Washington Too Disengaged About Crushing Oil Prices!

[JimofPennsylvan]

Americans are “mad as hell” about the steep escalation in oil prices and they expect politicians to do more about this problem. They know Washington can’t completely solve the problem but they want more than rhetoric and blame they want real meaningful help from these elected officials! The price of a barrel of oil closed over $110.00 yesterday on the commodity markets what was it a year ago below $90.00! this has caused the average price of gasoline to go from below three dollars a gallon last year to over three and a half dollars today. Further, the price of oil is out of control, credible experts are proselytizing all types of nightmare scenarios on price! Economist tell us this dramatic increase in oil price will significantly reduce the increase in GDP America will see this year (GDP being the total value of all products and services produced in the country) to the American people this means significantly less job and income growth, federal government help is need here!

One key thing about this whole issue, is that the problem is not that there isn’t enough oil production to meet world-wide supply needs which there currently is it is that the gap between supply and demand has narrowed and reliability of supply has become a greater issue thus providing the reasons for the commodity markets to drive up oil prices. The bottom line for the American people should be that it is not acceptable these reasons for driving up oil prices the way they have been and will be it is not fair to consumers and citizens of countries who will have to pay the price for this increase in price.

Unless the commodity markets, oil producers and regulators get their act together and stop this creation of hardship at warp speed, the American people should demand the following be done. From American territory, the continental U.S. and off –shore, probably at least forty to fifty percent of the oil America consumes on a daily basis is produced. The American people have some unique rights with respect to this oil because it comes from U.S. sovereign territory. The American people should demand these rights be used to put “price controls” on how much oil produced from U.S. sovereign territory can be sold for and that savings must be passed on to oil end users and consumers. America only needs to do this for ten years until America transitions to other sources of energy. The power to set this price for U.S. oil could be set by the Federal Reserve Chairperson, he has the staff to determine a fair price for consumers and end users and the price needed to drive new oil production and consideration of what oil prices are doing to the health of the economy! A reasonable initial price ceiling would be between $90 to $95 a barrel of oil. This course wouldn’t completely solve America’s oil problem because America has to buy a lot of foreign oil to meet its needs but it would give significant help. The American people should consider that if there was some weather calamity in the country and some individual gas station owner in the affected area jacked up his gasoline prices twenty-five plus percent to just make money, the American people and American politicians would want that gas station owners head for price gouging, well the oil industry and the commodity markets are collectively doing the same thing today, how about we take some heads!

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says just like death an' taxes, gas keeps goin' up...

Why gas is so expensive, when oil isn't
April 21, 2011: Prices at the pump may soon set a record, but analysts say U.S. oil prices and gas prices from 2008 don't reflect the true cost of crude.

Gasoline prices have been rising for months and are within striking distance of their 2008 all-time high of $4.11 a gallon. But while oil prices are above $100 a barrel, they're still 24% below their 2008 all-time high. So why is gasoline so expensive, when oil is so far off its record price? The answer is that the price of oil Americans see every day has little to do with the price of gasoline at the pump. Those prices are for a particular type of oil -- West Texas Intermediate -- that's stored in Cushing, Okla.

Thanks to increasing supplies from the Rocky Mountain states and Canada's oil sands, plus a lack of pipelines to move that oil out, there's currently a big glut of oil in Cushing. That's pushing the price of West Texas crude down. Prices for most other types of oil, which make up the vast majority of oil that refiners use in U.S. gasoline, are much higher than West Texas Intermediate. London's Brent crude, for example, was closer to $124 a barrel on Wednesday. "It's really a broken benchmark," Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, said of the West Texas price.

Also, it's important to remember that oil and gasoline prices don't move in lockstep with one another. Gas prices lag behind oil prices by a couple of weeks. During the oil price spike of 2008, gas prices were still trying to catch up as oil prices had already started falling. That put refiners in a tight spot. "[Refiners] couldn't sell their product for as much as crude was increasing," Rayola Dougher, a senior economic advisor for the American Petroleum Institute. "People lost money."

Kloza, who crunches numbers for motorist group AAA, agrees. "Crude went up," in 2008, he said, "but gas prices did not follow." The difference between what refiners pay for a gallon of oil now and how much a gallon of gas sells for -- excluding taxes -- is about 78 cents, said Dougher. That's slightly higher than normal, but not terribly so, said Dougher. That's little consolation to drivers, who can expect the price of gas to continue rising. Gas prices have jumped 29 cents over the past 29 days to a nationwide average of $3.84 a gallon, according to AAA.

Source

See also:

Obama Says New Task Force Will Examine Gas Prices
Apr 21, 2011 –-- President Barack Obama said Thursday that the Justice Department will try to "root out" cases of fraud or manipulation in oil markets, even as Attorney General Eric Holder suggested a variety of legal reasons may be behind gasoline's surge to $4 a gallon.

"We are going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain," Obama said at a town-hall style meeting at a renewable energy plant in Reno, Nev. The town hall was sandwiched in between Obama's four fundraising events in California on Thursday - one in San Francisco and three in Los Angeles. The president was holding six fundraisers over the course of his three-day West Coast trip, aimed at high-dollar donors and young people, both of whom will be integral to a campaign that could set fundraising records. "This is going to just as hard, if not harder, than 2008," he said of his re-election bid during a small fundraiser at Sony Pictures Studios.

With the 2012 campaign in mind, the White House is anxious to show the public it's taking action to address rising gasoline prices. The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.84 on Thursday, about 30 cents higher than a month ago and almost a dollar higher than a year ago. Obama, decrying such levels as yet another hardship "at a time when things were already pretty tough," said Holder was forming the Financial Fraud Enforcement Working Group.

The task force will focus some of its investigation on "the role of traders and speculators" in the oil-price surge, Obama said, and will include several Cabinet department officials, federal regulators and the National Association of Attorneys General. In Washington, Holder said he would press ahead with the investigation, even though he did not cite any current evidence of intentional manipulation of oil and gas prices or fraud.

"Based upon our work and research to date, it is evident that there are regional differences in gasoline prices, as well as differences in the statutory and other legal tools at the government's disposal," Holder said in a memo accompanying a statement announcing the task force. "It is also clear that there are lawful reasons for increases in gas prices, given supply and demand." "Nonetheless, where consumers are harmed by unlawful conduct that has the effect of increasing gas prices, state and federal authorities will take swift action," Holder said.

MORE

 

[waltky]

Guess Hugo figgers there's more than one way to raise gas prices...

Venezuela’s windfall tax on oil companies raised
Sun, Apr 24, 2011 - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ratcheted up an oil windfall tax in a move that raises government income ahead of a presidential election, but puts a heavy load on oil companies in the OPEC member state.

Chavez, who will seek re--election next year, predicted oil prices will keep rising and said extra income from new tax rates will be transferred to a development fund for social spending. “The decree is to increase the fiscal contribution and the contribution of petroleum resources to development,” he said in a late night telephone call to a television chat show on Thursday, adding that the war in Libya was driving prices higher. US oil futures settled at US$112.29 on Thursday, while Brent crude was US$123.99. US markets were closed on Friday for a holiday.

FAST-TRACKED

The new law was created under fast-track powers that allow the president to bypass the Venezuelan congress for several months and rule by decree. Chavez first introduced a windfall tax in 2008 of up to 60 percent on revenues from oil prices higher than US$100 a barrel, based on the ideas of Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. Under the new rules, the government will take as much as 95 percent. South America’s biggest oil producer, Venezuela pumps almost 3 million barrels a day and has enjoyed sharply higher income from its main export in recent months.

Despite the rising prices, already large transfers to the government mean state oil company PDVSA suffers cashflow issues and its profits fell sharply last year. The original windfall tax kicked in when prices rose above US$70 a barrel in November last year. Under the new decree, PDVSA and its foreign partners will have have to pay the government 80 percent of income from sales of oil at more than US$70 a barrel, rising to 90 percent when prices reach US$90 a barrel. All income from prices more tan US$100 per barrel will be taxed at 95 percent.

In 2008, companies complained the windfall measure was too harsh because it taxed gross income rather than net profits. Between November and January, Venezuela collected US$800 million from the windfall tax Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said in February. The OPEC member’s oil sector has been the driving force of Chavez’s revolution, contributing funds from everything to education, health and sports programs.

POPULATIRY BOOST

See also:

Costly gasoline clouds Obama re-election prospects
04/23/11 WASHINGTON -With gas prices climbing and little relief in sight, President Barack Obama is scrambling to get ahead of the latest potential obstacle to his re-election bid, even as Republicans are making plans to exploit the issue.

No one seems more aware of the electoral peril than Obama himself. "My poll numbers go up and down depending on the latest crisis, and right now gas prices are weighing heavily on people," he told Democratic donors in Los Angeles this past week. In fact, Obama raised the issue unsolicited in a series of town meetings in Virginia, California and Nevada that were ostensibly about his deficit-reduction plan. And he made the gas spike the subject of his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday.

"It's just another burden when things were already pretty tough," he said. As Obama well knows, Americans love their cars and remain heavily dependent on them, and they don't hesitate to punish politicians when the cost of filling their tanks goes through the roof. Indeed, for presidents, responding to sudden surges is a recurring frustration.

"These gas prices are killing you right now," Obama said at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, acknowledging that many Americans can't afford new fuel-efficient cars and must drive older models.. For some, he said, the cost of a fill-up has all but erased the benefit of the payroll tax holiday that he and congressional Republicans agreed on last December.

On Saturday, Obama insisted in his radio and Internet address that the best answer is a long-term drive to develop alternatives to fossil fuel. He also renewed calls to end $4 billion in subsidies for oil and gas companies. "Instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy sources," he said, "we need to invest in tomorrow's."

MORE

 

[digger]

And what, exactly, is the government supposed to do? Because this sounds a lot like "when things go wrong people bitch about the government."

 

[Antiderivative]

Carter was right, yet windbags still blow.

I really don't understand this madness.....well, actually, I do.

Instead of being leaders in the alternative energy revolution, Reagan sold us out for his disillusionment over energy.

What happened? Instead of being leaders in the alternative energy paradigm, we are becoming followers.

However, this is on par for the GOP course in American Exceptionalism.

 

[Mr. H.]

Carter was right, yet windbags still blow.

I really don't understand this madness.....well, actually, I do.

Instead of being leaders in the alternative energy revolution, Reagan sold us out for his disillusionment over energy.

What happened? Instead of being leaders in the alternative energy paradigm, we are becoming followers.

However, this is on par for the GOP course in American Exceptionalism.

Carter was the master or fuck for brains. He alone instigated our fall from any hope of an energy independent future.

I was there. Where were you? Edited

Jimmy Carter singlehandedly sold this country up the river on the idea that in order to become oil independent from foreign nations, we should first and foremost brow beat, tax, and hog-tie our very own American petroleum industry into submission for the sake of conficscating private property as a means of financing pie-in-the-sky "alternative/renewable/sustainable energy production.

Where did that lead? It lead to hundreds of thousands of lost jobes, decresed domestic oil production, and an incremental increase in crude oil imports.

No- Carter was as much a screw job as is Obama.

And the saddest thing is, America has not learned anything.

Liberals do not learn from history, and they are hell bent on repeating history.

 

[digger]

Just how much oil do you think we have? We can't "produce" oil domestically. We can only suck it out of the ground, and once we've done that we can't do it twice. Any oil that Carter failed to "produce" back then we can just as easily "produce" now. But that's not gonna do it. Maybe it'll buy us a decade's breathing time. But sooner or later we're gonna have to get serious about clean energy. Might as well be sooner.

 

[Wicked Jester]

This government needs to wake the fuck up, and understand that we will be an oil dependent nation for many, many years to come......It's time to start seriously drilling our own damn oil, and send these overseas providers a damn message....We are no longer going to be held hostage any longer.

Yeah, we should start looking into more alternatives. In the meantime, drill our asses off.

 

[Antiderivative]

Carter was the master or fuck for brains. He alone instigated our fall from any hope of an energy independent future.

Go fuck yourself, you anti-American asshole.

I am not standing against one ounce of your anti-American BS.

 

[Wicked Jester]

Carter was right, yet windbags still blow.

I really don't understand this madness.....well, actually, I do.

Instead of being leaders in the alternative energy revolution, Reagan sold us out for his disillusionment over energy.

What happened? Instead of being leaders in the alternative energy paradigm, we are becoming followers.

However, this is on par for the GOP course in American Exceptionalism.

Carter was the master or fuck for brains. He alone instigated our fall from any hope of an energy independent future.

I was there. Where were you? Some cum stain on daddy's pants?

Jimmy Carter singlehandedly sold this country up the river on the idea that in order to become oil independent from foreign nations, we should first and foremost brow beat, tax, and hog-tie our very own American petroleum industry into submission for the sake of conficscating private property as a means of financing pie-in-the-sky "alternative/renewable/sustainable energy production.

Where did that lead? It lead to hundreds of thousands of lost jobes, decresed domestic oil production, and an incremental increase in crude oil imports.

No- Carter was as much a screw job as is Obama.

And the saddest thing is, America has not learned anything.

Liberals do not learn from history, and they are hell bent on repeating history.

Obama's a fuckin' joke.

Just look at his ridiculous "Cash For Clunkers" horseshit.......Yeah, that sure did work!....Just look at all the hybrids that are out on the roads.......Oh wait, theren't aren't anymore now, then there were before that asinine BS.

Christ, auto dealers here in so. Cal are still bitching about not being repaid by his sorry ass....All it did was screw them out of money, and didn't do one bit of god damn good.

 

[Wicked Jester]

Carter was the master or fuck for brains. He alone instigated our fall from any hope of an energy independent future.

Go fuck yourself, you anti-American asshole.

I am not standing against one ounce of your anti-American BS.

WTF?

LMAO!

The druggies are out in full force, and as usual, not making one bit of god damn sense.

 

[Antiderivative]

lol....I would love true reform in alternative energy. However, America will be a follower while overtopping nascent democracies in the long run.

America doesn't stand for freedom nor do they stand for leadership, except in prison population and arms deals.

 

[Mr. H.]

Carter was the master or fuck for brains. He alone instigated our fall from any hope of an energy independent future.

Go fuck yourself, you anti-American asshole.

I am not standing against one ounce of your anti-American BS.

I'll ask you once again- where were you when Carter was President?

I was making American jobs, American energy, and contributing to American GDP.

It was Carter, your Whore in Chief, who took away my ability to do just that.

Grab a shovel, you tit-sucking liberal waste of air, make something of us first and yourself secondly.

 

[digger]

Mr. H., I think it's funny that you keep on pointing out how old you are like it somehow makes you more right. I think it would be even more funny if you told me to pick up a shovel.

 

[Antiderivative]

Fuck you

 

[Antiderivative]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fa4HUiFJ6c]YouTube - Can't you hear me knocking- rolling stones[/ame]

 

[Antiderivative]

lol.........

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WysbZRPToEI]YouTube - Rusted Root ~ Back to the Earth[/ame]