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CommentsWant to know what's causing high oil prices. It is simply supply and demand. Sure, other factors can cause short term spikes and slumps, but long term it's all just supply and demand. Demand is pretty obvious. Look at China and India. They are growing by leaps and bounds and demanding more and more oil. Most countries are demanding more oil, I don't think I'm jumping to any conclusions here.Now that there's really no argument against increased demand, lets look at supply. Oil production per day has averaged between 70 and 73 million barrels per day for the last 7 years. All the experts agree that crude oil production has pretty much reached it's peak. Even the oil industry experts aren't denying it anymore. The most positive outlooks favor other oil, gas, and fossil fuel sources to keep total fuel production increasing for only another 20 years before that starts to drop too. Those "other" categories include oil sands. Alberta's oil sands reserves are second only to what Saudi's claim to have in reserves (though most experts agree their numbers are extremely optimistic). Using Alberta's 173 billion barrel estimate of economically recoverable oil, and the worlds 90 million barrel per day and growing demand of fuels, Alberta's reserves would only give the world a little more than 5 years of energy. If there is some hidden multi-trillion barrel reserve sitting around somewhere please let me know, otherwise I'm going to assume that total fossil fuel production will begin to decline by 2030. Maybe alternative technologies aren't good enough yet, but I have a hard time believing that some miracle cure for this problem will occur between now and 2030. The fact is that we are demanding more and supply has stopped growing, and will soon shrink. There is no one group of people to blame, nor is there one solution. If everyone wants to live the way they are now, and China and India want to continue growing, everybody is going to have to find ways to consume less, and produce more. We need to at least consider solar, wind, ethanol and biodiesel fuels from newly bred fast growth trees with high oil content, algae grown in deserts or whose growth is fueled by CO2 exhaust from fossil fuel burning power plants, or cellulosic ethanol from land not suitable for farming foods or from various municipal wastes. These sources, individually, will not solve anything, but if you don't want to see the price at the pump triple in the next 20 years, we're going to have to make use of every available technology we have simultaneously. Posted by Nick on 08/02 at 10:47 PM | # @Liberals who whine that U.S.A. consumes ten times as much oil as France: U.S. is the largest economy on earth that provides goods and services, military protection, welfare, medical help, and aid to 150 countries including the bloated UN and NATO. France gets most of its electricity from nuclear power. Liberals scream and oppose through violent means and lengthy court battles any nuclear power plant in the U.S. or new refineries. France has a much smaller economy, and very selfishly provides very little actual help of any kind to the rest of the world. This progressive argument that we consume too much energy is getting old - we consume more because we have a larger, more productive, and successful population and economy than any other country in the world. When they catch up with us, we will start falling behind and our consumption will reduce as well. Posted by Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh on 07/12 at 04:20 PM | # OPEC, Libya and the laws of supply and demand are not responsible for high gasoline and oil prices. The oil price is dictated by the fraudulent "round-trip" trades of the "dark pool" trading in the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in Atlanta. The international Big Oil/big banking cabal owns ICE. ICE operates outside of U.S. law. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission has no jurisdiction over ICE, bribed by Big Oil. ICE's energy traders and speculators can ratchet-up the oil price anytime they feel like it, for their own profits and on the behalf of Big Oil, through the use of "round-trip" trades. Google the "Global Oil Scam" and the "London Loophole." ICE is a super Enron. Oil is too critical a resource to be controlled and manipulated by greedy corporations, greedy traders, greedy refiners and greedy speculators. Posted by Earl Richards on 07/12 at 05:43 AM | # @rt - you are right. China is making great strides but the people are still very poor. Posted by Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh on 07/11 at 10:09 PM | # @MBC - The stimulus I and II have not worked at all, they were not intended to boost the U.S. economy or help unemployment, they were intended to salvage a few banks,an insurance giant, AIG, GM and Chrysler that have been brought to their knees by overly demanding unions. Bondholders and stockholders of Chrysler and GM were paid 29 cents or less on the dollar for their investments, against legal contractual law, and given to unions and to Fiat, an Italian company. Chrysler and GM should have been allowed to fail, reorganize and emerge as better companies. That is capitalism. Incidentally, unemployment is closer to 18% if data is reported correctly and accurately, not the deceptive 9.1%. By ending the space shuttle program last Friday, Obama has created almost 10,000 more unemployed among NASA personnel and its contractors. Small towns around Titusville, Florida, are devastated economically. I would not expect a liberal to understand economics since most of them do not take basic economics in college. Unemployment is determined by Bureau of Labor Statistics through a poll which randomly asks people certain questions regarding their employment status. The result of this poll is extrapolated to represent unemployment for the entire country. Your random guess of 25-40% is laughable and ridiculous, to quote you. Most of the TARP funds went to foreign banks and foreign subsidiaries of U.S. banks. No jobs were created as the result of Obama's stimulus, the money was wasted on payoff and schemes such as cash for clunkers, cash for caulkers, 99 weeks unemployment benefits, Democrat voter buyouts, and Democrat party re-election lobbying. Posted by Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh on 07/11 at 10:06 PM | # @Peter - The price of oil is quoted in U.S. dollars worldwide. When the value of the dollar goes down, as it has constantly in the last 2-3 years, the price of oil has to go up to make up for losses in oil revenues due to a weak dollar. Check out the term petrodolllars, bank accounts derived from petrodollars. Check out petrodollars recycling -countries that deal in oil have excess reserves of petrodollars which they must invest in other banks/economies. I do not have the information requested about the IMF. Posted by Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh on 07/11 at 09:46 PM | # Here is an article which states that speculators and the declining value of the dollar play a role in oil prices: http://www.fueltracker.com/artificially-high-gas-prices Posted by AustinGuy on 07/11 at 06:40 PM | # MBC seems to think our government is wiser than the market. Companies that cannot compete should be allowed to fail. They will be replaced with those who can succeed. If we had allowed banks to fail it would have hurt in the short run but we wouldn't have had to subsidize the "too big to fail" corporations with taxpayer money. This especially applies to fanny and freddy. The auto companies are a special case. Allowing them to fail would have enabled them to restructure and negotiate new contracts with the unions to allow them to compete with the non-union manufacturers like toyota. Instead, our government, in its "wisdom" ordered restructuring which resulted in the unions having more power than ever and gave one company over to foreign ownership. How has this helped the economy and our competitiveness? I expect if a trillion had not been drained out of the economy in order to finance liberal pet political projects, we would have turned the corner toward recovery by now. The only good I see coming out of the "stimulus" is the awareness by the american voter that uncontrolled spending must stop. Thank you administration for waking the people to this issue. MBC doesn't seem to realize that india and china will be driving the growth in consumption for the foreseeable future and this has very little to do with population growth. I'm all for new innovation but I don't see anything taking the place of oil and coal in the near future. If we could now buy solar cells for five cents a watt as was predicted in the early '70s, I would gladly invest in this alternative. Unfortunately, this didn't happen, and it's not likely to happen any time soon. Posted by rt on 07/11 at 06:03 PM | # Who Controls the Price of Oil?Posted by Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh on Jul 11, 2011 at 07:54 PM
Liberals believe that supplies should be rationed through deliberate higher prices in order to protect the planet from unnecessary pollution.
Most economists agree that the oil industry is an oligopoly, a market dominated by a few sellers, synonymous in developed countries with “big business.” An insidious form of oligopoly, which dominates the oil industry, is the cartel. The cartel’s firms join forces to control production, sale, and the price of oil. More...Post a Comment on: Who Controls the Price of Oil?Commenting is not available in this channel entry. Next entries comments: Obama’s Watergate Previous entries comments: Casey Anthony, Miss America Note from the Editor: This section is for comments from readers of canadafreepress.com. Please don't assume that Canada Free Press agrees with or endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose his or her posting privilege. |
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Most people do not understand what drives the price of oil but readily accept the explanation pushed by this administration that it is the unbounded greed of oil companies and their “fat cat owners.” Oil companies are publicly traded and many Americans and other foreign nationals or entities can own stock or bonds in these firms.