Gas prices...is Bush responsible?

[Narkos]

I just heard an interview with Joseph Stiglitz, who said approximately $0.20 of the increase can be attributed to the Iraq war. I understand these are supply and demand issues, but other than Iraq, what did Bush do or not do to allow this increase in oil prices? This is going to be a big campaign issue that if framed correctly can really put the screws on the Rethuglicans. Any insight would be appreciated!

[El Supremo]

1. What part of 'a plot to enrich his friends' don't you understand?

[Narkos]

5. Do you really believe they would be stupid enough to do that?

Maybe so, but wasn't their whole goal to get us "cheap" oil? I believe they literally don't understand the forces they have unleased, but I just can't believe that they desired $4/gallon gas. What gives here?

[truedelphi]

18. I believe that their goal was to have it all:

They destroyed the nation of Iraq on purpose. Halliburton's coffers are overflowing.

Even when the troops are pulled out, there will still be private contractors there.

And the money schemers will have permanently deflated the economy, through the use of derivatives.

ALso to look at the big picture: the nations whose currency is a steady currency, that is the Euro, are not seeing a great deal of strain over the oil and gas prices - the oil nations sell the oil in Euros - and thus the rate hike is in a large measure due to the deflation of our dollar.

[samplegirl]

2. Cheney refuses to Regulate

the gas companies.

[Demobrat]

3. He let Cheney and the oil companies set energy policy.

To this day nobody really knows what went on in those meetings. Not hard to figure it out though.

[liberal N proud]

4. Bu$h is the cause of the Iraq war, so there is $.20

By your own statement, Stiglitz said such.

Now, bu$h and Cheney are tied to big oil, they care more about the royal family in Saudi Arabia than they do the citizens of the US.
What could they have done? If they are such good friends, they could have leaned on the oil companies to easy pressure on prices by increasing production.

They could hold the oil companies accountable for the record profits while our pockets get sucked dry.


But bu$h dances and sings rather than take care of the American people and the US economy.

Yeah, I hold bu$h completely responsible for the oil prices, when he took office gas was $1.26/gal

[Warpy]

6. Yes, on a few levels. Not directly, on one level

When Stupid took office, the price of oil was $38/bbl. The Euro brought around $.83. The government was solvent and enough pressure had been taken off the money supply that business was hiring people and expanding.

Enter Stupid, recklessly cutting taxes and causing massive deficits, drying up investment in this country's infrastructure as cash strapped states canceled projects, and driving the dollar's worth down as nervous central banks realized this goon didn't learn from his mistakes and raise taxes back where they were supposed to be in order to generate revenue. With the fall in the dollar, the per barrel price of oil should be $60-$70.

This brings me to the part he's not directly responsible for: a speculative bubble. That's what's driving the outrageous price of oil as big money boys move out of stocks and into commodities. They're betting this fool will lob a few bombs at Iran on his way out of office if the Democrats win and they're probably right about that. Commodities prices will shoot sky high if that happens and they'll win big.

That's basically what's driving the price of oil on the commodities market right now. Stupid is directly responsible for half of it and the greed of men who are betting that Stupid will continue to destroy this country on his way out of office is driving the other half.

[Narkos]

8. Thanks, that makes sense.

We need to keep pounding that issue, because this is what people are going to pay attention to in the fall. It's unfortunate that most Americans could give a shit less about Iraq or anything else in the world, but god forbid you increase their energy prices, then you get their attention!

[Warpy]

12. Face it, most people have enough on their plates right now

and if you want their attention, you have to clock them between the eyes with a 2x4.

The first smack came from gas prices. The second, harder one will be from the food prices as the bubbles in grain prices combined with fuel prices are felt.

There will be rioting overseas. I'm not sure how bad it'll get here.

[Jersey Ginny]

7. He ignored Peak Oil and Global Warming issues and they relate directly

to the price of gas. A visionary leader for a president would have increased CAFE standards years ago as well as create incentives for the use of alternative energy sources. He could have decreased American demand for oil as well as taken a leadership role in the Global Warming problem. The president failed miserably, opting to try to increase the supply of oil while ignoring the demand side. One of his first acts as President was to opt out of the Kyoto protocols. Supply increases have not kept pace with the world demand, nor will they ever with the massive growth of China and India. I believe that peak oil is here or we are very close. Peak oil occurs when 1/2 of the world's oil is gone and we'll use up the rest really quickly. All increasing supply has gotten us is no more oil, 4000 dead americans with thousands more severely injured and global warming that may be unstoppable by now.

[Narkos]

10. When you say peak oil, do you mean easily obtainable oil?

You always here about these "tar sands" in Canada and other sources of oil that more difficult to obtain. I agree that we need to get away from fossil fuels, but what do you say to the "free market" optimists that there are several more untapped sources of oil?

[magellan]

16. Let me answer that with another question

Do you believe oil is an infinite or finite resource?

If you believe (rightly) that it's finite, then you also have to understand that at some point demand is going to outstrip supply, no way around it. That's peak oil. So why continue chasing the stuff when it's bad for us geopolitically, bad for the environment, and will only become more and more expensive to extract, when we KNOW it's going to run out eventually? Some experts in the field believe we're already at peak!

This country has the ability to grab hold of alternative fuel technologies that are OUT THERE NOW and have been for years. Solar. Wind. Geothermal. All just waiting for us to use them. Get out of Iraq and use the $12 billion a month as grants to deploy these technologies across the US. Put the unemployed to work doing this. It's A NEW DEAL and it's for the future of America.

This is the sort of thing the Dems ought to be talking about. It's infuriating and disheartening in the extreme that they aren't.

[Narkos]

21. Totally agree. We should move away from an energy source

that is in the end finite. We need to get our frames right because these are the questions that the wingnuts are going to ask.

[Summer93]

30. Agree and

saddened that our country has taken the wrong road to the future.

[NickB79]

27. The problem with Alberta tar sands

First, they require obscene amounts of water to extract, so much so that they've diverted entire rivers running through the region. The result is wastewater holding ponds so large they can be observed from space and could be classified as toxic waste dumps.

Second, they also require massive amounts of natural gas to cook the tar into oil. Unfortunately, Canada's natural gas supplies are projected to begin falling; they've reached Peak Gas. There is actually serious consideration being given to build multi-billion dollar nuclear reactors on the tar sand ranges to cook the tar.

Difficult-to-obtain/unconventional sources of oil won't make much of a difference in future oil production, IMO. They are either constrained by production demands (not enough water, not enough natural gas), or by production costs (investing billions into nuclear reactors gets passed down to consumers). Either way, the unconventional oil reserves will still cost so much that they'll be unaffordable to the average consumer.

[Captain Angry]

9. Gas prices are a function of refining capacity and oil cost.

Oil prices are high due to speculation in the futures markets by investors. When the dot-com bubble popped, money flew into real estate. When real estate collapsed, the money went into commodities. Hence the rise in oil, wheat, corn, etc.

Refining capacity is low due to the lack of refineries. No refineries will be built because it's not profitable right now. It is in their best interests to wait to increase refining capacity until they can get the USA to panic enough to write them a check to build a new one.

Bush has screwed up a great many things, but this one I won't hang on him.

If it weren't for speculators, oil would be less expensive, but I don't believe gasoline would be much cheaper. Keep in mind that in all of this, China and India are increasing their demand for oil, some countries that used to export are now importing due to their increased consumption. So it's not going to get any nicer.

[BankruptcyLawyer]

11. Bush is not "responsible"

The OPEC nations are saying that the run-up in prices has a lot to do with the plunge in the value of the dollar. I don't think that's the whole story. But are they right? It's certainly a large contributing factor. Blame OPEC for limiting production, blame the dollar, blame increasing demand and competition for oil. We have one big problem (OPEC) which is not something within the control of either D's or R's.

<On Edit>

Also, as others have pointed out, refining capacity has a lot to do with it. And companies are afraid to build new refineries with all of the environmental concerns and problems that they get hit with.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

15. The lack of refinery capacity...

Is a strategy that was first brought up at a 1994 Oil Industry conference, to tighten supplies and bring up prices. This is well documented and transcripts of the speech where this was offered up can be found on the web.

The environmental aspect is a straw man, created to kill two birds with one stone: give them cover and discredit the environmental movement with the average joes and janes.

Read some stuff by Raymond Learsy, over at HuffPo for more information.

[NickB79]

29. There is another viewpoint to the lack of refinery capacity

If we've reached Peak Oil, there's no point in investing billions into new refineries if there won't be oil available to refine.

[girl gone mad]

24. Oil companies are not afraid to build new refineries.

They have no incentive to build new refineries, or even to maintain the ones they have. If a refinery should happen to go off line, they simply jack up the price of their product and profit from the calamity. The fact is, they are not eager to produce more oil because the current state of affairs suits them just fine.

Do you honestly believe that a few environmental groups are standing in the way of big oil, the most profitable industry in the world? Environmental groups can't even keep ATVs and snowmobiles out of the national parks or keep a couple of ranchers from killing endangered wolves.

Limited production, caused by OPEC or lack of refineries, is not behind the current run up. If you will recall, we had a surprise surplus last month and prices still climbed. This month supplies were below expectations, but we are talking a tiny fraction of a percent. Something else is going on here and I may post my thoughts on that in a bit.

[Xenotime]

33. * is 100% responsible. His actions against other countries have..

caused instability in the rest of the world. The fact that his cronies make money is just a fring benifit

[2Design]

13. these threads are always interesting - low count people who all think

BFEE are innocent of causing anything - of course they are part of the gas prices raises - cheney secret meetings, all their family and friends are in the oil business, holding hands with saudi visitors, kissing them, etc. I look at actions not the words - the words are used to manipulate people - most people on this thread are low count - it seems when ever I see that - it is like one starts it and then their other republics jump in to manipulate the thread so that BFEE is the innocent - sorry actions tell me differently - and no I will not spend time, listing them, just be an observer of the past and the present and future - they continue to tell us the reason it is going up is yada yada yada and then earnings reports come out that the gas companies are making record profits for the last bunch of years - do I think it will end when this BFEE group go out of the WH - no - they have set up special agreements - not sure how long it will take new administrations to fix the damage this group has done - with so many people in wh that were there back in the nixon, reagan, poppy days has given the BFEE fast access to the know how to do BIG damage -

[girl gone mad]

26. I noticed that, too..

and not just on DU. Someone is working overtime to push this meme that the Bush administration had nothing to do with our current mess.

[Narkos]

31. Bigotry towards the "low counters"

What the hell, you guys are so freaking paranoid! So I have to >1000 posts to be able to ask a legitimate question? Look over my previous posts and show me where it indicates that I'm some kind of "plant". Get over yourselves. We as liberals need to do our homework and not overplay our hand on the issues, or else we'll get pounded. The wingnuts are way ahead of us on framing the issues, and I think that if we jump to conclusions, we'll be tarred as "paranoid" liberals.

[gravity]

14. He has little direct responsibility

The problem comes down to the fact that there is an increasing demand for oil, while supply limited. The only way I see a new president significantly reducing the price of oil is by negotiating with OPEC to increase supply.

While you can make an argument that Bush's policies could have helped raise the price of gas, but I doubt that he had a secret agenda to intentionally do it. Most Republicans want the price of oil to be low because high prices hurt this economy from workers to big businesses. The only people who benefit from this are energy companies.

There isn't an easy solution to fix the problem, and if a Democrat was president the past 8 years, the price of oil would have still have increased significantly during the time period.

[AdHocSolver]

19. The ONLY way to reduce the price of oil is to REDUCE demand.

Increasing supply drains the oil fields faster. The Saudi oil fields have already been harmed by the Saudis using practices to increase supply. One Saudi practice is to pump sea water into the oil fields to increase pressure so as to pump the oil faster. This is damaging the fields.

What the next president has to do is to mandate vehicle fuel efficiency standards to reduce gasoline consumption. The technology exists now to increase gasoline mileage for all new vehicles. The American auto companies have been fighting this strategy for years. Why? Because the investors in the auto industry also invest in the oil industry, and want to insure their huge profits.

Another way to reduce costs is to remove ethanol made from corn from gasoline. Ethanol usage reduces gasoline mileage and does NOT save oil. At the same time, diverting corn production from food production drives the price of food up. However, this practice, while hurting the American consumer, makes large profits for agribusiness investors who also invest in auto and oil companies.

Finally, the invasion of Iraq was done to reduce the supply of oil. Saddam Hussein was a bad guy because he was going to go around OPEC and sell oil to customers such as China and accept payment in currencies other than the dollar. So Bush/Cheney had to take him out to maintain OPEC's domination of world oil prices through its control of the world's oil supply.

Iran are bad guys because they are planning on circumventing OPEC's control of the world's oil supply by making separate deals with oil consumers like China and accepting payment in Yuan and other currencies than the dollar. That is why Bush/Cheney are so eager to attack Iran and occupy it. Cutting off Iran's oil will reduce supply and raise the price of oil even more.

[gravity]

22. That just lowers the price, which increases demand

But even if we could reduce our consumption, demand is increasing rapidly in the developing world, and they aren't going to slow down anytime soon.

There is no easy solution to the problem as we speak, and high gas prices are probably going to be the norm. Right now, nothing can compete with gas on a large scale, and it is the lifeblood of the world economy.

[AdHocSolver]

32. Lowering the price does NOT automatically increase demand.

That is the same faulty argument that says you can increase demand (sales) by lowering the interest rates. That tactic isn't working now. The Fed's dropping the interest rates is not causing people to borrow and spend because of other factors beyond the cost of money.

The U.S. buys some 20 to 25 percent of the world's oil output, mostly to burn in vehicles. Reducing that demand will have a considerable impact on oil consumption. It is doable with current technology. In the late 1970's, in response to the Arab oil embargo, which was designed in collusion by OPEC and the oil companies to reduce supply and force up prices, the U.S. mandated fuel efficiency standards for cars. The result was that within five years, oil imports dropped more than 20 percent, and stabilized the price.

If we don't reduce U.S. consumption, the increase in demand elsewhere will exacerbate environmental problems beyond repair. The U.S. has to take the lead.

There is another solution to the increase in demand world wide for energy. Return manufacturing to the United States. The main reason for energy demand in China is that they manufacture practically everything we buy. Much of what is manufactured in China is cheap and of poor quality. They manufacture huge quantities of poor quality junk and dump it in the U.S.

Much of this crap would never be manufactured. The materials and other resources used to make this stuff would never get wasted, and the pollution would be less in China and the rest of the planet. If we manufactured most of the goods we use here in the U.S., our trade deficit would be much less and we would owe less money to the rest of the world. Our currency would be stronger and there would be less inflation, and the price of oil would drop, since part of the oil price rise is due to the devalued U.S. dollar.

Bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. would also reduce government deficits since working Americans pay income taxes. More Americans working at family supporting jobs means more taxes collected by federal, state, and local governments. This is a win-win scenario for the U.S. and the world.

There is ONLY ONE solution to the economic and environmental problems and that is to significantly reduce reliance on oil and coal, i.e., reduce reliance on the nonrenewable energy sources. The technology already exists for doing so. It only requires the political will to implement the correct policies, and that means countering the political power of the multinational corporations, which have gotten us into this mess and keep us in it.

The corporations have so corrupted the political process that it may take another "great depression" to bring back the New Deal of FDR, which implemented policies to limit the ability of corporations to so completely dominate the economic and foreign policies of the U.S.

[NickB79]

28. Assuming OPEC has the ability to increase supplies

Since no one gets to see their information on the true size of their reserves, that leaves a lot of room for doubt about what they still have left in the ground.

[bhikkhu]

17. He advocated war as a means of preserving the "American way of life"

Enough said?

[Lasher]

20. Funny you should mention this.

Just yesterday I put this one up in GD: Jawbone of an Ass: Bush's Utter Failure with OPEC

[Andy823]

23. No doubt in my mind

Here is a good article on the subject:

http://www.247wallst.com/2008/03/cutting-oil-pri.html

Seems like those who donated huge amounts of money to Bush, keep getting rich while the rest of the country suffers at the pump, and at the grocery stores. We have gone from something like $38 dollars a barrel up to around $109 today. Profits for the big oil companies have broken records every single year since Bush took office.

Instead of releasing oil, or at least stop putting it in the reserves, Bush just asks the oil producing nations to pump more so investors can buy it, store it, and jack up prices, much like they did with the Enron scandal.

[girl gone mad]

25. Look at the realities of our current situation.

We aren't dealing with an increase in the demand and cost of oil so much as we are dealing with the deflation of our currency.

Bush is absolutely to blame for the dollar's devaluation. First off, he cut taxes on the wealthy. Then he started two unending, expensive, unilateral wars with no exit strategy. Next, in an effort to retain power in 2004, he created the largest government entitlement program of the past 50 years (also a huge giveaway to the drug companies). Those tax cuts, wars and entitlements don't pay for themselves. Bush ran up the deficit to pay for his reckless spending. Deficits act like termites in the basement, eating away at the foundation of our economy and eroding our quality of life in very obvious ways.

In the midst of all of this, Bush and the Republicans in congress continued to push for banking and market deregulation. They revised the bankruptcy laws. They talked up the 'ownership society'. Bush appointed a Fed chairman who insisted that subprime was contained and believed deflation to be our biggest threat (never mind his predecessor who got the whole party started with prolonged, artificially low interest rates). These actions added fuel to the fire of our housing and derivatives manias. The inevitable collapse of these bubbles has sent shock waves around the globe, with traders rushing out of dollars and into commodities and oil.

This is not solely a supply and demand issue. It is a predictable (and predicted) result of Bush and Cheney's supply-side economic policies.

Of course, I'm only scratching the surface here, but needless to say, Presidential policy does have a drastic effect on our economy and on the price of gas in your town.