Charles Lehardy is reacting to yet another mainstream media piece shilling for the Obama administration:
A new study by the Associated Press finds that during the past 36 years, US oil production increases did not correlate to lower US gasoline prices at the pump. When we produced more oil, the prices we paid for a gallon of gasoline did not drop. (see article here)
The dishonest spin put on this study is that drilling makes no difference: Oil is that rare, magical commodity not subject to the normal laws of supply and demand. As CBS and other news outlets put it:
It’s the political cure-all for high gas prices: Drill here, drill now. But more U.S. drilling has not changed how deeply the gas pump drills into your wallet, math and history show.
That conclusion — drilling makes no difference — is meant to give cover to the Obama administration’s active program to close off or sharply curtail US oil exploration and production on most federal lands, including off shore. As the President keeps saying, US oil production is up on his watch. What he hasn’t said is that most of those increases have occurred on state and private lands where the Obama administration has been unable to block exploration.
But the AP study only tells part of the story.
Oil prices are in fact kept artificially high by the Saudis and other members of the oil producing states. They constantly adjust their outputs higher or lower to maximize the cost of a barrel of oil, something they are able to do because they control such a large percentage of the world supply. They operate exactly like the De Beers family does in controlling the prices of diamonds. Gem grade diamonds are not particularly rare, but retail prices are kept high because De Beers and its many confederates tightly control how many diamonds are on the market at any given time.
But if the US were to suddenly discover a wealth of gem grade diamonds here in this country, that discovery, and those diamonds once they were put on the market, would shift the balance of power. The same is true for oil.
As long as our government refuses to permit the vigorous development of US oil resources — and with new technologies that can extract oil from oil sands, oil shales and deep off shore wells, our theoretical share of the total world oil supply keeps increasing every day — the US has no power to shift world oil prices, except by reducing consumption. Developing our domestic oil supply would gradually shift the balance of power in what is now a very one-sided game.
What’s needed is a national mandate to develop known US oil resources and to explore for more, a mandate that could not be held hostage to every political whim in Washington. Such a program would have a stabilizing effect on the world oil markets.
But more importantly, a serious program to develop our own oil resources would gradually reduce the amount of oil we purchase from the Gulf states, making us less dependent on their unstable regimes.
Charlie’s got more and it all makes good sense. If someone can counter his arguments, then please, by all means, do so in the comments.
What this does for me is confirm Obama’s radicalness, confirm why it is that he must not be elected again.
There’s so much at stake.
