As I was driving into town today, I noticed the pumpjacks doing their thing, pulling precious petroleum out of the ground here in the Texas panhandle. As the rest of the world laments an oil crisis, Texans are enjoying the fruits of the higher per barrel prices, and some areas of Alaska outside of ANWR may soon reap the benefits as well.

You see, a boom or a crisis depends on your perspective. And the Texas and Alaska pumpjacks are what stand to prohibit OPEC price controls from going through the roof. If they go too high, a few wells need to be uncapped, and BINGO! We don't need their oil.

The oil crisis cry is beginning to smack of the boy who cried wolf. You will see this analogy written in a soon to be produced sister blog, but when I was in grade school in the 1970's, we were informed that the world's oil supply would run out "in 20 or 30 years". Then, my younger brothers and sisters who attended grade school in the '80's were given the same 20 to 30 year timetable, and my friends' children in the 90's were given the same information.

Now, it seems, the same 20 to 30 year timetable is being given by environmental alarmists. Should it be any wonder that I, as a 34 year old, am bordering on hardcore cynicism here?

What you do and will perceive at the pump to be an oil crisis is nothing more than a boom to the domestic oil industry, who have been able to uncap long dormant wells and put workers back in the field in an area where the economy was in danger of becoming as dry as the climate. And so, you see, we have jobs.

Didn't I hear a bunch of folks asking where the jobs had gone a few months back?