In the 1940s Germany ran its war machine on a process its scientists devised to develop synthetic diesel fuel (synfuel) from coal reserves which it had access to in abundance.

Today, Montana is the repository of coal reserves convertible to synfuel in an abundance that would support this country’s total petroleum needs for the next 30 years with those reserves extending in equal measure into Canada, the only restriction being, other than processing facilities, that the price of crude on the world market be in the $35- to $50-a-barrel range.

The price of crude at the timeof this writing is $71.28.

In the 1940s, a result of the Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act, Congress appropriated $80 million for process research and production and by the 1950s America was producing thousands of gallons of synfuel a day at a test plant in Missouri. We have had the technology for 55 years. What is going on?

L O B B Y! That’s what is going on. The oil lobby is so powerful by virtue of the enormous sums the oil behemoths have been dumping into lobby war chests that nothing can be achieved in the Congress that would be counter productive to that industry. Is there little wonder that 34 percent of the population thinks the Congress is corrupt (according to the latest NBC poll of two days ago)?

It’s time to mount a letter-writing campaign. Write your senators and congressman and tell them the time for change has come; that the time to appropriate monies for extraction facilities is at hand. Do it today while you can still afford to drive to the post office and before the economy as we know it collapses.

Phil Tobin

Ellsworth