Under the Obama blueprint for reorganizing the United States, gasoline in the U.S. will shortly be $5.00 a gallon. Know what that means to the average America household: An additional $1,000.00 that you won’t have to spend for food or medicines. Gas prices are the highest on record (that means ever) for the month of February and prices will continue to rise until we show OPEC, the Middle East dictators, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and the disgusting, unprincipled oil speculators that the U.S. is going to produce our its oil. Don’t say we didn’t warn you, we did. Reprinted below is the lead article by Walter Theadore from our February 2 issue #143.
Nothing makes us more angry than when Barack Obama walks to his bully pulpit and, reading from his teleprompter, begins telling us how he is working to create more jobs and expand domestic oil production. If that were the case, why did he refuse to approve the Keystone pipe line? On Monday, oil reached $105.00 a barrel, by the time you read this that hike will have reached your local gas pump.
Gas Prices Are High Because They Want it That Way
Numerous pronouncements in the past from the president and leading Democrats show that high fuel prices aren’t by chance, they’re by design High gasoline prices are not a cause of the current economic recession, they are an avoidable and unnecessary symptom of liberal environmental and economic policies. When President Barack Obama took office the price of gasoline was $1.83 per gallon. Today it’s once again nudging $4.00. Understanding why that is so will give you insight into the patient game plan of the fossil-fuel-hating, combustion-engine-despising, environmentally obsessed left.
By Walter Theadore
Editor’s Note: “I filled up my gas tank today: 19.5 gallons cost me $69.90. I am driving the same vehicle today as I did the day Barack Obama took office. Filling the tank then (19.5 gallons) cost me $35.58 – same gas, same gas station. You really believe Obama and the Democrats feel our pain?”
Do not doubt, during the months leading up to the November elections, that gas prices will fall dramatically only to skyrocket to $5.00 or $6.00 in January if Barack Obama wins re-election.
The high price of gas is not simply a function of the cost of crude oil. There are many causes for the $4.00 we are currently paying for a gallon of gasoline. Of that $4.00, taxes account for 52 cents, distribution and marketing about 32 cents, refining 56 cents, and the cost of crude oil $2.60. By the mid-20th century, oil was surpassed only by income taxes as the largest generator of revenue for theU.S. government.
Clearly, the biggest portion of the $4.00 you pay goes to the crude oil suppliers. This is where supply and demand takes over. The price of crude oil is determined by the world’s oil-exporting nations, particularly the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). OPEC is responsible for over 40% of the world’s crude production. In 2001, when OPEC reduced its production by 1 million barrels a day, gas prices in theU.S.skyrocketed to $1.71 per gallon. When it increased its production in 2005, gas prices dropped.
TheUnited Statesis actually the third-largest producer of crude oil in the world, but we still import nearly 40% of our crude oil demand, mainly fromCanada,Mexico,Saudi Arabia,Nigeria, andVenezuela. But here is where life becomes quite simple. The more crude oil we produce domestically, the less taxes we heap on a gallon of gasoline, the fewer hurdles and blends we require of domestic manufacturers, the less we pay for gasoline.U.S.domestic oil production peaked way back in 1970, and by 2005, imports were twice that of domestically produced crude oil.
When the outrage of high gas prices hits the White House, they default to their usual mantra of blaming Big Oil. They point to oil company profits and insinuate that these profits are from the sale of gas. However, oil companies have an anemic profit margin on the sale of gasoline — around 6%. This means that while the oil companies see a profit of around 24 cents from the gallon of gas you pay $4.00 for, the government sees a profit of 50 cents in taxes and other charges. It is the government who is gouging and needs to be investigated — not the oil companies.
Increasing domestic exploration, drilling, and production is the simple solution to what we are paying at the pump. Yet our president has repeatedly misled us by alleging that there is no “silver bullet” for lowering gas prices. What the Obama administration and his liberal machine have been doing is just the opposite — and it is beginning to look intentional.
Barack and his crew are at the beck and call of the environmental movement, George Soros and his fellow international financiers. They will stop at nothing to ruin the domestic oil industry and see us buying gas at prices similar to that paid inEurope.
Think Keystone pipeline, folks.
President Obama follows the liberal playbook about energy independence — code for wind and solar energy which won’t fuel our automobiles, jets, ships, or our military. He misleads the American people about ethanol leading to energy independence. It can’t and won’t. Ethanol is not economically competitive. Corn ethanol costs an average of $2.53 to produce – several times the 56 cents it costs to produce a gallon of gasoline. Instead, ethanol simply raises the price of gasoline we pay at the pump.
Barack has to take care of Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and the Chicago Machine, doesn’t he?
The media destroyed George Bush over gas prices saying it would destroy the country. But today the media portrays high gas prices as something positive. “Higher gas prices are forcing us to search for alternative fuels and more fuel-efficient cars,” said Priya David on CBS News. “And there are other reasons to be optimistic about the high cost of gas.” So there you go. It’s a good thing.
Obama’s policies are intentionally reducing the supply of gasoline and crude oil just as world demand goes up. One must conclude based on his actions that he doesn’t object to gas at $4.00 a gallon. Inflammatory? It shouldn’t be. In 2008 he said, “I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment [in the rising cost of gas]. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money in their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more rapidly, particularly U.S. automakers.”
A president who truly wants lower gas prices can increase the supply of oil by opening up more areas offshore and in ANWR for domestic drilling and easing regulations. We have plenty of domestic resources to drill, and plenty of companies willing to drill for it if the left and their misguided environmental, big-government and anti-capitalist policies would just get out of the way. Increased domestic production would stimulate U.S.job growth and provide a tremendous boost to our economy. It would lower gas prices, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and shield us from the effects of instability in the Middle Eastand price fixing by OPEC.
But these things aren’t going to happen if Obama wants just the opposite. The result of his policies has been decreasing oil production, increasing gas prices, and a mass exodus of oil companies sending operations and rigs overseas to “greener” pasture
It’s been happening for three years and until the Congress reins Barack Obama in or he is defeated in November, it will continue.
Think of it, $5.00 or $6.00 a gallon for regular gas. You think things are tough now?
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