Posted on 04/22/2006 3:27:41 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
Congressional leaders yesterday planned to ask President Bush to order investigations into possible price gouging by oil companies as crude oil prices hit new highs on world markets and average gasoline prices in the nation's capital blew through the $3-a-gallon mark.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) are preparing to send a letter to the president Monday asking him to direct the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department to investigate alleged price gouging and instruct the Environmental Protection Agency to issue waivers that might make it easier for oil refiners to produce adequate gasoline supplies, Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean said.
Hastert and Frist's letter comes amid charges by some consumer groups and Democrats that oil companies have manipulated refineries and oil inventories to drive up prices. Hastert also took aim at the rich pay package for Exxon Mobil Corp.'s retired chief executive, which he called "unconscionable."
Yesterday, oil prices climbed to a new record, unadjusted for inflation, with benchmark crude rising $1.48 to settle at $75.17 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Average gasoline prices in the District reached $3.02 a gallon, up 3 cents from the day before.
AAA Mid-Atlantic moved to discourage panic. "We caution drivers against hoarding or panic-buying. If one gas station is out, the next one will have fuel," said John B. Townsend II, AAA Mid-Atlantic's manager of public and government affairs.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
???
And in San Francisco. Right next to the city council building.
BS and posturing. I think the President should appoint 10 democraps to do a study and come back in 90 days with SPECIFIC ideas on how to cut the price of gas by 25%.
Just think what heroes the dems would be and it would assure their victory in the fall elections.
Does anyone think the dems would stick their body parts in that wringer?
I wonder how many pols own Big Oil stock...
So that means that about ten percent of the price of gas is profit. Do you want that 10% or do you want Exxon to have it so they can stay in business and look for more oil?
Or do you want to give that money to Ted Kennedy so he can buy more Chivas Regal?
Hello, "leaders", it's the price of crude (coupled with govt taxes which are a percentage NOT a set amount) that are driving up the price.
The price of crude is set by speculators and foreign* suppliers NOT the oil companies.
*But heaven forbid that we should develop domestic supplies.
Oh, and what kind of environmental sense (there's an oxymoron) does it make to haul crude around the world in super tankers? If we are really worried about leaks and spills, and not America's economic might, then obviously the longer/farther the haul the greater the risk of spills.
I agree. But this is not a new problem and my question is why, after all this time, the Pubbies have allowed the liberals to dominate the perception game.
We need refineries, lots of them. We need reduction or elimination of all gasoline taxes, federal and state. Most of all we need elimination of utterly insane enviro restrictions and have led to this self-created crisis.
We need to focus on domestic oil drilling, offshore and on. We need to work our butts off to develop new ways to produce energy and processing our own oil shales would be a step in the right direction. That should be followed by a transition to non-oil transportation energy if we can figure out a way to do it economically.
If Exxon can afford to give a retiring CEO a $400 million retirement package, it could (with the help of its oil business competitors) drum up enough cash to finance an effective hard-hitting TV "truth" campaign about environmentalist constraints on the gasoline market. Instead we see candy-assed commercials kissing up to the enviros.
Why can't Pubbies ram the idiocy of the MTBE scandal down enviro throats? It was required as a gasoline oxygenate in the 1990 Clean Air Act, remember? Then it was discovered to be a water pollutant. Maybe because a lot of Pubbie politicians voted for it? I can recall gas station after gas station here in CA having to dig up its gasoline storage tanks to clean and leak-proof them. I can't imagine how much that's added to the price of a gallon of gas.
Now we're on to new oxygenate requirements that are creating problems due to lack of refinery capacity (another legacy of the lefty enviros). When will the lies, cant and buck-passing end?
Yeah, but Katie has her flying monkeys read Free Republic and they look for disingenuous, right-wing plots.
It provides less mpg, is more prone to absorbing water that ruins performance, costs more, and is in short supply.
What's better about that?
hey want to find the source of the gouging, all they have to do is look into their mirrors.
The consequences of thoughtless, increasingly expensive environmental regulations.
No drilling or refining without permission
No permission
No drilling off most of the U.S. coast or new refineries
Also, for the same low price:
No sulfur rollbacks
No limited phaseout of MTBE
No dropping gasoline taxes
No redution of vapor pressure standards
No reduction of benzene standards
No reduction of oxygenated gasoline requirements in some regions.
No lessining of EPA penalties for miniscule mixing of different blends in transfer pipelines.
No promotion of more diesel vehicles
No promotion of coal to oil plants
No mandatory reduced speed limits
No military action to secure investments in troubled parts of the world.
All of this brought to you by your wonderful legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. Their motto:
pass feel good laws now and don't worry about future problems.
Supply and demand is correct.
They don't set the price---the demand does. If someone is unwilling to pay the price, someone else is.
The solution is to get the supply up so that the sellers are standing in line.
With more and more of the world's production being sucked up by the chinese, Indians, and even Arab countries, the solution seems to be to Produce more in the U.S.
This is not likely to happen until people recognise that Congress is the problem. So is the "Not in my back yard," mentality of many Americans.
How about asking the government instead, why they didn't better plan the implementation of these regs.
Or, why they think that fiats they pass have no economic consequences whatsoever.
Screw that! LETS start digging for oil here on our soil!!! ANOTHHER million dollar hunting expedition that'll lead to nowhere!! Invest those millions instead into finding or reopening our own oil spigots!!
Exactamente:
We think our pubbies are wolves and they prove to be prissy poodles.
I'll bet they are all in the middle of a love-fest with the French.
The modern Republicans are disgusting.
The have the truth but are cowards.
Ethanol blend is garbage. Mileage drops unacceptably becuase the molecule contains less energy that pure hydrocarbons.
The Oil Rush, The Shale Solution, page 3
So why aren't companies pumping that oil? Simple: It is locked deep in layers of sedimentary rock called oil shale.
No end of adventurers have tried to tap oil shale over the past century. The oil crises of the 1970s spurred Exxon to embark on a $5 billion effort in which 2,200 workers descended on the rural ranch land. The region readied itself for boom times, but Exxon bled money to bake each barrel out of the shale. Once oil prices fell, the company knew it could never recover its costs. On May 2, 1982, still remembered in northwestern Colorado as Black Sunday, Exxon pulled the plug. Property values plummeted, local businesses went bankrupt as suddenly as they had sprung up, and a new skepticism was born in this mineral country. "Imagine a town of 300 ... invaded by 3,000 men," says John Loschke, former mayor of Parachute, Colo. "They're sleeping under bridges and in the street. They're making real good money and not answerable to their wives, and have nothing to do in their spare time but recreate." Today, he says, he can exercise "perfect hindsight" and call Exxon's departure a blessing, even though he and his partners lost their pub business. Loschke would welcome new efforts to exploit oil shale, he says, to help reduce America's dependence on foreign oil--as long as the oil industry treats small communities like his right this time. "We were run over by big oil companies in the early '80s," he says, "and it wasn't pretty."
The company now making the most promising stab at oil shale--Shell--is well aware of the history. "The irrational exuberance and failure of oil shale development a generation ago still loom large in people's minds," says Terry O'Connor, a vice president for Shell Unconventional Resources. The company is being careful not to raise expectations. Shell won't decide whether to proceed with commercial development until 2010, O'Connor says. But after 24 years of research and tens of millions of dollars, the company has developed a method that could make sense even when oil companies can command $20 to $30 a barrel--far less than the market price they're raking in today.
Mining was the old approach to oil shale. Yet with oil shale some 2,000 feet thick in some places and buried beneath 1,000 feet of earth, the excavation would be incredible--comparable to the largest open-pit mines in the world. Shell expects to process the oil shale in place, using otherworldly techniques that sound like something out of a sci-fi novel. The oil giant would plunge heaters underground to bring the rock to extremely high temperatures for three to four years. That's not so long, considering that the compound found here, kerogen, is a primitive precursor that wouldn't have morphed into usable crude for tens of millions of years if left to nature. Shell would also freeze the ground around the site's perimeter--making an ice wall to keep water out and seal contaminants in. Less environmentally disruptive than the mining process Exxon tried, Shell's process also should recover 10 times the oil.
"They do this every year just before Memorial Day, don't they? Just a posturing bunch of power-hungry windbags, sound and fury signifying nothing and doing it on our money."
Yep, Even the Republicans are politician enough to care more about their soft, lucrative jobs than the country.
"Got to get re-elected or my feathered nest will be gone."
Grow a spine. You may lose your job (probably the best way to keep it), but you will gain manhood.
Gack!
I imagine most of the people on this forum would love to live within walking (or even biking) distance of work.
Automobiles like cows are a blessing not a curse.
Industrialization is good.
Captialism is good
Needless shortages caused by the short-sighted policies of whorish politicians are not good.
They neednt worry about Frist. He is useless.
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