It’s an election year and that’s why President “Wall Street” Obama “urged Congress to toughen penalties for improper manipulation of oil markets and called for stricter government oversight of energy markets.” Apparently, the president thinks there is a proper way to manipulate the market. Nobody should take the president seriously.
The price of gasoline in the United States is probably two to three dollars per gallon higher than if there was some kind of real, competitive, market. Gasoline may be even three dollars or more per gallon higher than it should be. The United States has been exporting more oil than it is importing for several months now, for the first time since the late 1940s. That suggests the market has been manipulated for a long time, that US production has been artificially curtailed and manipulated for decades, and that there is an overabundance of oil available, but the president hasn’t done anything as the price of gasoline has risen, fueled by the demands of the financial markets. The big boys are making us pay so they can keep their stock values high. It’s been a scam for a long time and the president hasn’t instructed his Department of Justice to use the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to break up the oil oligarchs and send some of these big and slick oil barons and their Wall Street cronies to prison for their crimes.
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Actually the concept of Peak Oil is difficult for most people to get right away. It’s a big idea for most to understand in just a couple of minutes. When they take a chance to look at the facts it can be pretty daunting. That doesn’t mean the we were not manipulated by the oil companies, we have been. They cut out the alternative energy options and narrowed us down to “Oil Only”. Are they getting rich? Yea they are. Should we cut out the oil subsidies? Yea, we should.
When we think of oil, we picture the gas tank analogy. When the needle reaches E for empty is when we are in trouble. The world does in fact have a trillion barrels of oil left to produce. The real analogy is like a Pearl Harbor reconnaissance plane flying its mission over the ocean. The plane flies as far as it can for as high as it can. The pilot fulfils the mission of aerial photography of enemy positions. At a certain point though the pilot knows he must turn around at the HALF WAY point of the gas gauge to make it back home. When the needle reaches at half the tank the pilot MUST RETREAT and DESCEND to make it back to base. When the world has produced as much oil as it ever can in one day (peaked), when it has flown as far as it can for as high as it can the world economy MUST RETREAT and DESCEND.
Despite the oil companies the world is facing a very tough time. We PUMP 31.3 billions barrels a year. Pumping energy has always been easier then growing grass/corn or mining coal and tar sands. In fact, the aggregate of all methods: Hydro, Wind, Solar, Nuclear, and Tidal energy will not delay Peak Oil much more than a couple weeks at best. The reason why is because everything uses oil, even the Hydro, Wind, Solar and Tidal Energy. They are all made using oil.
Its easy to confuse demand, speculators, technology, and politics with this issue but ultimately it’s about…..the oil geology. Thanks.