This past week Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. announced it would sell a gas field to BP America for $1.7 billion. Chesapeake also sold off interest in another field and is collecting $1.65 billion.

Oh, I know Chesapeake is spending money to develop new fields, but obviously they’re making money.

And then there’s Devon Energy, another Oklahoma City-based natural gas company, with plans to build a $350 million, nearly 40-story building downtown.

If the company has money like that, they could afford to build a few compressed natural gas stations. Besides, the state Legislature this past session gave them tax breaks on drilling deep wells.

But you and I know what will happen this winter when low-income residents can’t pay their gas bills. The federal government will come up with heating assistance, and those of us who pay our bills will receive a notice asking us to please give extra to share the warmth with the needy.

Probably, gas producers don’t have money to build their stations, convert vehicles to compressed natural gas and lower prices so poor people can afford to pay their gas bills because the companes are spending too much of their money lobbying politicians for tax breaks and government-subsidized incentives to sell their product.

Let’s be careful we don’t exchange dependence on one type of fuel for dependence on another. And in subsidizing one energy source, let’s be careful we don’t squelch the development of alternative energy sources that ultimately will make us energy independent.

To write GerardClick Here