$5 Gasoline? Really?

This week our fine President announced that he had no control over gas prices. It’s a strange position for him to take. Strange as in unusually laughable. This is the man who told us that energy costs would necessarily skyrocket while he supported Alternate forms of energy. This is the man who wanted to bankrupt the coal companies. This is the man who doesn’t want to drill in ANWR or off shore, but will buy up all the Brazilian oil they can produce from OUR off shore fields. Sadly, even this fine offer was turned down by Brazil, who signed contracts with China for their oil. I’m sure that our president has a vision of Solar powered Airliners flying freely through the skies with no pollution and wind powered tractor trailers crossing the highways beneath cloudless skies, not to mention the thousand of locomotives operating on Steam power. But alas, he can’t do anything about the price of Gasoline.

Let’s look at history for any available remedies to help our president out. First of all our president needs to realize that an Alternative fuel has been a political “Cause” since the early 1900’s. For an excellent analysis, I would refer the reader to this scholarly work http://www.radford.edu/wkovarik/papers/fuel.html
Henry Ford was a great proponent of Alcohol for fueling his automobiles. As late as 1936 an alcohol conversion kit was offered by Ford Motor Company. However, Congress harkened to the Department of Defense and decided to go with oil. This was the right decision at the time as Gasoline was selling at roughly 18 cents a gallonand Alcohol was selling at 38 cents. Frankly, the API was lobbying hard for it. Moving forward, Roosevelt put on price controls for wartime gasoline consumption and went to rationing. When Jimmy Carter was president, we had an oil shortage and the beginning of long lines at the gas pumps. The actual shortage was generally
thought of as “manufactured”. Living in Illinois, I experienced the long lines at the gas pumps and climbing gas prices. I also had a friend that worked for one of the local refineries of which there were three. One day a week, my friend would pick up my car and take it to work. He would then bring it back to me with a full tank. I thought that he may have been stealing from work. He told me no, the company had run out of storage space, so they were giving the gas to the employees and burning gasoline soaked barge rope along the banks of the river.

In the early 80’s, I worked for Halliburton in New Mexico. I worked on wells that produced oil in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and California. I had been told from various oil company engineers that there was plenty of oil available for drilling for the next 200+ years. I had also been told that for years the oil companies had been drilling wells throughout the US and just capping the wells for future production. I actually got to work on putting a few of those wells into production. By 1983, gas prices had fallen to less than one dollar a gallon. It was at this time that Prudhoe Bay was opening up for production. There was one very memorable well I worked on. It was located on the West Mesa outside of Albuquerque. The deepest hole they had drilled in the US to that time. It was 29,500 feet deep. It was an exploratory well. We discovered 4 oil formations and 5 Natural Gas formations. One of the group of engineers that I worked with told me that we really didn’t need to import anyoil due to reserves that they knew about currently. He showed me a map of theUS and outlined with his finger 5 separate spots that we could work for the next 50 years each. He displayed a field north of the Permian basin in Texas, one that ran through Ohio, Michigan, and Northern Indiana, and told me about oil that had been seeping up through the ground where two runways crossed in Flora, IL. The Flora seepage, I had later confirmed in a Halliburton employee magazine that told of Halliburton getting called out to drill the hole to stop the seepage. This was during Reagan’s administration. Refining costs were 39 cents a gallon in New Mexico.

When President Clinton was in office, the price of oil was generally under $2 a gallon, even though we heard about OPEC shortening supply and oil was imported even more. The EPA was furthering its regulations on Drilling, Refining, and Storage Facilities. If a Refinery had a storage tank fire, EPA wouldn’t license a rebuild. Drilling had more regulations concerning concrete pits for overflow. Soil studies and samples for water retention and what kind of environmental impact the hole would make. It become harder for oil companies to produce gasoline. Exploration slowed to a virtual standstill. Price increase was exacerbated by oil companies looking for greater profits. This is displayed in quotations from a paper Senator Wyden published in 2000. Thiscan be read in its entirety here: http://wyden.senate.gov/issues/gas_prices/pdfs/wyden_oil_report.pdf
“a senior energy analyst at the recent API (American Petroleum Institute) convention warned
that if the U.S. petroleum industry doesn’t reduce its refining capacity, it will never see any substantial increase in refining margins…However, refining utilization has been rising, sustaining high levels of operations, thereby keeping prices low.”
Internal Chevron document, November 30, 1995

When President Bush took office in 2001, Gas prices were averaging $1.69/ Gallon. After 9/11 gas prices started the upward crawl. Oil companies were buying each other up for refining capacity. Independents were being swallowed up. EPA was still pushing intolerable regulations. When prices crawled to 3 dollars a gallon for gas, President Bush was asked by the press what he intended to do about the price of gasoline, he told the press that if the people thought they were being gouged by the oil companies, report them to the FTC. Within a week, prices started to go down at the pump. My belief is that if the FTC investigated the pricing, they would have learned that the oil companies were following the commodity price which is based on future demand
rather than lobbying for EPA relaxation of regulation.

Nowthat brings us back to our current President who openly wants high gas prices. What can the poor boy do to ease the suffering at the pump? Currently, we have 17M barrels of oil refining capacity. We consume 21 million barrels of oil. That’s a 4 million barrel deficit that we import oil to make up. We are drilling more now on private land, not public land. This doesn’t give us as taxpayers any royalty money or benefit from lease fees or taxes. This current state of affairs gives us plenty of oil, but not enough refining. Oil companies want to make profit so anything over that 17 Million Barrels can be easily exported for a nice profit. All extra drilling would accomplish would be to increase the amount of exported oil. More profit for the oil companies and higher
speculation in the markets. The taxes we pay to the Federal government would still be high, the taxes to the states would remain the same. The politicians would be asking to raise the taxes to promote some utopian situation and in then final Bills the contributors would gain millions. So what can a leader of the free world do? First we would need to find a leader. Then he could call the oil companies, the API and the department of the Interior, The Energy Czar, and the EPA head into a meeting. He could explain that the country does not want to impede the free market in any business; however we prefer to be self sufficient where our energy is concerned. He would strongly suggest that the EPA limits its licensing and approval process for refining and storage to six months and be generous in its approvals. To the oil companies, he could suggest that the
game is over and we need not just 21 Million Barrels of oil available But 30 million barrels of oil at the ready daily. Anything over that they could export. It is in the best interest of the economy, as well as the EPA and the Oil companies to satisfy the demand. Have it all completed within 5 years. Furthermore, get busy drilling on public land to help pay down the debt. This would lower the commodity speculation price, as we would not need imported oil and the main player in the oil market is buying locally. Let the Arabs sell the oil to China. If the EPA complains, he can replace the head with someone like minded. If the oil companies complain, maybe their licenses or tax forms could be reviewed for any improprieties. It is not a free market when the country is held hostage by the EPA and the oil companies. But again we would have to find that leader .

What I want in a President

With all the hullabaloo about the Republican Primary elections and delegates, I took the time to think about what I would want in a President. What I realized was that no one running for election right now fits the bill perfectly. I consider myself an independent voter, although I have
voted more times for Republican nominees more than Democrats, so I guess I’m not a “Straight ticket” type of guy. While I lived in Tennessee I voted for Phil Bredesen for Mayor. I was proved right. The greatest business increase for Nashville in the last 50 years can be attributed to Mayors Fulton and Bredesen. I moved back to IL in time to watch the Jack Ryan fiasco. I would have voted for Jack Ryan. But, David Axelrod Preferred to assassinate him publically, and instead of backing him, The IL Republicans preferred to drop him. Bad Choice on their part. We got State Senator “voting present” Obama.

What I see as I get older is how the people who are elected to represent us find more reasons to spend less time with us. I suppose the Georgetown political parties are more exciting. It seems that once they get elected they vote the way they want and want no accountability for it. The
Party seems more important than the people. Power seems more important than the constituents. The chasm seems to grow with each election. So I took the time to analyze why I voted for this one andnot that one. These are the qualities that I would want for the next president.
1. Knowing and abiding by the US Constitution. My belief is that the US Constitution is written in stone. It is not a living breathing thing; it is the rules of the entire nation. Something that we once all agreed on as the best way to be governed. I want him to understand what his position means along with the checks and balances to promote the best government for the people, not lobbying groups, party affiliations, Campaign contributors, and the like.
2. I would like my president to inspire the peopleto achievement rather than decide how they should live. I want him to understand that emotional outcry does not deserve legislative response. I want him to know that everyone is not a victim of the system, but a beneficiary of it. I do want him to discourage dependency on the Government and encourage personal achievement.
3. I want the president to know the law, but not be a lawyer. That is the job for the Attorney General. However, I don’t want the President to encourage laws that prioritize results based on race, gender, sexual orientation or any other discriminating reason. We are all American, we
are not born hyphenated.
4. I would like the President to have some military experience, preferably in a combat situation, to know what defending this country really means. It would also give him insight to the difference between controlling the people and leading them.
5. I would like the President to live by the law. When the constitution says defend against enemies both foreign and domestic, which includes Illegal aliens, gangbangers killing to make their bones and countries that hold our citizens hostage under phony charges.
6. I want the President to have been properly vetted in each state. I find it hard to believe that a President can seal all his personal life and still be electable. How can someone hide himself from the people he wants to lead? I would certainly like to see the next president set up an independent investigation into the current president’s eligibility to be president, and if he is found ineligible prosecute him and all those who aided and abetted him to the fullest extent of the law. Then I would want him to deal with the Constitutional crisis of unraveling every executive order and law that he signed.
7. I would like the President to be a man of some religious belief and understand that the people that he is leading are not just physical and emotional creatures, but also have a spirit that needs to be fed as well. This would change some current law as in abortion and the encroaching
Sharia Law as well as prayer in schools.

Upon further consideration, I suppose that person who I would want for president wouldn’t want to be president.