Obama Would Take on Oil Companies...
Is Obama the ONLY candidate who is alarmed by the oil companies and their stranglehold monopoly on the market? It would seem so. Yes, he may tap into the gargantuan reserves that are sitting doing nothing but collecting dust, and Conservative (who like to conserve everything but money on stupid, illegal wars, big government and big business) will try to cry foul, but it's probably the only way to get the price of gasoline lowered to where people can afford to go to work!
2 comments:
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has about 700 million barrels of crude oil in it right now.
US Petroleum consumption is currently 20.687 million barrels of oil per day.
Net imports are about 12.4 million barrels of crude per day (we produce some oil in Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, etc).
Anyway, the SPR would last for about 34 days with no other production. If our imports got cut off, it would last about 56 days.
Oil is an international commodity: the price of $105 or so a barrel is a worldwide price. Releasing the SPR to combat the per barrel oil price wouldn't be very effective. It wouldn't last that long, and it's not that big in terms of daily oil consumption worldwide (and since we import most of our oil, you have to look at this on a worldwide basis).
The SPR is really intended to be used only if there is a genuine supply emergency: natural disaster, terrorist attack at an oil terminal, etc.
Gasoline is of course based on the price of crude, but also on the price to refine crude into gasoline. There is a refining bottleneck in the country right now, but building more refineries probably wouldn't decrease gas prices all that much.
The real way to save is going to be to use less gasoline. The price per gallon is very difficult for the government to influence much. They can cut gas taxes, but gas taxes are needed to fund the roads.
"The real way to save is going to be to use less gasoline."
And find alternative fuels (I know ethanol isn't really any cheaper than petrol). Perhaps, in order to break oil's stranglehold, the government needs to start practical research into more efficient, less expensive, and cleaner alternatives.
I'm not saying I have all the answers. Obviously, I don't. But things as they are just CAN'T continue...
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