[Protagoras]

One more oil in the maket is not a bad thing for consumers

No,I guess one could make a case for oil being a few pennies a barrel less dear.

and two it would at least look like something is being done.

LOL, "don't just stand there, pretend you are making a difference".

This two would hope calm the market.

The market is calm.

The media and the uninformed and economically undereducated are agitated.

Prices rise and fall, always have, always will. And price remains the most useful tool for the allocation of resources that has ever existed.

Anyone who believes that the internal combustion engine with petroleum as the energy source is the future, isn't much of a student of the past.

[TXBSAFH]

Politics and economics have always been intertwined. Doing something, even if mostly symbolic can calm the market and the buyers. And as for the market being calm it does not look that way from here.

[norraad]

Well, I can tell you from this side of secret city, they've got about two hundred years worth of improvements just waiting to be implemented on that old internal combustion engine.

You'd be amazed how clean and efficient it can be if need be(need be, of course, is determined by the powers that be.)