did anyone catch real time with bill mahr when he had exxonmobil's exiting ceo raymond in a picture next to a picture of fattbastard.
They are part of the etc, etc. OPEC, Hugo Chavez, the Saudis... put whatever you want in there, it doesn't change that gas was hovering around a dollar a gallon when Clinton was President. (IIRC, OPEC existed during the 90s)
opec also flooded the markets then basically so we would depend more on foreign oil sources. wouldn't it be nice if we would have pushed for development of the oil sands in canada 10-15 years ago? so does your theory about it only being the bush admin cover the price spikes in platnium, gold, silver, any non-precious metal, uranium, non-metal minerals and so on? or do you have no clue what is going on in those markets?
I don't care a bit about gold, silver, uranium et al. I'm talking strictly about oil and price gouging. I hadn't heard about Canada before. That's nice. Soon it will be, if only they had not cancelled Small Wonder or if only women had three breasts, anything to distract from the obvious. Record Profits.
IMO, the best thing a presidential candidate in '08 could propose would be a "Manhattan Project" scale effort to get America completely independent from (1) foreign sources of oil and (2) oil altogether. Ted Kennedy was on TDS last week and he said something that struck a chord with me. He said that "Americans want to be challenged," and I agree with him. When we were challenged to "send a man to the moon in this decade," we responded and did it. When we were challenged to show the world that Democracy and capitalism were better models of government than the USSR's version of communism, we rose to the challenge and won the Cold War. We need someone to challenge us to do something other than rack up credit card bills.
Couldn't agree more. Great post, andy. Bush had his golden opportunity to challenge America, in the aftermath of 9/11, and he blew it. A real leader would have recognized the moment, and used it for all it was worth. Instead of challenging America, he continued cutting taxes. And cutting taxes. And cutting taxes. During a war. Pathetic. Keep D&D Civil.
The "dumb American" phrase just doesn't apply to tourists anymore. The sickness has infected every aspect of our society.
Commodities. Gold, silver, Oil, Corn, Wheat - they are all commodities. The price of a commodity is not set by the owner of the commodity. Gold miners don't set the price of gold. Farmers don't set the price of Corn or Wheat. And Exxon, COP, Chevron, etc don't control the price of oil. All benefit from the higher price, but you can't blame farmers for the fact that corn is at an all time high. Maybe put aside a few of those Oliver Stone books and pick up a WSJ though I think much of the above is assumed knowledge in the WSJ. Are they making a profit? Yes. Oil is and refineries are passing on the higher cost of oil to our gas prices. Whould you expect them to take a loss? Drill a barrell and sell it for below market? Now Max is right, we have a huge surplus of oil in this country right now. More than usual. But our gasoline prices have gone up because of: 1) The high price of oil (see commodities) 2) Gasoline surplus is dropping and we are just beginning to enter the driving season. 3) MTBEs have to be replaced with another additive for pollution reasons. If ethanol is used, they can't ship it via pipelines and have to transport the gas via trucks and trains which is more expensive and slower. Also, the Canadian sands is a very expensive and extensive process to get that into a usable product. Most companies are not lining up for the stuff even with oil at these prices. Oil will come down when there is more stablization in Middle East - Iran specifically. Gas prices though may be there to stay - IMO.
That's an excellent point. Many people say that ethanol is a net energy loser and takes more petroleum inputs than the equivalent energy you get from ethanol. Thats true if petroleum is being used to power the mills and farm equipment. If they switch to using agricultural waste to generate the power then it comes out much better. Unfortunately like every other power source an ethanol and bio diseal economy takes some infrastructure changes but these are changes that are well within our technological reach and less substantial than changing to hydrogen, electric or even natural gas cars since you can still store ethanol and bio diseal like gasoline and you don't need to retool diseal engines to run on bio diseal.
But the problem with those studies is that 1) They assume current American technology which is behind much of the world and 2) Assume American corn ethanol which is a flat out joke. Because of our lovely farm industry and their lobbying, we're stuck using the most inefficient and expensive type of ethanol in the world because farmers and the federal government need to support each other. The last energy bill actually prohibited tax breaks and energy subsidies from funding sugar ethanol/bio-diesel.
I agree to an extent but producers can regulate price by controlling supply as long as demand remains relatively constant. Look at how effective OPEC was during the 70's. I've seen some material that says something like that might be going on. For instance the argument that environmentalists have prevented more refineries being built there have been some reports that oil companies themselves don't want to build more refineries to keep prices high. I think someone had posted a thread about that here a while back.
I agree that OPEC has had some control over the price. In the past they have pushed prices by limiting or increasing production. Now that doesn't have as much bearing on the price of oil as 1 sentence from Iran. We have oil, but we don't have security and that is what is making the oil go up to $75. Speculation and fear is driving it up. Remove that, and you will be back to OPEC controlling the price via production. I am against another war as I don't think it adds to the stability in the region, but stability is what it will take - or at least a few quite months from Iran.
this notion is problematic on a number of levels. firstly the tar sands will never be as cheap as saudi oil. that is the reason there wasn't development. unless crude is 50 dollars a barrel theres no point in exploring the tar sands. to say we should have started developing 10 years ago makes absolutely no economic sense. secondly canada is not exactly dying to ship oil to the US to make up for the 'mid east oil that the US is dependent on'. china is going to be a HUGE player and they are investing extensively in canada. the problem isn't cheap oil. the problem is oil. relying on fossil fuels this extensively is dumb.
the tar sands can be produced profitably with oil at 13/barrel i don't disagree with what you are saying but oil is still the reality.
Canada would gladly supply the US with all the oil it would like…at the right price. And rather than having you kiss the Saudi’s backsides…we would humbly request you simply substitute current Nascar coverage with hockey, and give the Stanley Cup playoffs their proper due at the beginning of the sportscasts. We have no current demands for live coverage of curling.
