The $10.00 Gas Conspiracy

The $10.00 Gas Conspiracy

I’ll bet you thought that getting more oil out of the ground and from under the seas would mean, well, we’d have more oil, more oil on the market, and more translates into a greater supply to meet demand which would mean lower gasoline prices. If you thought that, you’re wrong, gas breath!

Or so says Michael Bromwich, the chief regulator for US offshore drilling, who believes his agency’s snail’s pace of reviewing oil and gas exploration plans has nothing to do with high prices at the pump.

Bromwich elaborated for the dense among us: “Even if we permitted the hell out of everything tomorrow–every pending permit, some permits that haven’t even been filed yet–it would not have a material effect on gas prices. That’s the simple, clear reality:” http://bit.ly/h4jO6e

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said much the same thing last month. When asked about drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve, he replied, “We don’t believe that you need to drill everywhere.” Instead, in Obamaspeak, we drill nowhere since the amount of oil we have has no bearing on the quantity of oil we have. Got that?

Actually, the simple, clear reality is that the Obama administration since even before there was an Obama administration has wanted high energy prices to effect his brave, new green world. In January 2008, candidate Obama said that, “Electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” and his future Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, said, “Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

We’re getting there, fast. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4238)

Ethanol: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Corn Bread?

Ethanol: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Corn Bread?

Ethanol (ethyl alcohol) biofuel, aka booze when it’s purified, bottled and sold in liquor stores, has been the greatest boon to some farmers and some states since the inventions of tractors and porta-potties. To everyone else, it’s been a bust.

The blending of up to 10% ethanol with gasoline, now mandated in a number of states and localities, was a government brainchild ostensibly begun in the interests of reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil imports. It has developed into a typical, wasteful boondoggle which is enriching farm states and farmers who raise corn, potatoes, and sugar cane and gaining big political points with politicians at the same time it’s helping to impoverish those needing gasoline to survive.

Alcohol as a motor vehicle fuel is hardly a new idea. Henry Ford built his Ford Model-T’s to run on it, or on gas, or on a mixture. Alcohol as a widespread biofuel, however, is very much a modern concept and very much the product of the less than supple minds of environmentalists, conservationists, and the good people at the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA. As is so often the case when government gets involved in anything, bureaucrats are unable to factor in either obvious or unintended consequences. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4124)