BUSH HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HIGH OIL PRICES. the whole reason is because of the change to deregulation. allowing for these markets to be manuiplated rather than reflecting the fundamental force of supply & demand
This has to be one of the dumber threads I've read lately. There's really two separate problems here. First, the price level. This has nothing to do with Bush. Rather, global supply-demand is the culprit. Huge Chinese, Indian, and other world-wide demand as the Chinese for instance, move from bicycle transport to automobile. Hello? So I would say here that Bush has nothing to do with this. But the next problem is US dependence on foreign oil. This is a problem. No nuclear plants built in the last 35 years due to over the top regulation. No new refineries in 30 years. Guess why. No drilling off either coast, no drilling in Anwar, no oil shale. We could go on and on here. Do you think there is a culprit here? Forget about political party here. It's again, clearly not Bush. Let's just say that our leadership in Congress is shit. And they continue to play politics today. We have plenty of coal. We could gasify coal for instance. Right now it ain't gonna happen. We could use our plentiful natural gas. Ain't gonna happen, thanks to Congress. I could go on and on here, but the bottom line is that most of this has little to nothing to do with Bush. Rather, I put most of this at the feet of Congress. And it doesn't look like it's about to change anytime soon. So you guys who want to bash Bush, just remember, the price level is supply demand globally. That ain't gonna change anytime soon. What can change is an energy policy and starts promoting the creation of energy on every level. It looks to me like that isn't about to happen any time soon either. One thing for sure....drilling for instance won't change anything for let's say 5+ years. Doing nothing on the other hand will never change anything. LOL. OldTrader
Thanks for your honesty and perspective. Your points are well made and I believe pretty much on the money. This is "political season" and W has turned me into a Bush hater. Very clearly, free trade and the globalization of capital has lead to development which places an upward bias on demand with a commensurate response in both price and supply. At the end of the day, however, oil pricing also has an element of risk premium due to supply disruption. Political stability in the middle east was adversely impacted by the second Gulf war. If I remember right, the principal issue for our adventure in Iraq was the WMD issue. Remember the 8+ year Iran / Iraq war of the 80's? Clearly in 20/20 hindsite, Saddam would have been in trouble with his neighbor Iran, if it were clear he had no WMD's. The rush to war in Iraq in hindsite is enough to make anyone sick to their stomach's. It never smelt right or felt right. All it took was a few well paid insiders to seed bad intel to duping our peaceful nation into becomming a warmonger. Watching the neocons morph this adventure into a crusade to transplant democracy in a region ruled by dictators and populated by tribes only adds insult to injury. It truely gives democracy a bad name. Since when do democracy's make war to spread democracy. Oh yeah, I forgot - we were there to liberate the Iraqi's. After 6 years and untold US war costs - Are the Iraqi's really any better off? The transition from a bipolar world to a multipolar world necessitates a rise in regional conflicts, none of which post the same direct threats to the US that existed during the Cold War. No one who benefits from oil production has any real interest in middle east peace or a reduction in tension in that region. US foreign policy has been badly managed in the region since at least the 1980's if not earlier. I hate W because he is a simpleton who was manipulated by folks who've made a killing off this war. The power vacuum created by the distruction of Iraq has freed Iran to set it's own agenda in the region. I blame the Republicans for this shitty turn of events brough about by both their greed and stupidity. At the end of the day, we'll all be lucky if we aren't at war with Iran before a regime change occurs in the US. I guess I'm a little pissed off. We all have to live in this world, and it's clearly not a "better off place" as a result of W and his band of pirates, or our dumb as dirt (read corrupt) political elite. Oil prices aren't all supply and demand. There is manipulation and a systemic failure of price discovery. Todays historic meeting in Jeddea of oil producers in consumers sponsered by the King of Saudia Arabia should be seen as a clear confirmation that there is more at work with pricing than supply / demand imbalances. The Saudi's are smart enough to understand that there is no value in killing their "golden goose".
Bingo. A few years ago, Bush would ask rhetorically, "does anyone really believe the world would be a better place if Saddam were still in power?" You don't hear that being asked anymore because the answer is not so clear. While he was a tyrant to his own people, Saddam did stabilize the M.E. to some extent because he was a counterbalancing force opposite Iran. His absence has clearly boosted Iran's influence and power. Iraq now puts out about 2.3 mil bbl/day compared to 1.9 mil prior to the war. 400k extra barrels per day is a scant return for a costly war. I assume risk premiums remain high on Iraqi oil due to vulnerability to sabotage attacks.
It is worth going on a bit here, because I think people (even the well informed folks here) don't get it. My older brother worked for years doing construction / engineering management for a company that built nuclear power plants. When that work started to dry up in the 80's, the company diversified into constructing waste to energy plants in the California market. My brother stayed on in the nuclear division back east, working as an outage engineer conducting nuclear maintenance. Ultimately his employer went bankrupt. Not because they were continually profittable on the nuclear side, but because they were sued in California over emission guarantee issues. You can pretty much design a power plant to burn almost anything. The ability to control emissions it directly tied to an ability to control the make up of the fuel stream. Pretty hard to do with trash burners. It's not a big surprise that no one has built a trash burner (or probably almost anything other than NG peaking units) in CA since the mid 80's. The only thing worse that our out of control EPA is probably the California air quality folks. The EPA's arbitrary application of Best Available Control Technology requirements to utility retrofits has helped push utility construction costs almost to the point of feasibility limits. Carbon sequesterization is a key technology which needs to be developed to support clean coal power. Currently our government is backing away from it's committment to develop a pilot plant due to the burdens imposed by regulatory requirements. They are searching in vain for industry partners to share risks & costs. In todays regulatory environment, no one wants to step up. Vapor recovery requirements and hydrocarbon fugitive emission requirements have significantly raised costs to both refinery operations and marine transportation. It's no surprise that we are short of both refining capacity and critical marine transportation infractructure. Washington's desire to emulate our European counterparts and adopt a "cap and trade" system for carbon emissions and or an acrossed the board carbon tax, promises to raise utility costs by 40% (on top of any rise in the underlying cost of energy inputs). I'm right there with everyone else when it comes to clean air and water. If our regulators don't smarten up and begin to consider the real world economic impacts of their intrusive regulations. We're pretty much up shit creek. You cant have a "sustainable" future if you destroy the economic basis to create it. Clean air in America & Europe is a moot point if the developing world doesnt play by the same rules. Remember the END USER pretty much pays all these costs.... At best this is a zero sum activity which lowers end user living standards, and delivers competitive advantage to folks who don't practice the same environmental values.