dirty
EOG Master
Tell It Like It Is on Energy
Nov 1, 2005
by Jay Bryant ( bio | archive | contact )
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<!-- rt-column --><!-- /spotlight -->Here in my neighborhood, the price of gasoline has been dropping faster than the president's poll numbers. But Bush's ratings make the news in every broadcast for days. Surely everyone has heard by now, newsies, why must you harp on the subject like your reports were paid commercials? How come you don't keep up that drumbeat when he's doing well? By contrast, the drop in gas prices is scarcely mentioned at all, and one continues to hear the old news about how the price has skyrocketed since Hurricane Katrina (which, by the way, Bush: a. caused, and b. deliberately failed to clean up in order to kill off the black population of New Orleans. This has contributed to his declining poll numbers, in case you hadn't heard.)
Just a few weeks ago, stations around here were asking $3.19 a gallon, but now their signs mostly read in the $2.30 - $2.40 range, and I understand similar trends have been evidenced in the rest of the country. So why aren't people ? and the media ? thanking the oil companies for cutting their prices by eighty cents a gallon or more? Why at least, aren't the media reporting this great good news, like they would have if the price had gone UP eighty cents during October?
Hey, everybody was quick to jump on Exxon's butt when the price "skyrocketed", isn't it only fair to send them some love when the price plummets? Instead, the politicians, ever behind the times, are now talking about a windfall profits tax (the Democrats' idea) or a law forcing the companies to invest their profits in building more refineries (the wimpy Republican fallback position).
There is so much nonsense floating around about energy prices you'd think it was a regatta.
Here's my first demand. We should have a law that requires people who complain about high energy prices to sign a document pledging that if they ever sell their house they will not ask for every penny they can get, but instead ask no more than what they paid for it. Okay, with an allowance for inflation, but you shouldn't even get that because you've been able to live in the silly house all these years, which means you have, in the end, zero housing costs, unlike the poor people who can't afford to buy a house and have to rent, and thereby pay out real money for their living space. In fact, your housing cost is less than zero, because you get to deduct your mortgage interest on your income taxes. And all that with no appreciation at all.
(The wimpy Republican fallback position on my windfall housing profits bill is to require homeowners to invest their resale profits in vinyl siding factories.)
Whenever discussions about gasoline prices come up, I want to scream, "Don't you know what a price is?" A price is and always has been and always will be whatever you can get for what you're selling given the conditions of supply and demand. Just like when you sell your house.
And don't you just love the politicians ordering the oil companies to invest in more refining capacity? As if the companies didn't want to. As if it was THEIR fault we haven't built a new refinery in the U.S. since Gordon Liddy was a plumber.
If the politicians want more oil refineries built they don't have to pass any new laws, they just have to repeal about a thousand absurd laws already on the books that make it utterly impossible for an oil company or anybody else to build a refinery anywhere between Bar Harbor and Maui. Companies aren't building refineries because they know by the time they get done with all the permitting, environmental impact statements, NIMBY lawsuits and skanky, sunburned, publicity-seeking soccer moms chaining themselves to the bulldozers, they'll have used more energy than the plant could produce in a decade.
Then there's the matter of energy independence ? the idea that the U.S. ought not to be dependent on foreign oil. The truth is, we don't have to be. We've got more than enough oil right here beneath the fruited plain to last the whole world for roughly a millennium. Most of it is in coal and shale deposits, and the story has always been that it's so costly to mine and process that it isn't economical to bother.
Well you know what? That's not even true any more. At 21st Century world crude prices, we're very close to the margin on some of these things ? and that's with existing technology. Given some serious work on the project, no doubt significant efficiencies could be made. According to one estimate, shale oil production could be viable at any price above $25 a barrel within a decade or so. (The current price is something like $60 a barrel.)
But it doesn't really matter, because the same forces that are preventing us from building refineries, drilling in ANWAR, even building desperately needed liquefied natural gas terminals ? heck, even building gas stations in a lot of places ? will keep us from mining oil shale, although the House is moving a bill to help make it happen in Utah.
But perhaps the worst news of all is that the oil companies have apparently decided to play the self-defeating liberal game. Watch for their commercials. They're turning into left-wing eco-lessons. BP is the worst, but they're all doing it.
Sometimes I think the business community is worse than the Republicans when it comes to wimping out on principles. I'd pay extra and be brand-loyal to a company with ads that tell it like it is. Well, I'd be brand-loyal anyway.
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Nov 1, 2005
by Jay Bryant ( bio | archive | contact )
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<!-- rt-column --><!-- /spotlight -->Here in my neighborhood, the price of gasoline has been dropping faster than the president's poll numbers. But Bush's ratings make the news in every broadcast for days. Surely everyone has heard by now, newsies, why must you harp on the subject like your reports were paid commercials? How come you don't keep up that drumbeat when he's doing well? By contrast, the drop in gas prices is scarcely mentioned at all, and one continues to hear the old news about how the price has skyrocketed since Hurricane Katrina (which, by the way, Bush: a. caused, and b. deliberately failed to clean up in order to kill off the black population of New Orleans. This has contributed to his declining poll numbers, in case you hadn't heard.)
Just a few weeks ago, stations around here were asking $3.19 a gallon, but now their signs mostly read in the $2.30 - $2.40 range, and I understand similar trends have been evidenced in the rest of the country. So why aren't people ? and the media ? thanking the oil companies for cutting their prices by eighty cents a gallon or more? Why at least, aren't the media reporting this great good news, like they would have if the price had gone UP eighty cents during October?
Hey, everybody was quick to jump on Exxon's butt when the price "skyrocketed", isn't it only fair to send them some love when the price plummets? Instead, the politicians, ever behind the times, are now talking about a windfall profits tax (the Democrats' idea) or a law forcing the companies to invest their profits in building more refineries (the wimpy Republican fallback position).
There is so much nonsense floating around about energy prices you'd think it was a regatta.
Here's my first demand. We should have a law that requires people who complain about high energy prices to sign a document pledging that if they ever sell their house they will not ask for every penny they can get, but instead ask no more than what they paid for it. Okay, with an allowance for inflation, but you shouldn't even get that because you've been able to live in the silly house all these years, which means you have, in the end, zero housing costs, unlike the poor people who can't afford to buy a house and have to rent, and thereby pay out real money for their living space. In fact, your housing cost is less than zero, because you get to deduct your mortgage interest on your income taxes. And all that with no appreciation at all.
(The wimpy Republican fallback position on my windfall housing profits bill is to require homeowners to invest their resale profits in vinyl siding factories.)
Whenever discussions about gasoline prices come up, I want to scream, "Don't you know what a price is?" A price is and always has been and always will be whatever you can get for what you're selling given the conditions of supply and demand. Just like when you sell your house.
And don't you just love the politicians ordering the oil companies to invest in more refining capacity? As if the companies didn't want to. As if it was THEIR fault we haven't built a new refinery in the U.S. since Gordon Liddy was a plumber.
If the politicians want more oil refineries built they don't have to pass any new laws, they just have to repeal about a thousand absurd laws already on the books that make it utterly impossible for an oil company or anybody else to build a refinery anywhere between Bar Harbor and Maui. Companies aren't building refineries because they know by the time they get done with all the permitting, environmental impact statements, NIMBY lawsuits and skanky, sunburned, publicity-seeking soccer moms chaining themselves to the bulldozers, they'll have used more energy than the plant could produce in a decade.
Then there's the matter of energy independence ? the idea that the U.S. ought not to be dependent on foreign oil. The truth is, we don't have to be. We've got more than enough oil right here beneath the fruited plain to last the whole world for roughly a millennium. Most of it is in coal and shale deposits, and the story has always been that it's so costly to mine and process that it isn't economical to bother.
Well you know what? That's not even true any more. At 21st Century world crude prices, we're very close to the margin on some of these things ? and that's with existing technology. Given some serious work on the project, no doubt significant efficiencies could be made. According to one estimate, shale oil production could be viable at any price above $25 a barrel within a decade or so. (The current price is something like $60 a barrel.)
But it doesn't really matter, because the same forces that are preventing us from building refineries, drilling in ANWAR, even building desperately needed liquefied natural gas terminals ? heck, even building gas stations in a lot of places ? will keep us from mining oil shale, although the House is moving a bill to help make it happen in Utah.
But perhaps the worst news of all is that the oil companies have apparently decided to play the self-defeating liberal game. Watch for their commercials. They're turning into left-wing eco-lessons. BP is the worst, but they're all doing it.
Sometimes I think the business community is worse than the Republicans when it comes to wimping out on principles. I'd pay extra and be brand-loyal to a company with ads that tell it like it is. Well, I'd be brand-loyal anyway.
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