Rant on Gas Prices

Gas Prices (Flame-Thrower Reload) and Infastructure LA Slime (Times) Article (log into my blog archives for a link)

How much is enough? We have Millions if not Billions of Barrels of Oil off of the California Coast, the Gulf Coast and in the Vaunted ANWR in Alaska.

I have seen some stations hitting $2.75 a gallon for gas. How high do gas prices have to go before you relent on your anti-drilling position? Maybe I should host an auction on this blog we've got $3.25 going once... I see a hand is that $3.50? $3.50 is the price now... was that $4.00!? $4.00 a gallon folks before we can drill...

How much more damage does the US economy have to suffer before you see the light? The Highway bill has allocated Billions to alternative fuel research, but until that stuff becomes practically useful, what do we do in the interim?

Is Iraq going to solve our immediate energy need, nope. Saudi Arabia, Nope. China? I'll bet they are loving our energy crisis. We have the solution within our own borders and you'd swear that drilling would be the worst Environmental catastrophe ever precipitated on America since the Exxon Valdez crashed. (Note that area looks pretty normal now, dosen't it.)

A related issue, the Highway Bill is going to add much needed transportation capacity to our freeways. Leave us not forget, cars idling on inadequate freeways produce 7 times the pollution of cars running at 55mph.

We have not built a new Oil refinery in California since I was in Kindergarten 29(!) years ago.

The problem is that extreme environmental policies have hamstrung infastructure development. In California, our roads are in terrible disrepair and there aren't enough traffic lanes on any of our freeways. Congrats Governor for fully funding Prop 42 for the first time ever... Congrats Congressman Doolittle for getting badly needed funds to fix the I-80 bottleneck in Roseville.

We need to drill and build... the dirty little secret again is the technological advances have minimized the resultant pollution from both. This is a fact that Environmentalists and politicians they purchase will always deny.

Finally, the Environmentalists have acheived their goal in a way that no piece of legislation could have ever worked. People are being denied the right to drive the vehicle of their choosing because of gas prices. The founding principles of this country are the freedom to choose your lifestyle... works for terminating your unborn child really well... why can't we be pro-choice on vehicles?

It is further the responsibility of government to accomodate the will of the people not to force social change. Californians want to drive their cars, not ride a gosh-darned train or a scummy graffitti-plastered bus. People have the right to go to work however they want... deliberately raiding Highway money to pay for welfare and then spending what little is left over on mass transit is Social Engineering in its' most classic form.

Some American Petroleum Institute estimates for proven oil reserves(in the ground) say we have enough crude oil, at current usage, to last a couple of hundred years. The problem, indeed is, how do we keep up with the demand.

Our refineries have suffered the fate of most everything that seems to conflict with the goals of the Sierra Club. They want the oil business shut down and have convinced many legislators of this unholy need. The oil business is one of the last bastions of capitalism in this nation and anything that will put it in a bad light is the goal of the Sierra Club. You can even see the result of their insidious campaign here on an ostensibly free market forum such as Free Republic. I see constant criticizm of oil companies and their "profiteering" from many on this forum.

Without refinery capacity to meet demand at peak periods we will constantly see price spikes and price increases during high use times of the year....such as summer up to and including Labor Day. In sixth grade I remember learning about supply and demand. I cannot believe my eyes when reading some of the stupid comments about the oil business and their "Gouging". If you are running a business and cannot keep up with the demand you will find that your own customers will drive up the price. "Don't sell to him....I need it more! Here, I will give you a dollar more for that (use your imagination)." The other thing that will happen is "Joe Blow" will see that you cannot satisfy your customer base and he will open up to compete with you....and herein lies the problem.

The government will not allow any new refineries to be built unless the Oil Companies jump through twenty thousand hoops and suffer through years and years of law suits, and lets not forget our friend "NIMBY". Normally the lack of supply will be met by increased competition, but our own society has seen fit to destroy this possible solution with its insane restrictive policies. Hence, no new competition.

Ladies and gentlemen. Profiteering is not a bad thing. Profiteering in a sane economic system causes more supply to be generated and thus lowers prices through availability and competition. As mentioned earliar, the raw material(crude oil) is not the problem. Refining it into petroleum products quickly enough to meet the ongoing demand is the culprit! If we had new refineries on line to meet the demand daily, you would not see these price spikes....ever! Our refineries must schedule their maintenance ahead of time (with each other) to insure that not too many are shut down at the same time. They are already running at full capacity so you can imagine what happens when one of them go offline with an unscheduled shutdown. It causes prices on the futures market to react because of the increased demand for a lessor amount of fuel.

Our oil industry has managed to keep oil priced lower (inflation adjusted) than it was during the Arab oil boycott of the seventies. How has this been accomplished? Well, for starters President Reagan, upon taking office, eliminated many of the regulatory policies of the Carter years. The oil concerns, themselves, have managed to become more efficient in their delivery of the finished product. Try to remember what gas stations were like 30 or 40 years ago. As the deregulation policies took hold innovative ideas and modern technology took over. This did not happen in Europe. They maintained many of the restrictive policies in place during the seventies. This is one reason why you see $7.00 a gallon gasoline in parts of Europe.

This is not rocket science. It is really just that simple. Build more capacity and you will see prices stabalize and reflect the true market value.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.