Posted on 04/18/2006 8:09:46 AM PDT by ex-Texan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Tuesday he is "concerned" about high gasoline prices, and pledged that the U.S. government will keep a close watch out for profiteering.
"I'm concerned about higher gasoline prices," Bush said at a Rose Garden news conference to name new staff appointments.
"The government has the responsibility to make sure that we watch very carefully and investigate possible price-gouging, and we will do just that," Bush said in unprompted remarks about energy prices.
U.S. crude oil futures hit a record of $70.88 a barrel on Tuesday on fears of supply disruptions in Iran stemming from its nuclear standoff with the West, as well as lingering outages in Nigeria.
U.S. retail gasoline prices rose 10 cents last week to average $2.78 a gallon, up 29 cents over the last three weeks and 55 cents higher than a year ago, the government said on Monday.
Bush said high crude oil prices, rising summer driving demand and a switch to new motor gasoline standards is keeping gasoline prices high.
"It's tight supply worldwide and we've got increasing demand from countries like India and China, which means that any disruption of supply ... (is) going to cause the price of crude to go up," Bush said.
More drivers will take to the road this summer, which will also boost demand, he said.
"At this time of year people are beginning to drive more, getting out on the highways, taking a little time off," Bush said. "That increasing demand is also part of the reason the price of gasoline is going up."
No way the Constitution Party is against all executive orders and want them eliminated but of course they hate Bush anwyway. ;-)
As I understand it, the freemarketeers feel there is no such thing as gouging in a free market...'If you own it, you set the price'...
Seems at one time, our gov't came up with laws that prevented this from happening by allowing (and demanding) competition, thus preventing monopolys to exhist as they currently do in the oil business...But the monopolys bought the gov't...
So what's the recourse???
Guess we'll just continue to pay the price, on our knees...
I could go down the street to ARCO (British Petroleum) and save a few cents.
Bottome line: yes, out in here in SoCal I feel gouged--but I just haven't been able to find a good deal on a hydrogen car...
Exactly. That is the whole problem in a nutshell. These traders can line their pockets at will- every time there is a hint of trouble.
See that ON FEAR that is the only reason. That has always been the case, even before the war.
To be honest, I think he's just plain tired and getting a lot of bad advice lately.
I was just discussing this today with one of my colleagues. That is a lot of cash to be throwing away when they could have plowed it back into the business to grow it further, maybe alternate fuels, as you suggest, or even run-of-the-mill things like furthering exploration of new deposits or building additional refining capacity. Shareholders should be up in arms over this waste of company resources.
This could also be implemented on any river. Simply substitute the floatation devices with a paddlewheel attached to a turbine.
It takes very little electricity to separate the hydrogen from the water. We did it with twelve measley volts in seventh grade.
My wife is pissed, but we will not this summer be taking our usual drive to Destin, Florida.
Very rarely are there calm seas along the shorelines of the lower-48 for more than a few hours at a time. The reason everyone doesn't have one on the end of their boat dock is because what are they individually going to do with their warehoused hydrogen stores?
~ Blue Jays ~
Besides, there are plenty of hydro electric dams in the world. Every river that can be damed- is.
Nor, ftm, would such folks ever dream of putting their capital where their mouth (er, keyboard) is. I'm coming to be very much afraid that nothing will satisfy this crowd short of a replay of the 1970s: shortages, outages, long lines for gasoline, ''old oil'', ''new oil'', ''new new oil'', the lot. All of which to be brought (back) to us by the respective founts of all wisdom, to wit, gov't regulators.
Sigh.
ping
Soros (head of the ANSWER group) plays the money market. The more the American dollar declines, the more money he makes (which is why he's hard core democrat. A recession is a boom for him.)
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