Posted on 05/19/2004 10:32:57 AM PDT by OESY
Thank you, Lord, for 40-dollar oil.
Obviously the Almighty has a better understanding of our interests than we do. John Kerry lays a higher oil price as one more charge in his indictment of the Bushies. Motorists available for interviewing by TV reporters during daylight hours (otherwise known as senior citizens) lament two-dollar gasoline as a crime against humanity, if not a mortal sin.
Meanwhile, six and half billion people need to eat, clothe themselves and find shelter, and do a little better job of it each year. That takes oil, at least as far as the eye can see.
Something like a trillion barrels remain in the ground. But, for technical reasons, a few old, extremely large fields the world has depended on for 50 years may be about to start dropping off rapidly, without much hope of replacing the output with new, affordable production. That's the worry anyway, though there's much debate how urgent and dire this effect will be. But no matter: Unless economics has no purchase on reality, the only solution out there is one of price incentives.
That's not to say that all forces behind today's higher prices are a godsend. The futures market puts oil for delivery next summer at $35, well under today's $41. Seers are not hard pressed to explain why. On April 24, three small boats operated by suicide commandos hit Iraq's southern oil terminal and a few days later kamikaze gunmen shot up a Saudi petrochemical plant. Osama bin Laden has a plan: Get control of Saudi Arabia through subversion and put himself in charge of its oil, foundation of a new Islamic empire. That is, Saudi survival can't be taken for granted.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
This just in from opinionjournal.com--
All this has some petroleum engineers predicting resource wars, famine and pestilence, preventable only by a massive effort of central planning to shift the world to a less hydrocarbon-intensive lifestyle. If so, we might as well pass around the cyanide caplets right now. Such global planning is certainly beyond the wisdom and power of politicians to manage.
Yet the unwillingness of doomsayers to credit price signals with eliciting changed consumption behavior, new technology, a thousand substitutions and other adaptive responses is more than a little peculiar here. Oil companies have held back from investing in deep-water searches, Canadian oil sands and Venezuelan bitumen for fear oil prices will plummet to $15. Shareholders have kept Big Oil on a short leash, tolerating only low-risk investment projects that will generate cash flow in a small number of years. Won't this change now if higher prices seem a permanent feature of the landscape?
Motorists might or might not be willing to swallow price hikes, but what about other industries that use petroleum as feedstock? They're price sensitive and would be expected to adapt in ways that aren't all easy to foresee from today's vantage.
Scare talk is a hardy perennial in the global petroleum business, a passport to fun and attention from the media. Industrial society is frequently painted as a fragile, vulnerable machine, yet all the evidence suggests the opposite: It's a machine that has grown more resilient and adaptable the more complex and interdependent the world becomes. In short, as long as the price mechanism is allowed to work, mankind seems likely to muddle through. Hallelujah, then, for higher oil prices.
This is scary, but tells why in uncertain times having a Strategic Petroleum Reserve is absolutely essential to meet future energy emergencies, for example, should the royal Saudi family be overthrown such as the Shah of Iran was.
I havn't noticed the price of petroleum jelly going up yet. I check every week. yuk yuk.
I thought that the Democrats want to reduce fuel consumption.
Higher gasoline prices reduce gasoline consumption and force people to buy more fuel efficient cars. Higher prices make alternative energy more competitive.
So why are the Democrats complaining. I really don't think they know what they want.
Sometimes the WSJ is just plain funny.
Ping. I love the way this starts.
So let me get this straight......the Government is more than willing to dish out billions of dollars to the struggling Airline Industry, but they are not willing to dish out subsidies to the oil corporations so our gas prices will be lower? This is un-believable.
We're just going to end up paying for it anyway, through taxes. The bailout of the airline industry was a real turkey, but we shouldn't compound socialism with more socialism.
Ah, Bush out, Kerry in, Daschle as Majority Leader and Pelosi as speaker? Do I win?
That stuff is bad for you... use the water soluble stuff.
Try using more peanut butter...
"...the price of petroleum jelly..."
You need to switch to a water-based product. Snort!
"Osama bin Laden...control of Saudi Arabia ...a new Islamic empire."
If that happens, SAC will ensure that there will be no survival. Of Osama, that is.
If it does, it's sure to become a Gay Rights issue.
Let's tell all complainers that:
a) The energy enlightened Eureans pay from $5.25 to $5.85 per gallon. Enviro-friendly taxes got 'em there.
b) If you voted or intend to vote for a democratic Senator you successfully helped block oil and gas explorations on the U.S. continental shelf as well as offshore.
There are 190 billion barrels laying there waiting to be explored.
These 190 bill. barrels would go a long way towards reducing imports and stabilizing the dollar, help the emergency oil reserve, keep a lid on prices, generate jobs for exploration, pipeline construction, stimulating our economy.
Think of this when choosing your Senator: He's the one by voting for or against exploration and keeps gasoline prices going up, besides of course slapping taxes on it and telling you it's for the ecology's good. His alternatives of windmills, stopping SUV's turned out to be insufficient alternatives.
Vote a democratic Senator out, it works in the case of your fuel costs and keeps money in your pocket.
A local radio host called up Johnson & Johnson complementing them on the flavor of their "Kentucky" Jelly and how good it was on his toast in the morning. It took the poor lady on the phone a little while to figure out he was talking about KY jelly. She had a hard time trying to explain to him that it wasn't meant to be eaten.
Here is the real upside to higher gas prices:
Safety. Poor people will drive less. Since poor people tend to be less intelligent, and have worse judgement and societal responsibility, the roads will be safer, even if congestion is unchanged.
But congestion will be reduced, making the roads safer still, and saving time for those who can still afford to drive.
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