Recent Senate hearings have been held questioning Big Oil executives about the price of gas. Seems to me that the guys who voted for the war that caused this problem in the first place are sitting on the wrong side of the table. I’m not sayin’ Big Oil ain’t makin’ hay while their 100% owned sun shines, but isn’t the federal legislators grilling them sort of putting the fox in charge of the hen house?
Posted by Intercourse in General
Well, at least you started out on the right track. If I was the chairman of Exxon Mobil, I would have jumped over the table and punched Dick Durbin right in the nose, shouting, “It’s your fault, you stupid jackass! You won’t let us drill for the oil we have right here, and you won’t let us build more refineries to process the oil we have to buy from the dickheads in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Nigeria! Oh, and did I mention that we have to churn out hundreds of different blends of gas because every state has a different set of regulations?” Then I’d punch Pat Leahy in the nose. “Listen you moron, if you’d let us build nuclear reactors it would reduce the demand for oil for power generation. The same goes for your pal Teddy Kennedy, who won’t let windmills be built off Cape Cod because it would spoil his view! And who’s the simpleton who decided it might be a good idea to sue OPEC and not expect them to tighten the supply even further? Holy jumping Jeebus!”
Big oil is in trouble, not now, but it’s future. With the high gas prices upsetting it’s customers, it’s creating demand for lower fuel usage vehicles, which will lower demand in the long term future.
They are looking at alternatives, and making plans to get involved in them to insure their relevance in the future energy market.
You’ll have many people claim that big oil isn’t hurting with record profits, high prices, etc… but think of this, with our falling dollar, and counterbalancing inflation, are the profits in these quarters worth more than profits of years gone by? You hear execs claiming slimming margins, at the same time as reporting record profits.
I’m not giving them excuses… I mean, they should have seen this coming years ago when we first started the war and injecting billions of dollars in the world economy.
The whole Congressional angle is a PR thing. Nothing will come from it.
This is the biggest hoax on the american sheeple since the illegal invasion of Iraq. Tug Boat captains report there are ships loaded sitting in the ocean. What this is result of the secret energy plan of Dick Cheney…when the oil companies wrote their own ticket to wealth.
These neo cons are playing havoc with our environment…they want the stupid people to believe there is “no global warming”, so they can drill in Anwar, and everywhere else in the US. They also want to give big oil the right to build even more nuclear power plants (knowing the cost is prohibitive and their is no safe storage for the uranium).
Notice the neo cons are not pushing wind power or solar…and we all know what is happening right her in Delaware. Drilling in Anwar will take years to get down to the oil…how the hell does that help us in the near future.
We need wind, solar, and new fuel..get people to work, creating jobs strengthening the economy. Its the oil companies and their greedy buddies, and many of the congress/senators who are shareholders making big bucks in oil thats preventing us from getting a fair shake.
and notice noone is talking about the oil being sucked up in this illegal war!
“Tug Boat captains report there are ships loaded sitting in the ocean.”
I saw that story too; funny how you left out that those are IRANIAN tankers, not Halliburton’s. Iran is producing oil, but withholding it from the market, but Dick Durbin has the gall to ask why it takes $70 to fill his tank. Hmm, I guess he’s not driving a Prius.
Wait — I thought this was a “war for oil”! Since Liz and others have continually said so, prices should be quite LOW. What happened?
Hube; they fucked up the war. It was kind of like going to a combined half-price/2-for-1 sale at Neiman Marcus, then not paying the credit card bill until interest had mounted to 10,000% of the original balance.
It turns out it was a war for oil profiteers not for oil. The joke is on us twofold.
Keeping the middle east in an uproar has juggled a perception for Wall Steet etc to manipulate that supply is in jeopardy and the price is JACKED daily.
Let oil sell higher. It will just speed up the process of finding an alternative to oil.
I once read that the reason the Saudis are getting friendly toward the Israelis is because they know the end of petroleum dependence is not far off. Once the demand goes away(ie. alternative energy) what do the oil rich nations of the world have to offer? Yes, you guessed it, nothing. What will they do then ?
Sorry, should have followed up with this statement after the Israeli part.
“They want to learn how the Israelis grow things in the desert”
Hope that helps.
the oil execs getting ‘lambasted’ on capitol hill is like yelling a at a kid for the 20th time saying ’stop doing it or else’. they answer the questions, leve laughing at the inquisition, get in their private jets and leave. six months from now they will be summonded back and it will continue, until the oil bubble bursts.
The oil companies have record profits because they have record sales. They are making $0.08 on the dollar. What is McDonalds profit margin?
The biggest reason (not the only one) for the higher prices at the pump is the falling value of the dollar.
Since January 2007 the price of one ounce of gold has risen from $650.00 to $900.00 (+27%). This is how the comparision is always phrased, in actuallity it is backwards. Gold is the benchmark, not the dollar. The dollar has lost 27% of its buying power, hence a barrel of oil that cost $100.00 in January 2007 will now cost $127.00.
The price of oil has not gone up, the dollar has gone down.
The price of one Euro has gone up 20% over the same time period,
No one is complaining about how expensive an ounce of gold is or how they can’t afford to buy Euro’s anymore. They just know ignorantly complain about how much a gallon of gas cost and they think some Senators will fix thinkgs.
Absolutely right, John. I revise and extend my previous remarks to include the following: “Yes Mr. Spector, I personally made $12.5 million last year, but with the devalued dollar I could only buy a yacht half the size of the one I could have bought a year ago, especially after I gave $4 million to you baboons so you could spend it on stupid pork projects like bridges to nowhere and a freaking Woodstock museum!” I would only slap Spector, not punch him in the nose, because he had cancer.
Oh, and Senator Durbin, the reason why you spent $70 dollars to fill your gas tank might have something to do with the fact that your home state of Illinois has a 20 cent per gallon tax on top of the federal tax.
Israelies grow things in the desert, by diverting water from the Palestinan territories to themselves. And no, GRex its OUR tugboat captains reporting that story…those are american oil companies filled with oil…you know supply and demand…withold the supply is the name of the neo con game.
The real reason this happening is to get american sheeple to let them drill in Anwar…but all environmentalists say that would “increase global warming”, not an option.
Our oil comes from Canada and Mexico…so why would OPEC be our problem? The Sauds are so angry with Baby Bush for invading Iraq…and destabilzing the entire midde east, putting the moderate Sunni out of power, and the nut job fundamentalists in power. Sauds are mostly Sunni, and Iran has a heavy population of Shia…so Bush actually gave Iran more power. The solution according to the Israelies is for the US to attack Iran…arent we lucky? If you heard Alan Ludell today, and the nutjob from the right wing think tank in DC, says…oh we can take out Iran easily….now where the hell have we heard that before?
The Israelies and Bush are pushing another war with Iran. And of course Iran was and still is number 2 on the Project for a New America hit list.
When Bush went to visit the Arab countries he avoided Egypt…who wanted to pose the idea of haveing a muslim force under UN sanction replace American forces, Bush snubbed him. Why, because the Shia Parliment are being forced by the Consitution we wrote for them, to give all the “unexplored oil in Iraq” to american oil companies…until that deal is completed…Bush isn’t going anywhere but maybe turning the forces on Iran…bankrupting america, and assuring that Obama will have his hands so tied, he will not be able to accomplish anything. The repukes know they will loose this election, already planning for the next one.
I didn’t see the hearings, but the thing that Congress really needs to do right now is to roll back every single gas subsidy they hand over to these yobbos. They are making alot of money in part because taxpayers subsidize the oil company risk.
Barack Obama is practically revered on this site, yet he voted in favor of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Apart from the fact that it was negotiated in secret meetings (which smacks of corruption), it included huge tax breaks for both the oil and nuclear industries. How do all of those concerned with global warming and other environmental issues reconcile that? How do you overlook his ties to the nuclear industry?
Speaking just for myself here — Obama’s vote was pretty roundly booed by a bunch of us who care about this (there was a big push back partially choreographed by folks at the Daily Kos). That booing included much letter writing and calling of his (and others who voted for it) office to point out the real folly of this.
Also speaking just for myself, I do understand that part of Obama’s vote was in the (shorter-term) interests of his current Illinois constituents who get something like 40, 50, 60% of their energy from nuclear plants. Plus the FutureGen project (so-called “clean” coal demonstration facility) mostly funded by the DOE was included in this bill. That plant was supposed to be sited in IL (before the DOE pulled out due to its huge costs — more than 1.8 billion last I read). I still don’t approve of his vote (way too much pork in this thing), but I do understand how he got there.
And speaking for myself once again, I am not one of those who thinks that nuclear power is an unmitigated bad option. I do think that the way that the industry operates here is untenable. Frankly, I think that the best way for the anti-nuclear partisans to make any real headway here is to lobby more fiercely against the subsidies — this industry would reorganize itself pretty quickly if its stockholders had to manage the risks involved.
My last point (speaking for myself) is that there is a fair amount of new thinking among environmentalists that nuclear energy may be a way around greenhouse emissions crisis. A longtime player for Greenpeace is one of the loudest voices for this view. Shutting down one way of trying to fix the emissions problem just because it does not fit some ideological purity issues frankly doesn’t seem the attitude of someone who has any seriousness in trying to slow down global warming.
cassandra m says:
Frankly, I think that the best way for the anti-nuclear partisans to make any real headway here is to lobby more fiercely against the subsidies…
Believe me the groups who live in the states where new nukes are planned are doing just that with great success.
You say :
A longtime player for Greenpeace is one of the loudest voices for this view. ..
Yes we all know Patric Moore, former greenpeace member who is now collecting BIG BUCKS traveling around the country “selling” the myth of “Clean. cheap nuclear power.(And his Partner Christin Whitman)
If you would like to be on my mailing list let me know. You will learn all about nuclear power
frieda302@comcast.net
. Subsidized fuel
,Protections in case of an accident (under Price – Anderson)
Waste disposal and the guardianship thereof (for a 100.000years) borne by the Government
Construction work in Progress (CWIP) meaning YOU PAY while we build even if we can never finish.I have a list of these “leftovers”
And more.
Freida - where do you stand on the Energy Policy Act of 2005?
The wars in Iraq and Afganistan are taking so much of the oil…the Sauds believe if they make it higher for the average american, the voters will make their voice heard, by ridding the country of the neo cons who want to keep the war going, and may even go into Iran. The Zionists seem to be pushing for US to do Iran (for them) by their sabre rattling using Leiberman and Mcmad as their cheerleaders. If you look at the IAEA site, they continue to state Iran is working cooperatively with them. Isnt this just what the Pentagon did to distort and lie to get us into Iraq. I guess they actually believe the american sheeple are so stupid, and have the retention span of a knat…they could actually use the same scenario to do it all over again. Sauds and the Bush crime family have been in bed since the 1930’s (written in the book banned in America before the invasion of iraq)….and they warned Bush against attacking Iraq….so its payback time…
Dominique
There are a lot of problems with the Energy Policy Act of 2005.One intersting point : It
sharply limits states’ powers to require cleaner burning motor vehicle fuels. This law runs contrary to the Clean Air Act’s long-standing recognition of states’ authority to adopt more stringent pollution controls than the federal government. So,California and 13 other states (Delaware included) are now contesting this provision in the courts. Saying they can do better. California in particular had passed a law years earlier far more stringent requirements.
This one example will tell you what I think of the Act.
Frankly I can’t wait to get these oil men out of the drivers seat
Castle on WDEL today…yup he supports nuclear power. He says “its safe to store in Yucca mountain”? Then claimed that “europe is building more”…..oh so Mike are you saying (like Bush and Cheney) that we should in the US because they are….thats your policy?
I called in to ask him why “he was not putting the full force behind Blue Water Wind”, if he supports wind. He went into a long winded argument about how DPL might have a point, and he needs more facts”…c’mon Mike are you more interested in the shareholders of DPL than you are about making a real difference here for the citizens of Delaware..this guy is a dinosaur…and should be treated like one.
Castle is woefully uninformed; I took him off my mailing list a long time ago. All effords are useless… he feels safe and secure in his seat, he is of the “go along to get along” philosophy. No need to learn anything or listen to anyone, the party does the work for him He needs to go.
Most libs said that the Iraq war was for cheap oil . They were wrong if was for expensive oil.Why the dem’s in congress have put up with this fool in the white house is beyond me. However you have to hand it to bush with his ratings so low and a lame duck at that he knows how to get every thing he wants. hats off to him