Gas at $4 brings promises, pandering

Even if Congress does lift the ban on drilling on the continental shelf, and states go along, energy experts say it's at least a five to seven year process before new drillling could begin — and that could be optimistic The industry already is in a frenetic push to find more sources of hydrocarbons and faces severe shortages of rigs and other equipment and workers.

Construction of nuclear reactors can take many years, sometimes decades, of regulatory hurdles before ground is broken once a new nuclear power plant is proposed. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has nine applications for as many as 15 new reactors; the industry anticipates the first of these around 2016-2017 at the earliest.

McCain and Obama differ on a proposed federal gasoline tax holiday. McCain supports a temporary repeal saying a respite from the 18.4 cents per gallon tax will help consumers and small businesses. Obama ridicules the plan — which Clinton had also supported — as a gimmick that would steal money for U.S. highway repair and maintenance without much benefit to consumers. Most economists agree with the Obama camp.

McCain opposes ethanol subsidies — not a popular stand in the nation's heartland — although mixed his criticism of such subsidies with a little pandering during a trip to Iowa last month, when he praised farmers in his audience as "the most productive, most efficient and the best. And I will open every market in the world to your products."

Obama, coming from the country's second largest corn-producing state, has supported such subsidies, although he has said the federal government might have to rethink its support for corn ethanol because of surging corn prices which hit the world's poorest people the hardest.

And while Obama is calling for reducing the influence of special interests, some of his top supporters and advisers are tied to the ethanol industry. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota is on the board of several ethanol companies and works at a Washington law firm where he lists advice to clients in renewable energy among his specialties. Obama energy adviser Jason Grumet previously worked at the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan initiative associated with both Daschle and former Kansas Republican Sen. Bob Dole, a big ethanol backer, according to a story in Monday's editions of The New York Times.

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