Laugh. Let it out at my expense. My point may be a bit absurd, but it is accurate.
SpinDoc: Absurd? You posted that gasoline and diesel should cost no more than $1.09/gal. and that a fair market price of a barrel of crude was $25 to $30. You then went on to claim that anything above that is evidence of price gouging (whatever the hell that means). Yep - it was absurd.
I have three questions that the elitist media should be hammering the President, Congress, and the oil company executives with, but strangely, they are not.
2. Why did the oil companies close down a number of perfectly good refineries in the 1990's, after all of the mergers? There is only one answer, and it is greed, pure and simple.[/quote]
Ya know, I keep hearing about all the closed refineries, but from this week's petrol report by
BoeingBoy:
Now for something I'll call the Spin Doc section.....
Domestic Refinery capacity:
Jan 1990 - 15,732,000 bbls/day
Jan 1995 - 15,216,000 bbls/day
Jan 2000 - 16,317,000 bbls/day
Jan 2005 - 16,925,000 bbls/day
4/14/06 - 17,335,000 bbls/day
That's an
increase in refining capacity, not a decrease. Whom to believe? B)
Maybe we really do need even more refining capacity - perhaps located in areas less vulnerable to hurricanes, as last August showed us. But in my perfect world, our gasoline/diesel/jet fuel demand would decline each year, reducing our demand for refining capacity, not increasing it.
3. Why have we not put major political and economic pressure on OPEC to deliver oil at a much lower cost? After all, the US is the largest consumer of OPEC oil in the world, and if we threatened to boycott them, they would crap their sandy pants.
Boycott OPEC oil? Huh? You're kidding, right?
I'm confused. In some posts, you claim that oil is pricey right now due to greedy speculators like me and their NYMEX contracts, not because the intersection of the supply and demand curves occurs between $70 and $75/bbl. (depending on the day). This post seems to abandon that rationale. (BTW, my only "speculative" participation in the oil market is thru long positions in oil company stocks.)
The reason OPEC won't sell us oil for less than the current world market price is the same reason that USAir won't sell me a First Class walkup transcon LAX-PHL for $200 this afternoon. It's why I can't buy any Google stock at $85/sh anymore. The same reason I can't buy new Corvettes for $5,000 anymore. The same reason I can no longer buy any gold for $300/oz. Or $35/oz. And the very same reason that I can't buy any more houses on my street here in the suburbs of LA for under $1 million each. In each case - the market price is up. For many of them, WAY UP. New 707s used to cost $3 million each many years ago. Now, new 763s cost over $100 million each. Which of these situations, exactly, is "price gouging?"