{"id":3,"date":"2008-06-18T17:46:19","date_gmt":"2008-06-18T15:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/blog\/?p=3"},"modified":"2008-06-20T22:26:54","modified_gmt":"2008-06-20T20:26:54","slug":"oil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=3","title":{"rendered":"Oil"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GasolineAnyone not under a rock can’t help but notice the price of oil having skyrocketed.\u00a0 $4.00 per gallon prices may seem like a lot, and indeed they are compared to what they were, and so President Bush has decided to wage a war to attempt to get domestic production up.\u00a0 That means drilling off the shores of Florida and California and in the ANWR National Reserve in Alaska.<\/p>\n

It’s a smooth political move.\u00a0 He figures now that prices are high he can play this card.\u00a0 However, many economists would disagree that this would do a thing to bring down the cost of oil.\u00a0 First of all, many believe that speculators are stepping in and buying up oil and storing it, thus driving up demand.\u00a0 These guys have a lot of money and might well be able to absorb any increased supply.\u00a0 The proof is what happened when Saudi Arabia announced that it would increase oil production by 200,000 barrels per day.\u00a0 Prices went up<\/strong>.\u00a0 The fact is that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has been asleep at the wheel.\u00a0 These people are responsible for keeping speculators in check, and where they fail, we could sink speculators hard by selling lots futures from the Strategic Petrolium Reserve.\u00a0 That would really stick it to them.<\/p>\n

But even if prices had gone down, the increased retrieval of oil doesn’t translate into the increased production of gasoline, as we are driving our refineries to capacity.\u00a0 Building new refineries in the United States is as popular as drilling, because it is a messy business with serious environmental consequences.\u00a0 You can trust me on this: I come from New Jersey, home of toxic waste.<\/p>\n

Fortunately the President’s efforts (and by extension those of Senator McCain) to spoil our shores and Alaska are transparent.\u00a0 Unfortunately, our energy dependence problem will not go away any time soon.<\/p>\n

In case you’re wondering, yes I am insulated just a bit by the oil increases.\u00a0 A small fraction of those increases have come from the weakened dollar.\u00a0 However, the dollar has stablized but oil prices have not.\u00a0 The way I am more insulated than I was in California is that I now have a commute from upstairs to downstairs instead of a 120 mile round trip commute.\u00a0 This is better than a Prius, but sometimes lack of colleague contact is a problem.<\/p>\n

But our house is heated with oil, and many of the products we use require energy to create.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone not under a rock can’t help but notice the price of oil having skyrocketed.\u00a0 $4.00 per gallon prices may seem like a lot, and indeed they are compared to what they were, and so President Bush has decided to wage a war to attempt to get domestic production up.\u00a0 That means drilling off the … Continue reading “Oil”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5,493],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-oil","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}