Thursday, February 23, 2012

Conspiracy theory of oil

“Fuck Obama .. green energy policies and prohibitions on new oil drilling are killing me at the pump.  And fuck greedy oil companies and Republicans .. rigging prices and enriching themselves at my expense.” 
 I hear accusations like this a lot these days. They fill-in for what’s unknown ..in this case, trading practices. And the less the mind knows ..the more hypothetical and insubstantial these explanations become .. filling the void with narrative that’s like Styrofoam. As much as we’ve tried, no evidence of intelligence life has been found in the oil industry capable of pulling together all the players necessary to act in its favor. There’s just too many of them. The ‘spot market’ sets contract prices for crude before it ever leaves the Persian Gulf. In transit, contract prices are continually revised according to fluctuating estimates of supply and demand. In the meantime, investors and speculators place bets in response to the uncertainty caused by two, possibly three U.S. wars ..and ongoing civil unrest. Contrary to popular belief, oil from new drilling operations won’t be available until around 2030. And no matter what we do ..rising demand from India and China will outpace us to ensure gas prices keep going up over time. During the Mid-east oil crisis of the 1970’s, customers were actually blaming the gas station attendants for rising prices, which confirmed a theory in psychology .. the mind often supplies local reasons to explain the outcome of distant events.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Good points made here Bill, and that's exactly why we need the solution offered up on this blog http://newsparticipation.com/thoughts-on-rising-gas-prices/

Europeans realize this fact and are not worried about it because they have a very good mass transit system that removes a lot of the dependence on gas that we have here. We have to develop our transit system or we will keep squabbling about gas prices forever.

Bill Robertson said...

Thanks Boodie,

You’re right ..we have to develop a transit system. The only thing holding us back is fear. I live in California. I read something about the high-speed rail project in the LA Times last Thursday. It’s definitely a skewed view of the West Coast. It says: “Political conservatives are deeply opposed to the California high-speed rail project. They see something sinister about it: an agenda to push people into European or Asian models of cities where apartments are clustered around rail lines and people rely on state-run transportation. In their view, the rationale of the rail system rests on flawed assumptions that would undermine California's identity, which during the last half-century has revolved around single-family homes that have driven economic growth, family-oriented lifestyles and signature West Coast recreation.” [http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bullet-vision-20120308,0,3644887,full.story]

How do you counter that ..?