It certainly is easy to blame the Oil Companies for the high price of oil.  After all, their record profits suggest that they are taking advantage of us.  Well, I’m here to tell you that the Oil Companies are not to blame.  They are merely doing their job which is to provide us and the world with oil.  The fact that the marketplace has determined that their oil is worth so much is not their fault.  As a matter of fact, we should all be thanking “Big Oil” for doing such a fine job.  Without them, we wouldn’t have oil and that means that we wouldn’t have food, clothing, housing, running water, airplanes, factories, televisions…you name it.  In short, our lives would be drastically changed without them.  Oil Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars to explore new sources of oil so that they can make money providing the world with what it needs most, an efficient energy source.  They employ hundreds of thousands of people and in 2006 returned more than $11 Billion in equity to their millions of stockholders, which likely includes you if you have a 401K or pension.  So, the next time some congressman points his finger at the Oil Companies, understand that it is just a smokescreen to hide the true culprits.

Another easy target for the high price of oil is President Bush.  By now, you’ve heard many times that President Bush is in bed with the Oil Companies.  I’m not sure what that means or if it is even possible, but I’m sure you’ve heard it.  The truth is that President Bush has seen this problem coming for quite some time and warned Congress to do something about it years ago.  You see President Bush understands that the price of oil is determined by supply and demand.  The simple truth is that our government has committed itself to restricting our ability to produce our own oil.  This has lead to a heavy reliance on foreign sources.  With China and India’s economies growing so fast, the demand for oil has simply outpaced world supply.  This, of course, has lead to higher prices.  President Bush predicted this would happen in 2001.  A New York Times article dated: May 18, 2001 explained: “President Bush began an intensive effort today to sell his plan for developing new sources of energy to Congress and the American people.  The Bush plan mentions about a dozen areas including land-use restrictions in the Rockies, lease stipulations on offshore areas attractive to oil companies, the vetting of nuclear plants, environmental reviews to upgrade power plants and refineries that could be streamlined or eliminated to help industry find more oil and gas and produce more electricity and gasoline.”  President Bush was then quoted as saying: “this great country could face a darker future, a future that is, unfortunately, being previewed in rising prices at the gas pump.”  There you have it.  President Bush presented the dangers to Congress in 2001.  What did they do? Well, a later Times article reported: “the president’s ambitious policy quickly became a casualty of energy politics and notably, harsh criticism from Democrats enraged by the way the White House had created the plan.”

This leads us to the Democrats.  You won’t be surprised to find out that they deserve the most blame for the high price of oil, and here are few reasons why: 

1. Bill Clinton vetoed a bill in 1995 that would have allowed drilling in ANWR (Alaska). If he had signed it into law, ANWR could be producing one million barrels of oil a day (5% of the nation’s consumption).

2. Democrats have consistently fought to prevent us from drilling off our own coastlines. To put this lunacy in perspective, the Chinese are currently drilling off our coastlines.

3. Instead of focusing on drilling for our own oil, the Democrats have focused on energy bills that mandate alternative fuels like ethanol which has since been proved to be more costly and inefficient.  This had lead to higher gas prices and food prices worldwide.

4. Democrats and environmentalists have consistently refused to allow us to consider Nuclear power.  Even France was able to see the value of Nuclear power, generating 79% of its electricity from nuclear plants and reducing their need for oil.  The last nuclear reactor built in the U.S. was in 1977.

5. Democrats and their environmentalist friends have also fought against coal and coal mining plants.  Coal is a proven, clean source of electric power and a liquefied fuel that would reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

6. Our refinery capacity in this country is restricted due to old technology and aged infrastructure.  Voters in South Dakota just approved what could become the first oil refinery built in the U.S. in 30 years.  The Democrats and environmentalists vow to oppose it.

7. The myth of Global Warming embraced and pushed by the Democrats has lead to the ethanol debacle and other environmental regulations that restrict our ability to produce oil.

8. One of Bill Clinton’s last acts in office was to sign the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.  This enabled large firms to trade energy commodities on electronic exchanges without federal oversight.  Before this, U.S. energy futures were traded exclusively on regulated exchanges.  Clinton’s law has lead to unprecedented oil speculation. F. William Engdahl, an Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization has written: “it is more likely that 60% of the today oil price is pure speculation.”

There you have it, all of this and the defeat of President Bush’s 2001 energy package has lead to record high oil prices.  One more thing to keep in mind here: the latest solution from the Democrats is to impose a windfall profit tax on the oil companies.  It is laughable to think that transferring money from “Big Oil” to “Big Government” will lower the price of oil.  Yet these are the smokescreen solutions that we are left with.

So, what about the Republicans?  They are just as much to blame for not standing up to the Democrats and their environmental supporters.  Time and time again, the Republicans have rolled over and allowed the Democrats to create policies and regulations that have created and sustained this mess.

Now you know who to blame for the price of oil. So, what now? Well, its time to take action.  By voting for people with the courage to stand up to the leftist environmental movement and their willing accomplices in the Democrat and Republican parties, we can change the course we are on, drill for our own oil, increase supply and lower market prices.  If we don’t, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.

Sources:

Keister, Todd; “Thank You, Big Oil”; www.americanthinker.com; June 14, 2008

Tate, William; “Top Ten Reason to blame Democrats for soaring 
    gasoline prices”;www.americanthinker.com; June 16, 2008


...more columns by Todd A. Carges