The reality is that increasing gas prices are going to destroy our economy because it will drive the price of everything up.

The reality is that there is no legitimate reason for America to buy foreign oil. America has more oil in the ground than any other nation in the world.

The only reason that we have to buy foreign oil is because of the lunacy of the environmentalists. In the 1980s, I helped build a plant in Parachute, Colo., to extract oil from shale rock. It was built for the oil company Enron. The amount of the oil in the prime land owned by Enron is enough to produce something like 10,000 barrels per day for 41 years.

There are hundreds of oil wells all over America that just need the caps removed and then start pumping oil. Due to the environmentalists howling at last account that I had, there had not been a new oil refinery built in America in about 40 years.

It is time for us to tell our employees to start doing what is best for this nation. That is to tell oil companies to start building refineries and start pulling their oil from our supplies in this nation.

Edwin J. Slaten

Eva, Ala