Cluster Column

Why Gas Prices Are So High

 

Or, Why Environmentalists and Cartel Arabs Are Costing You Money

 

By Jeff Scott

 

Most of you have probably noticed that gas prices are up, again, in a time of year when usually they stay low.  This means that, once Memorial Day and the summer driving season arrive, we could be looking at paying $4 for a gallon of gasoline (in some places in California, they are already paying over $5).  This, of course, will lead to much complaining, something which I usually disdain.  In this case, however, there is legitimate reason to complain, and it is not the wonderfully obscene oil company profits.

 

When I fill up my tank, my curse two groups of people:  environmentalists and the Arab governments controlling oil production in the OPEC nations.  Oil is not traded on a free market; most of the top oil producing nations in the world (especially those in the Middle East) are members of the OPEC cartel that decides (based primarily on greed) how much oil should be produced in those countries.  Their incentive is always to line their own pockets, because there is no competition to this cartel.  A true free market would provide competition to OPEC producers, but the semi-monopoly that is OPEC prevents anybody from competing.  If another producer were to increase production, OPEC would respond by cutting production, just to re-raise the price of a barrel of oil.  In fact, even last week, the cartel considered (led by Algeria and Iran) cutting production, even as oil prices rose above the $100 per barrel mark.

 

Compare the cuts of OPEC, in which they manipulate the world oil market for profit, to the “evil” oil companies that the left hate so much.  Oil companies try to produce and refine more oil, because more output means more sales.  The more they produce, the more they sell.  They wish they could produce more oil and refine more gasoline because they make their money from sales.  They are not to blame for the high gasoline prices.  Unfortunately, it is not just OPEC either.

 

The United States has oil reserves that an oil company could very easily drill, cutting oil prices and, once refineries were built to refine the crude oil into gasoline, gas prices could fall to less than $2 per gallon and stay there.  However, there is a very strong interest group that seems to have a death-lock control over politicians on both sides of the aisle:  environmentalists.  Thanks to these tree huggers, we are facing the very real possibility of $5 per gallon gasoline this summer.

 

The United States has oil reserves in Alaska, under the Four Corners states, in the Gulf of Mexico, and off the coast of Florida and California.  Unfortunately, due to environmentalists and their stranglehold on politicians, none of those oil reserves can be tapped.  The Chinese Communist government is able to drill for oil closer to American shores than Western oil companies.  Why?  Because they are drilling off the coast of Cuba.  American companies, thanks to environmentalists, are unable to drill for oil that is very easily attained.

 

Of course, the environmentalists like to tell us that they are saving us from ourselves by trying to stop “global warming.”  Unfortunately for them, they are on the wrong side of science.  They ignore the fact that there has been no increase in the Earth’s temperature in the last decade; they ignore that most of the 10 warmest years on record happened before the big industrial boom (they happened during the 1930s, when the globe was in a depression); they ignore that big fiery ball in the sky that dictates the Earth’s climate a hell of a lot more than any “greenhouse gases” ever could; they ignore that the sun is entering a cool cycle, and that the earth is actually closer to entering another mini-ice age than to burning up (of course, they’ll try to blame that on global warming too; such is the liberal environmentalist logic).  They are also on the wrong side of history; a bit of research into the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age prove that.

 

Thanks to this “global warming” scam, the environmentalists instead want us to rely on the unreliable solar and wind power, and the self-defeating ethanol.  Have you noticed lately that you are paying more for groceries?  That is the result of the recent obsession with ethanol.  The government subsidizes ethanol to the tune of 51 cents per gallon, and the resulting increase in demand for corn has a trickle-down effect on the rest of the economy.  Poor Mexicans cannot afford tortillas, because their prices have tripled, and meat and milk prices are up because the price of corn for livestock feed is up.  Isn’t it obvious by now that liberalism and environmentalism only spread misery?

 

Of course, that is what we should be accustomed to from liberals.  They want to make us all equal in our misery.  They hate free markets; global warming is just their latest excuse to establish socialism in America.  They blame the “greedy” oil companies when gas prices go up, when in reality they should be blaming the anti-market forces of the OPEC cartel and themselves.  When will ignorant Americans wake up and realize that liberalism and big government are not the solutions; they are the causes of the problems that plague this once-great nation.