Put a Shyster in Your Tank

The Virginian/Wall Street Journal ^ | 5/28/2008 | Moneyrunner

[moneyrunner]

Growing global demand and a weak dollar have given us $4-a-gallon gasoline. The way to lower prices would seem obvious: pump more oil domestically and strengthen the dollar. That's too obvious for Congress, apparently, which instead wants to solve the problem through litigation:

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices,

[moneyrunner]

Great headline from the WSJ

[EVO X]

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices,

Opec only controls about a third of the worlds oil production... You don't have much control if your under 50%..

[sickoflibs]

I am amazed how the three candidates are racing to out-dumb each other on this issue, which the public seems to demand. I saw on Cavuto’s Your world FNC Obama let it slip that we use too much energy and eat too much food and high prices are having a positive impact on our behaviour. But at the same time he and campaign are blaming Bush for high prices and saying “he wants to talk about the high prices hurting the middle class.” (this is all the public hears, phoney compassion.) He really loves the high prices but wants to spend all that money oil stockholders are earning honestly. A similar thing happened in Maryland over electric and the voters woke up with even higher than market prices after democrat governor ran on not allowing market rates to rise.

[Realism]

Opec only controls about a third of the worlds oil production... You don't have much control if your under 50%..

Well their 33% is much higher than our current 3% and our whopping 5% maximum capacity using untapped reserves. We would have practically no effect on oil prices and it could be easily wiped out with a 2% OPEC reduction.

[bray]

If you like $4/gal, Thank Congress.

Pray for W and Our Troops

[EVO X]

We would have practically no effect on oil prices and it could be easily wiped out with a 2% OPEC reduction.

Sure they have some effect and the world would be in deep dodo if they cut back drastically. But in the long term they risk having their best customers switch over to alternate forms of energy and losing them forever. It doesn't seem possible, but Israel is trying to get completely off oil. It would be a little a more difficult here in the US, but we could incorportate many of their ideas and just use gas for longer haul transportation.