Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Let's start pumping

Economist Robert Samuelson on tapping into US oil reserves.
What to do about oil? First it went from $60 to $80 a barrel, then from $80 to $100 and now to $120. Perhaps we can persuade OPEC to raise production, as some senators suggest; but this seems unlikely. The truth is that we're almost powerless to influence today's prices. We are because we didn't take sensible actions 10 or 20 years ago. If we persist, we will be even worse off in a decade or two. The first thing to do: Start drilling.

Most people, even conservatives, believe that this is a long term solution, but would not impact the current cost of gasoline at the pump.

However, much of what is causing crude prices to spike is speculation on long term prices. If the US were to just announce that they would open ANWAR or the Gulf to exploration, crude prices would probably drop $10.00/barrel on the announcement.

Consider this. Delta Airlines has been butt jamming it's customers in the Cincinnati area for years. They've been able to do that because there's effectively no competition. Whenever a new airline rolls into town and announces fares to, say, Charleston SC for $150.00. Guess what? Delta drops it's fares accordingly. Even the announcement of a new airline in town drives Delta's fares down. They've driven out many a airline over the years using this predatory pricing.

OPEC is no different. They control the worldwide supply of oil. It's never made much sense for US oil companies to pursue Alaskan or Gulf oil because it's more expensive to retrieve then OPEC oil.

Now the price is over $120.00 a barrel, there's an attractive incentive to go get that oil.

OPEC doesn't want that. They'll drop the price just to make it's oil more competitive than US oil. Even if they don't, we'll finally begin to wean ourselves from those jackoffs over there.

Of course you have "progressives" on the wrong side of history again. Their actions surrounding all this global warming bull crap has crippled the US's ability to urge more production out of OPEC. It's one of the main reasons crude has shot up since the democratic congress took over in January, 2007.

Want to see a real price hike, wait until the Wednesday after an Obama victory? Prices may go to $300 a barrel. OPEC will have absolutely no reason to increase production because they know Obama values the kodiak bear & caribou in Alaska than actual human beings in Buffalo.

No comments: