So let me get this correct: many in leadership positions in Clatsop County are basing their decisions to support importation of liquefied natural gas with the goal of improviing the local economy while simultaneously weakening the national economy.

Year after year, the U.S. has been running annual trade deficits of something like $700 billion per year. This enables our foreign trading partners to purchase American companies, real estate and debt and weaken the U.S. dollar. All of these factors adversely affect our national economy.

The largest portion of the trade deficit is due to oil imports. Do we really want to add natural gas imports to our already unsustainable trade imbalance? A Chevron executive vice president, George Kirkland, was quoted in The Oregonian as saying, “by the end of the year, we will not have a single gas land-rig running,” and with natural gas plunging to about a quarter of its value last year, “it really doesn’t make sense right now to be drilling those gas wells.”

Let’s strengthen our local economy by conserving oil, thereby lowering our trade deficit and purchasing the natural gas we do need domestically.

JOHN D. SAMP

Astoria