While Maine’s gubernatorial combatants debate the past, most of the state’s residents are looking at the immediate future, which in the area of energy supplies and costs looks uncertain, even bleak. The public wonders why its leaders do not take up a sustained appeal to the federal government to begin the process of opening up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Since Monday, when the NEWS first editorialized in favor of initiating this process, the flow of international events and the observations of industry analysts have buttressed a case for pumping oil out of storage and into the refining pipeline.

On Monday, Calvin A. Kent, who heads the Energy Department’s information administration, presented the House enery and power subcommittee with an unconvincing report on the status of heating oil and fuels. Stocks, said Kent, “appear adequate” today, but as Maine residents learned last winter, what appears adequate in September can evaporate quickly in the first cold snap. Even the spokesman for the national petroleum refiners concedes that the “supply balance is tight.”

Kent tempered his own cautious optimism, observing that any of a number of variables could create spot shortages. With refineries already running at 96 percent, the Middle East in turmoil, the weather unpredictable and the possibility of shipping or refinery accidents always a possibility, the Energy Department’s projections appear to be more political, wishful thinking than a studied prediction.

Washington is gambling with the Frost Belt. Wishing to give the international appearance of playing a pat hand in the Persian Gulf, the federal government is leaving the lock secured on the strategic reserve. If Washington is wrong, many people in the North Central and New England states could suffer. Once winter arrives, there will be no way to make up the lost time.

Gov. John McKernan has been more aggressive this week, ordering conservation measures in state government and the state energy office has sought greater federal help for energy assistance programs and support for broader public appeals for conservation, but the state can do more.

It’s time to turn up the political heat for opening the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The federal government is playing a high-stakes game, but New England’s economy and well-being are not worth the risk of inaction.