Bush says drill drill!

Should we drill more offshore or not? Some environmentalists say “no”. An increasing number of impoverished drivers say “yes! yes!” Bush recently responded to the “drill drill” movement. He’s increasing pressure on Congress to expand offshore oil exploration.

“The only thing now standing between the American people and the vast oil resources of the Outer Continental Shelf is action from the United States Congress,” he said. The case is being made that the that oil companies should drill in about 68 million acres of federal land they have already leased for such use — a move the Democrats say would nearly double U.S. production.

Other folks want Bush to to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — a stockpile set aside for emergencies — and work with Democrats to crack down on Wall Street traders who are driving up oil prices by buying huge quantities of oil just to resell at a higher price.

Personally, I think we shouldn’t put limits on commodity trading. If demand goes down, that will take care of the market! I’m a believer in the fact that eventually our free enterprise system will self-correct any situation instead of counting on our government “to fix everything.” What do you think?

For the whole Bush story, click here.

Watch Boone Pickens Plan

If you haven’t heard billionaire T Boone Pickens has taken out advertisements to promote a plan for energy independence. Here are some videos of Pickens:

Here’s a video of the Pickens plan:

Here’s a longer version of the plan:

Here’s Pickens on CNBC:

Gasline News Tracker service announced

A news service on all aspects of high gas prices launched today. Pump-less-gas.com, the blog devoted to news, information, resources, and money saving tips now provides a news service called News Tracker. Editor Frank Girard explained “what we are doing is providing constantly updated, highly focused news on all aspects of high gas prices. Currently our coverage includes the topic of “high gas prices” and “fuel efficient cars” with other topics being added every week. The service provides a list of headlines and related story summaries from more than 4500 media outlets from all over the United States on these two topics with more planned,” Girard explained. “To read the headlines stories/news summaries listed, one simply clicks on the headlines/summaries to instantly get the whole story. Now instead of having to search for news on highly focused topics related to all aspects of high gas prices, this information is constantly updated and instantly available from our blog Pump-less-gas.com/wordpress,”Girard continued.

The News Tracker service described can be found at this address: http://pump-less-gas.com/wordpress/news-tracker/

Energy independence argument

On this Independence Day holiday weekend, I thought it was only appropriate to share some thinking about energy independence- something this nation has ignored for many years. Here’s some videos about energy independence I thought you would find interesting:

Energy Independence

James Woolsey on Energy Independence

Wind Power

Glenn Beck- 30 Years of Empty Promises

This video provides a bit of a discouraging retrospective about how long we’ve talked about energy independence without doing anything about it. Don’t you think it is time we do something about this and approach it like the Manhattan project? There is now an Energy Manhattan project being talked about but will this really happen? We need the right leadership to make it happen.

If you know of any other interesting videos about energy independence, let us know…Perhaps we’ll finally “get real” about addressing energy independence!

Driving miles down

U.S. car owners drove 1.4 billion fewer highway miles in April than they did in April 2007, the Department of Transportation said Wednesday. Americans have driven 20 billion fewer miles overall this year, the Transportation Department says. That marks the sixth consecutive monthly drop and coincides with record gas prices and an increase in transit ridership, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said. The chart below from the Federal Highways Administration shows a previous trend over the years of mileage traveled growing every year. This trend may change dramatically based on the high price of gas. What do you think?

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Exxon exiting retail gas business

Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, plans to cut off its branded service station arm of the company in the U.S. resulting in the sale of the approximately 2,220 Exxon Mobil owned stations from the total station figure of nearly 12,000. Exxon Mobil’s service stations account for a small amount of the company’s overall profits.

What prompted Exxon to exit the retail gas business? Some speculate besides the fact that retail is a very small percent of Exxon’s profits, Exxon may have been “fed up” with government regulators calling them to testify as they investigate the theory that the oil companies are taking unfair advantage of consumers.

What do you think about oil company pricing?

Check out the complete story at Motor Trend Magazine’s site click here

Related stories:

Oil prices and speculation \

How much of the price of oil is the impact of speculation (traders betting on the price of oil rising or falling) as opposed to the true real demand? And how exactly are oil prices determined? This has been a recent subject of conversation when the topic is financial trends and energy. I haven’t studied this in detail so can’t say but want to share with you one perspective in a summary of one article provided below:

Article Summary

The price of crude oil today is not made according to any traditional relation of supply to demand. Nymex in New York and the ICE Futures in London today control global benchmark oil prices which in turn set most of the freely traded oil cargo. A third rather new oil exchange, the Dubai Mercantile Exchange (DME), trading Dubai crude, is more or less a daughter of Nymex, with Nymex President, James Newsome, sitting on the board of DME and most key personnel British or American citizens. Brent is used in spot and long-term contracts to value as much of crude oil produced in global oil markets each day. But how today’s oil prices are really determined is done by a process so opaque only a handful of major oil trading banks such as Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley have any idea who is buying and who selling oil futures or derivative contracts that set physical oil prices in this strange new world of “paper oil.”

The trading of energy commodities by large firms on OTC electronic exchanges was exempted from CFTC oversight by a provision inserted at the behest of Enron and other large energy traders into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 in the waning hours of the 106th Congress.

Get the full article here:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8878

Other related articles and links to the complete articles are noted below:

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Energy Manhattan project?

Why aren’t we treating the high priced gas crisis like we treated the need to develop the A bomb during World War II? The Manhattan project was an all out effort by the government and private industry to develop the atomic bomb…we did it in record time and the course of history was changed forever!

We put a man on the moon because Kennedy inspired us and dedicated talented folks made it happen even though some people laughed and said it couldn’t happen…Why the hell don’t we have a Manhattan like project going on at this very moment but for alternative energy? The lack of an effort like this makes me mad as hell!…Mad for the sake of the security of this country…mad about what these high prices are doing to our economy and the people on tight budgets who are struggling now because of these prices.

Before we decide on who will be President, we should demand that the candidate we choose commit to an alternative energy Manhattan project…and not just rhetoric but a comprehensive detailed plan for how to make it happen!

Here’s a thought- a group of bright…no… brilliant minds from multiple disciplines from private industry should develop a written position piece and proposed plan for the Manhattan project starting right now.

Some say we should begin drilling in more places now to give oil prices some relief…If this is our only alternative, perhaps we should…but only as an interim measure. We need a longer term comprehensive Manhattan type project that is more environmentally friendly but with limited impact on our free enterprise system.

Why don’t we have the Oil Manhattan Project? Is it too controversial for our politicians? Are lobbying groups blocking this? Has no leader in business or government suggested this idea? Is the public not smart enough to demand that a project like this begin now? What do you think???

Oil companies out of business?

You probably can’t imagine any possibility of any oil company going out of business but I think it could happen and let me tell you why….The railroads made the mistake of thinking they were in the railroad business instead of the transportation business and that one thought cost them greatly…The Swiss watch companies thought they were in the business of only building fine precision watches with gears…in fact they were approached by the digital watch inventor and associated start up companies to take on the digital line of watches and they refused to consider becoming part of the digital watch trend. Guess what happened? Because of the limited view of their business, the Swiss watch industry contracted to only serving a very small segment of the total watch market…There are many business stories like these where an industry or companies within it had a limited view of their business and suffered as a result.

I don’t know how the oil companies have defined their business. I don’t know if they only have defined their business in terms of drilling or refining oil or not…or if they have defined their business as the energy business as opposed to just the oil business.

I do know this—Oil is not an infinite resource. Alternative energy sources will expand and innovations in alternative fuel will move forward at a more rapid pace. Oil companies hear this– if you haven’t defined your business more broadly, you should. Imagine what the public image of you would be if they learned you were serious and investing big dollars in cheaper alternative energy…imagine how you would better insure your companies survival…..

Perhaps I’m wrong and the oil industry doesn’t have to worry about supplies. Read the excerpt below:

There’sa whole ocean of oil out there…

Cambridge Energy Research Associates said in a report that the world has some 3.74 trillion barrels of oil left — enough to last 122 years at current consumption rates and triple the amount estimated by “peak oil” theorists. …