From the Intern's desk

All hail the interns

Over the course of the last several months, the Spring semester. OK Policy has had the honor of having two interns from OSU. Kai Mann and Austin Linton were our first two interns to come to us through the Political Science department at OSU. Both were extremely helpful on a variety of assignments during this legislative session, including spending some time at the capitol and working on our Numbers You Need releases. We hope that they both gained as much from this experience as we did from having them.

Below is an opinion blog post written by Kai Mann and inspired by one of his assignments for OK Policy.
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Retrofit, Baby, Retrofit!

In rough economic times, it is often helpful to turn an eye towards more positive aspects of the state’s economy. One piece of good news is the fact that natural gas production is increasing. Since 2003, significant gains have been made in the production of natural gas, and that is good news for the state, especially as crude oil production continues a decline.

The United States is the world leader in natural gas production and Oklahoma, being one of the leaders in natural gas production nationwide, the number five producer out of all the states, should take a more active role in utilizing this resource. Cheaper and cleaner burning than oil and gasoline, the state should make a concerted effort to tap the full potential of this fuel source. Retrofitting of state vehicles to run off of CNG (compressed natural gas) would be a great place to start. This would allow the state’s vehicles to run off of a product that is in abundance in the state as well as lessen some of the uncertainty of dealing with wildly fluctuating gas prices that were common last summer and always a threat.

Efforts to effectively utilize the natural gas produced here in Oklahoma would be a great step for the Oklahoma to take to support one the state’s largest industries, become more energy independent, as well as help out the environment.