Oil price (and craven politician) watch
May 6th, 2008 by Jim JustOil surpassed $122 a barrel for the first time Tuesday, touching $122.49. Factors behind rising prices include continued strong demand from China and supply disruptions in Nigeria.
Will political pandering never cease? It’s bad enough when McCain and Clinton go trolling for votes by proposing that the federal fuel tax be suspended (Clinton’s support for a gas tax holiday is based on her conviction that the price of oil is a result of oil market manipulation). Now Clinton is threatening to sue OPEC. Clinton has only managed to prove one of two things:
- She is oblivious to the reality of peak oil.
- She is completely craven and would say anything to get elected.
Clinton (and to be fair, Obama too) is also calling for a windfall profits tax on the oil industry. While the international oil companies (which now are a shadow of their former selves, controlling only a tiny and diminishing percentage of world production) may for the moment be swimming in cash, but no longer in oil. And Matt Simmons is warning that the oil and gas industry is going to have to spend as much as $100 trillion within the next seven years to replace its aging, corroding infrastructure, and is calling for the appointment of an energy czar to kick start the process.
The WSJ blog Environmental Capital asks if rising oil prices will accomplish what politicians have failed to do through climate policy:
“As oil races toward [past] $200 and gasoline prices follow, will the market end up achieving what all the lofty climate policies are designed to do?”