[Yosemitest]

As far as oil is concerned... Rush has a great ideal from another article titled Bottled Water Industry Gouging.

This is pure Economics 101. It's the government, folks. It's the state and federal bureaucrats and environmentalist wackos who limit the supply of oil and then everything that gets refined from it. If the oil companies -- I mean, just as a matter of strategy, if the oil companies -- limited exploration, if they limited production, if this limited refining, then you could argue that they're trying to control the price, but it's your own government doing that, not the companies! In fact, you know what I would love to see if I were an oilman? If I ran the oil companies, if I was the Grand Poohbah of Big Oil, I'd call all these CEOs in and say,
"You know what? We're going to illustrate what the problem is. We're going to reduce our production. We're going to say we agree with the environmentalists. We're going to cut our production in half. We're not going to refine any more than half of what we're refining now because we are good stewards of the earth and we're going to clean it up -- and when there's no oil, and when the gasoline supply is cut in half and the price has tripled, then we will explain to them and let them see just who it is that places the obstacles in front of them in terms of affordable energy."
I mean, that will never happen. That's one of these exercises I would love to see, but it would never happen, but in fact it is. To a certain extent, it is happening with all these restrictions. That's what's so great about the House Republicans passing the energy bill on Friday. We're going to drill in ANWR if the bill ever gets signed, same thing in the Gulf. We're going to limit these 47 different formulations of gasoline to accommodate the various regulations in the states for pollution purposes. That would speed up the distribution of gasoline nationwide. It'd have a greater effect on price than you could possibly imagine.

But it'll never see the light of day, and we couldn't afford this lesson, even if the oil companies decided to teach us this valuable lesson.

[yoe]

"We're going to limit these 47 different formulations of gasoline to accommodate the various regulations in the states for pollution purposes."

These gasoline regulations are the EPA on Steroids! Only one formula is needed and that is to keep the sulfa content under control - ever think of filling your tank in one state and driving into another state with entirely different gas formulations - commingling with other gas as you add gas to what is already in the tank perhaps unwittingly creating some nocuous pollutant and drive on to another state with other regulations where we add more formulations for that state - are we breaking the law somehow? No, we have just allowed a stupid law to manipulate the taxpayer into paying higher taxes…some of these additives have poisoned the land where highways cross it, yet the Congress is slow to stop the practice…follow the money. One formula for clean air would lower the costs for fuel and enable the refinery to produce far more fuel --- that is not to say we will not need to build more refineries, we desperately need more however, the practice of “blending fuels” must be ended.