A careful review of President Carter's policies and an understanding of energy markets would have improved Pete's op-ed considerably.

Ashdown inquired what my colleagues and I had done on energy "from 2001 to 2007, when [the Republican] party controlled Congress and the White House."

Interesting question. Perhaps Pete merely overlooked the following facts. Between 2001 and 2005, I introduced six energy bills: the CLEAR Act promoting hybrids and alternative fuels; a bill promoting natural-gas production; a bill promoting natural-gas infrastructure; a bill promoting wind, solar and geothermal energy; a bill promoting new refining capacity; and the Oil Shale and Tar Sands Development Act.

Each was passed into law in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 by the Republican-controlled Congress.

Ashdown castigated me for "declaring all this country needs is a second dance with costly oil shale." Problem is, I never declared that. I've sought a balanced approach.

Pete should check his history. Jimmy Carter did support a Manhattan Project on energy, telling Americans, "You know we can do it. We have the natural resources. We have more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias."

That's right, Carter's Manhattan Project was based on oil shale. He would have succeeded, because even then we had the technology, but the Saudis responded by flooding the oil markets, bringing oil down to $10 a barrel.

Today, the Saudis cannot flood the market, technology is dramatically improved, environmental laws are better, we are 70 percent dependent on foreign oil instead of the 30 percent under Carter and the price per barrel is above $100.

Other elements of Carter's energy policies, such as constraints on imported oil and the windfall profits tax, both supported by Ashdown, failed because we can't wish away concrete marketplace rules.

Here's a little tutorial on energy. First, global supply and demand determine oil prices. President Carter understood what Ashdown does not: Constraining oil imports would lead to disaster unless combined with aggressive increases in domestic production.

Second, our government relies completely on our oil companies to invest in exploration, pipelines and refineries. All U.S. oil companies combined represent only 6 percent of the global oil industry. To supply America's energy, they compete with oil giants owned by foreign governments.

Third, the American Petroleum Institute says oil company profits average 7.4 percent of the price of a gallon of gas, but state and federal governments get 13 percent of the price per gallon in fuel taxes. That's right, government income from oil taxes dwarfs oil company profits and none of it is applied to increasing oil supplies.

Whoops, did the Democrats forget to tell you that? Also, did they mention that consumers would pay for their windfall tax proposal, which would lead to less supply and higher prices?

What we need is a balanced solution - more domestic supply plus incentives to spur innovation to reduce demand.

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* SEN. ORRIN HATCH, R-Utah, represents Utah in the U.S. Senate.