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 ...
It would seem that a lot of the Congress are as stupid as the rest of us in here for believing gas companies may be gouging us. Maybe we should heva some of our free marketers go have a talk with them.Its just supply and demand S/
And they still ask me for money.
FOOLS
Frist and Hastert need to do SEIZE THIS MOMENT TO EDUCATE the American people about what happens when the John Kerrys and the Hitlery Klintons are allowed to keep us more dependent on FOREIGN OIL.
Gee, if someone like me can figure this out, you'd think at least one conservative in D.C. can do the same.
What the heck are these critters thinking? They all appear to be idiots.
Maybe these "leaders" should spend the first 4 hours of their day on the trading floor on wall street. Then they won't have any questions, just a headache.
Just WTF do they expect the President to do? If they want cheap oil, get serious about fighting terrorism. Enough of this PC crap.
You have it exactly right! - The GOP / WH need to go on the offensive on this issue. It is made to order for pointing out the costs of wrong headed liberal policy! - Yet these fools are walking right into what the MSM / DEMs want them to do! - Demonize the private market place!
If the GOP hand any stones they could turn this issue on the DEMs in a heart beat!
It's the democrats and enviromentalists that are screwing oil companies, tying their hands so they can't build more capacity. DemocRATS and their base supporters, retarded moonbat envirowienies are the ones who should be told to go sit in the corner.
Typical democRATS, oppose development, drilling, then complain when their actions bear fruit.
This has less to do with supply and demand and more to do with the Energy Policy Act of 2005. There is NO SHORTAGE it is simply the transition to ethanol laced fuel.
Politicians vote. If Frist had ANY intelligence, he'd schedule some votes. Sure would help the Fall elections. Frist is an idiot.
Instead of a deadline- couldn't they phase the ethanol change over 12 months to reduce the impact?
I layed in a three month supply of Diesel over the Easter weekend. I'll spend this summer building infrastructure to store up to nine to twelve months worth (A big old truck capable of holding and hauling some old home fuel oil tanks). This is pathetic for most to think the government has to so something. In fact it's unAmerican. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
You got that right. Why aren't the Republicans hammering the DemocRATS on this? If there ever was a time to score some political points, this is it.
Idiots this supid deserve to loose. Then again, it's plain to see it's all a dog and pony show. The Government is raking in the money in taxes, they don't really want to see cheap oil.
We should do whatever it takes to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. This would include developing energy sources, improving gas mileage on cars, drilling for oil in the US (oil shale deposits could yield a ton of oil), and many other things.
Yes, that is causing a temporary shortage because all the suppliers have to drain their storage tanks, clean out the water, and install a new type of filter before they can fill them back up with corn whiskey. Add 25 cents a gallon because of this move. I don't really oppose the ethanol blend, it's actually better gas, but it need not be so expensive. The core problem is still a lack of refinery capacity, and a stupid anti-drilling blockade in congress.
Finally, a word of caution on the essential fragility of a study on the very long-term future for the world's energy supply which accepts without question the validity of the original 18th century hypothesis that all oil and gas resources have been generated from biological matter in the chemical and thermodynamic environments of the earth's crust.
There is an alternative theory - already 50 years old - which suggests an inorganic origin for additional oil and gas. This alternative view is widely accepted in the countries of the former Soviet Union where, it is claimed, "large volumes of hydrocarbons are being produced from the pre-Cambrian crystalline basement". Recent applications of the inorganic theory have, however, also led to claims for the possibility of the Middle East fields being able to produce oil "forever" and to the concept of repleting oil and gas fields in the gulf of Mexico.
More generally, it is argued, "all giant fields are most logically explained by inorganic theory because simple calculations of potential hydrocarbon contents in sediments shows that organic materials are too few to supply the volumes of petroleum involved."
There have been numerous reports in recent times, of oil and gas fields not running out at the expected time, but instead showing a higher content of hydrocarbons after they had already produced more than the initially estimated amount. This has been seen in the Middle East, in the deep gas wells of Oklahoma, on the Gulf of Mexico coast, and in other places. It is this apparent refilling during production that has been responsible for the series of gross underestimate of reserves that have been published time and again, the most memorable being the one in the early seventies that firmly predicted the end of oil and gas globally by 1987, a prediction which produced an energy crisis and with that a huge shift in the wealth of nations. Refilling is an item of the greatest economic significance, and also a key to understanding what the sources of all this petroleum had been. It is also of practical engineering importance, since we may be able to exercise some control over the refilling process.
The debate about the origin of all the petroleum on Earth lies in the center of the subject. If we really knew that it is only biological materials, which, in their decay, could produce hydrocarbons, then the quantities that could ever be produced would be limited by the biological content of the sediments. But then the clear and strong association of petroleum with the inert gas helium would have no explanation; the finding of hydrocarbon gases, liquids and solids on most other planetary bodies in our solar system which have surface conditions quite unsuitable for surface life, could not be understood; the presence of hydrocarbons which we now find in abundance in basement rocks would also remained unexplained.
YES
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