Oil Archives - Page 22 of 32 - Common Sense Evaluation

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Fact Of The Day: The Pelosi Premium

July 16, 2008 gags

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It is time for Nancy “the Troll at the Bridge” Pelosi to Resign

July 16, 2008 gags

Nancy Pelosi’s lame-brained plan to use the strategic oil reserve to try to lower prices, while still blocking any attempt to drill is the final straw. In playing politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Nancy Pelosi has moved beyond the incompetence and irresponsibility that have characterized her leadership to date. She is nothing short of dangerous to the future of our country and has become a real life living example of the “Troll at the Bridge” that stands in the way of America’s energy independence and lower gas prices. She should resign immediately.

Drill Here, Drill Now. Just get the Hell to it!

Feckless To Reckless, Pelosi Should Resign

Leadership: With oil hitting $147, Nancy Pelosi finally admits energy is a problem. But instead of drilling for it, she’s cooked up a new drain-the-reserves scheme. It’s pure politics at a time of crisis. She ought to resign.

Any leader with an energy record as derelict as Speaker Pelosi’s ought to step down. Where she once was just incompetent and irresponsible, she has now — with her latest scheme to fix oil prices — become dangerous.

Despite polls showing Americans in favor of drilling more oil from America’s huge untapped supplies, Pelosi won’t allow it. She just wants to empty our Strategic Petroleum Reserve for a short-term fix to get through Election Day.

It’s an irresponsible suggestion, signaling not only an ignorance of how the economy works but also a willingness to place the nation at risk in the case of emergency.

Last Tuesday, Pelosi sent a letter to President Bush urging him to release a “small portion” of the nation’s 706 million barrels of strategic-reserve oil to bring down prices. Regardless of how one feels about whether reserves should be held at all, two big problems stand out with Pelosi’s tiny demand.

One, she’s proposing a misappropriation of the reserves. The U.S. oil stockpile is a 58-day cushion for emergencies that today are all possible. If Israel attacks Iran, for example, and prices double again. Or if Hugo Chavez cuts off his supplies, as he threatened to do as recently as Sunday.

The reserve is there to cushion the blow of a market disruption; it’s not an open-market mechanism to manipulate prices for political ends.

Two, Pelosi has finally admitted that supply matters, something that contrasts with her entire legislative record. We count 14 energy actions to suppress supply on her Web site just since 2005.

She has blocked efforts to open Alaska to drilling, denounced fossil fuels, blamed oil companies for high gasoline prices, voted for biotech boondoggles and condemned speculators.

“Our coasts need lasting protection from oil and gas drilling,” she declared Dec. 6, 2006, after Democrats won control of Congress. Missing are any moves against petrotyrant regimes who drive prices skyward, or even lip service to the idea of ensuring supply through drilling.

Pelosi downplays her proposal as modest because it’s a “small” portion of the reserves to spend. And look what happened in 2000, she says, when an SPR release authorized by President Clinton lowered gasoline prices nearly 20%.

But she’s not fooling anyone. Then, like now, an election was coming up.

With Congress’ public approval at a subterranean 9% and falling, the speaker must be starting to realize that November may not be the Democratic cakewalk that pundits predict.

President Bush, however, isn’t about to be suckered into releasing the reserves just long enough for pump prices to fall by Election Day, thereby saving Democrats’ skins so they can carry on their drill-nothingism for an additional two years.

The president needs to do two things with Pelosi’s proposal: First, tell her “no,” unless she comes up with a plan to open up more drilling. Second, expose it for what it is — a bid to paint Bush as the problem to distract from her own sorry record.

In playing politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the speaker has moved beyond the incompetence and irresponsibility that have characterized her leadership to date.

It borders on reckless, something we cannot tolerate in such dangerous times.

Amusing

America’s Oil Held Hostage by the Democrats

July 15, 2008 gags

Voting for Democrats in November guarantees we will never be free from foreign oil because they will never let the American people develop our own independent fuel resources. You can’t build enough wind mills, solar panels or electric cars, to replace our present energy needs…not in 10 years, not in 20…and what are we supposed to do in the mean time?

What possible reason could the Democrats have for not drilling other than somebody is lining their pockets not to!

Drill Now, Drill Everywhere and Drill Often!

Free Our Oil

That was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s catchphrase last week as she continued to grope for an energy policy. One of her ideas was to request “a small drawdown” in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, no irony intended. At least President Bush has finally called the Speaker’s bluff by rescinding the 1990 executive ban on offshore energy exploration.

With Mr. Bush’s belated decision yesterday, Congress’s moratorium on offshore drilling is now the last major political barrier to increasing domestic oil-and-gas production. Yet Democratic leaders have refused to schedule even a single hearing on the topic. House Appropriations Chairman David Obey recently shut down the annual budget process rather than allow Republicans to offer drilling amendments. He and the Speaker know that if they allow a vote, moderate Democrats are sure to defect and the offshore moratorium could end.

Ms. Pelosi called Mr. Bush’s announcement “a hoax” and made a few cracks about “the oilman in the White House,” continuing the Democratic strategy of blaming everyone from industry executives to “speculators” for the energy crunch. But none of those compare to world-wide demand, tight spare production capacity and inflation – the real causes of today’s record high oil prices. Easing access to the Outer Continental Shelf, with its likely low-end estimates of 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, is one of the few responsible long-term remedies.

Congress’s 27-year ban typically comes in the form of a rider to annual spending bills. This year the ban expires on September 30. To borrow Speaker Pelosi’s slogan . . .

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July 15, 2008September 9, 2012 gags

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Analysts Say Gas Prices Could Fall to $2 if Congress Acts

July 12, 2008 gags

Let’s see. Last week it was caused by Big Oil, this week by speculators, who will it be next week? Facts are facts; it is the Environmentalists and their corrupt Democrat shills that are to blame for the price of gas.

This is just more of the same blame game that the Democrats use to focus on someone else because they are in desperate need of a villain in this picture since they are not free to move or adjust their positions on the issue. They’re basically locked into an ideological position.

Drill Now, Drill Everywhere and Drill Often! I don’t care if we have to drill through a Caribou’s head to get oil. Just do it!

Gas Prices Could Fall To $2 If Congress Acts, Analysts Say

The price of retail gasoline would fall by half, to around $2 a gallon, within 30 days of passage of a law to limit speculation in energy markets, four energy analysts told Congress on Monday. Testifying to a House Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee, Michael Masters of Masters Capital Management said the price of crude oil would drop closer to its marginal cost of around $65 to $75 a barrel, about half the current $135. Fadel Gheit of Oppenheimer & Co., Edward Krapels of Energy Security Analysis and Roger Diwan of PFC Energy agreed with Masters’ assessment at the hearing. Other witnesses say speculators aren’t a major factor in oil prices, however.