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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 9, 1981)
I; Local THE BATTALION MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1981 Page 31 Oil decontrol may increase drilling efforts irselves, r consciei :he Shall egimesint! , ^ oes not K deve al dissenic less comip in Vietni or the SO,# le many® the jungle w ribbons i; i shattered 1 naintainiiis ny substaiii! people to? mu: ed byhowm lady send fine mite versify wasi ecial day 1b ho have gin Sighting in Staff photo by Greg Gammon Engineering geology major Brandon Quinn sights in on his compass Sunday afternoon to take a bearing in front of the Halbouty Geosciences Building. The Geology 209 class is using the compass exercise to map a layout of the building using paced off distances and compass hearings. Advisory council to discuss issues By SHARON D. RENFROW Battalion Reporter Even a president needs advice; that’s why Student Body President Brad Smith formed an advisory louncil when he came into office. “Itwas something I felt we needed lodo,” Smith said. The Texas A&M University student body by-laws illow for an advisory council each year made up of student leaders from foups on campus and there has not )een one for several years, he said. On Sept. 10, these leaders met ivith Smith and a council was ormed. Its members are: —Sherrie Balcar, president of the Residence Halls Association. Gary Branch, president of the Class of ’82. — Ken Cross, Cadet Corps Com mander. — Jay Cross, president of the Class of ’84. — Emen Haby, president of the MSC Council and Directorate. Greg Hood, president of the Traditions Council. , — Aubrey Johnson, president of the Graduate Student Council. — Mike Lawshe, president of the Class of ’83. — Jess Mason, president of the Class of’81. — Sam Olivieri, president of the International Student Council. — Mark Outlaw, head yell leader. — Paula Sorrells, president of the Off-Campus Aggies. — brad Smith, president of the student body. — Brien Smith, president of the Married Student Council. The main purpose of this council is to improve the representation of the 6nt g 0Vernmen L Smith said, j ar .e an umbrella over all the student groups and it would be bad if w ent through the year without talk- ■ngtothe president of the Class of’83 efit the 1* the president of the International lt ^udent Council,” he said. =>s from at* i ^ ot on ty ^ocs the president get to iditaow the groups but they get to ■c«n<rthe®l ow . eac h other. “This council gives 1 , ^;„ 0 !| eV j 1 T^ )0 ^y a chance to get together 'f ® s cuss their issues and ideas,” th sa kl. nd the The council meets once a month to lives to : uss topics of concern and current the caiff 1 s Some topics under discussion e eac hing effectiveness on campus and the possibility of limited student enrollment. “We aren’t looking for solutions, just opinions,” Smith said. “We have to understand the problems first be fore we can act on it,” he said. Another important purpose of the council, Smith continued, is that it allows these leaders speaking pri vileges at senate meetings. “If an issue affecting their group came up at the meeting they can speak on it," he said. “And as the name implies, if they have any advice on a bill they can tell me about it at our meetings. ” Smith is pleased with the accom plishments of the advisory council. “Our main goal has been met,’’ Smith said. “We all got to know each other.” By CINDY GEE Battalion Staff Less money, fewer vacations and smaller cars are the results many people are seeing from rising gaso line costs, but local experts agree the end results of oil deregulation will greatly benefit Americans. “I’m very much in favor of dereg ulation of crude oil prices,” Dr. Earl Cook, Texas A&M University dean of geosciences, said. “Not because it has been unfair to the American pro ducer relative to the foreign produc er, which it has. Not because it will provide the oil companies with more money to try and find more oil, which it will. But because I think we need to have the cost... of petroleum products rise still further to encour age us to save what we eventually will not have.” Cook, whose background is in mining engineering, geology and re source geography, has written about energy problems for 15 years. “There’s no way the United States could become independent of fore ign oil in a short term,” said Dr. Robert Berg, Texas A&M director of research. “But with the declining supplies of conventional oil and gas, the oil companies may find it profit able to produce the unconventional methods.” Berg, who has field experience in petroleum geology, said the uncon ventional methods — obtaining oil from shale, coal or tar sands — re quire great capital investments be fore there is any return. He said the United States will soon be in a posi tion where it will have to resort to those methods. One major oil industry executive said that free enterprise, an overall competitive system, will allow Americans to buy at the best price. He said competition will keep the cost of gasoline from skyrocketing, but if gasoline is more expensive, it will lead people to develop alterna tive resources. Because of deregulation, the ex ecutive said there will be a continued strong effort in drilling, and oil com panies will take higher risks to go after expensive oil. With time and without government control that oil will be marketable, he said. When oil seemed to be plentiful, the person who could find more oil and sell it below his neighbor’s price made more money. Everyone tried to sell his product a little bit cheaper. Ultimately, the consumer who paid about 30 cents a gallon for gasoline benefited. But in 1973, the Arabs realized that their reserves would run out. They increased the world market price, while the United States kept its price at a much lower rate. That year the world market price was $12 a barrel, while the price for U.S. oil remained at $5 per barrel due to gov ernment-imposed price ceilings. Before deregulation. United States old oil (oil produced from wells that were drilled prior to 1973) sold for $6.50. At the same time new oil sold for about $18 per barrel. Cur rently the world price is about $40 per barrel. “Old oil” is oil discovered before 1973; “new oil” is oil discovered after 1972. The federal government’s price controls on old oil encouraged exploration. By artificially deflating the price of already-discovered oil, the government encouraged oil firms to concentrate efforts on searching for new wells, rather than develop ing old ones. Berg said the oil regulations made companies more or less frantic to find more new oil. Exploration speeded up, because if U.S. companies couldn’t sell the oil for the world market price, the next best thing they could do was to find more oil to sell at the new oil price. Cook said the United States was importing half of its petroleum a few years ago, and half of that oil that was refined was used for transportation fuel. “An awful lot of the wealth of this country has been going to pay for imported oil,” he s^id. “Last year it was over $80 billion.” An imbalance between these fore ign oil outlays and our export re venues contributed strongly to infla tion, he said. * * * * * ¥ -k * * * WE WILL TEACH THE CHILDREN Join the Texas Student Education Association. Fresh men, Sophomores, Juniors — it’s time to “stick your necks out.” Come to our Feb. 10, meeting at 7:00 p.m. in 302 Rudder. Topics: 1) Disney: Yes or No? 2) SNEA Report 3) Student Teachers info for ’81 & ’82 * * * * * * * if * k Associate ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ aaxxxxmigiw SOCIETY OF MANUFACTURING ENGINEERS HOUSTON TOOL SHOW 1981 TUES. FEB. 10 12:00-9:00 WED. FEB. 11 12:00-9:00 THURS. FEB. 12 12:00-6:00 SIGN UP LISTS AVAILABLE IN FERMIER FOR ANY ONE INTERESTED IN ATTENDING ALONG WITH TAMU STUDENT CHAPTER OR WORKING IN THE TAMU BOOTH. MEMBERS & NONMEMBERS WEL COME. FREE TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM SME OF FICERS. FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT Molly McDuff David Pausky 845-0115 f 845-4050 ditorid i words in phe edito^j >me, and 3 *' legeM 1 * sA&M's' iination P* 33.25 pe^ farnis^ w .onald BuiW P7843- S ively*i* d to it- FANTASTIC FRESHMAN JOSEPH P.RIKE, OF COLLEGE STATION AGENCY ffigTECTIVE LIFE 0 insurance company me Office Birmingham, Alabama This month Joseph Rike, a first-year member of College Station Agency, ranks as one of the leading agents for Protective Life. That means he’s been pleasing people with top-notch sales and customer service. We’re proud of him. He can help you with all your personal and busi ness insurance needs. College Station Agency P.O. Drawer CQ 520 University Drive East College Station, Texas 77840 Telephone: (713) 696-7714 In addition, oil companies are keeping interest rates up because they are borrowing a great deal of money for exploration, Cook said. He said it might be better to use some of that exploration money to develop alternative energy sources. Yet, exploration is relatively cheap compared to drilling because of the equipment and labor involved, Berg said. Drilling is expensive because companies are having to drill deeper and in harder-to-get-at places, such as off shore and in Alaska, he said. In other words, until now there was more of an incentive for the com panies to find new oil rather than to continue drilling an old oil field. Usually only one-third of the oil in a well is recovered, Berg said. The other two-thirds are more expensive and harder to extract. Higher gasoline prices will en courage Americans to decrease their gasoline usage, which in turn will cut down on the enormous payments to foreign oil producers, and will get the United States to move a little faster in developing alternatives to petroleum, Cook said. “In the energy business the indi vidual still makes a lot of important decisions,” he said. “We’re still able to decide what size car we re going to buy and how we’re going to use that car. “We’ve gotten into an inflationary kind of thinking and it goes this way: ‘Well $1.25 a gallon is an awful lot compared to what it used to be, but the papers tell me it’s going to be $2 by the end of the year, so maybe I better buy what I can now and use it up until I get so poor, or it gets so high in price I can’t afford it.”’ As profits to the oil companies go up, profits to the government will also go up because of the windfall profits tax. 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