1. Speculation: The Bush Administration is known for its coziness with big business. Its economic policy team is dominated by former executives in the financial sector, such as Henry Paulson who serves as Secretary of the Treasury. Despite evidence to the contrary, Mr. Paulson is adamant that expensive oil is a natural result of changes in the balance between supply and demand. He has firmly ruled out the possibility that excessive speculation has played a significant role. But excessive speculation began in 2000 when Texan Ken Lay (ENRON CHAIRMAN) met with Bush/Cheney & asked to be able to speculate "freely" on Electrical Power commodities outside federal supervision or control, and he got the OK. This became known as the "ENRON Loophole." Ken Lay contributed heavily to W. Bush 2 Governor Presidential campaigns. ENRON ripped-off the California consumers and charged up to 5x times the average cost of electricity. ENRON made billions on that Bush/Cheney/ENRON/Rep. Belatedly the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; the government agency responsible for overseeing the trading of energy contracts has taken the unusual step of revealing a six-month investigation into possible price manipulation. Led by Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman, Congress is also conducting an investigation. Watch Countdown Special Report: “McCain's Tie's To High Gas Prices” @ http://youtube.com/watch?v=S1ZKqQByZQ0
2. No New Refineries: One of the factors behind this increase is a shortage of refining capacity. Unfortunately, not a single new refinery has been built in the US in the last 30 years, a time period that obviously includes the eight years under the leadership of President Bush. And the Bush administration has helped refining capacity to become controlled by a handful of companies so that they, not speculators can manipulate the market. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) concluded in March 2001 that oil companies had intentionally withheld supplies of gasoline from the market as a tactic to drive up prices. Helping to control the market and drive up prices, oil company mergers have been encouraged by the administration. The Bush administration could reevaluate recent mergers, investigate anticompetitive practices, and re-regulate oil trading. He could do this when cows fly. See “Myths and Facts about Oil Refineries in the United States” - http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/electricity/Oil_and_Gas/articles.cfm?ID=11829
3. Weak Dollar: Record-low interest rates, a surging trade deficit, and ballooning national debt have shaken investor confidence in the dollar, causing the currency to rapidly lose value. While the relationship between the dollar and the price of oil is tough to pin down, the commodity and the currency are 95% correlated.
4. Foreign Policy: The first priority of US armed forces upon entering Iraq was to assume control over Iraqi oil production. While those directly involved in the planning of the Iraq war have yet to come clean about their true motives, Alan Greenspan and Henry Kissinger have separately implied that the war was blatantly aimed at Iraq’s vast deposits of oil. Regardless of whether this is true, the US presence in Iraq has driven production down 33% from pre-war output to one of the world’s major oil producers, and ongoing US military effort requires 3 million gallons of imported gasoline per day to sustain its operations. Disregarding the cost to taxpayers-estimated at over $1 Billion per week due to the army’s unique fuel specifications, this means that the net effect of the US military effort has been an increase in demand for oil and a decrease in supply. One expert has speculated that if not for the Iraq War, the current price of oil would probably be closer to $40 not $140.
5. Overseas Supply: The US has refused to trade with Iran for a couple decades, a major oil producer, and Pres. Bush’s thinly veiled ambitions to go to war with them has made speculators more than happy. The biggest oil nation in the Americas is Venezuela and the Bush administration has snubbed Hugo Chavez at ever turn of events and again put US supply on shaky grounds to the further delight of speculators. Pres. Bush has repeatedly lobbied Saudi Arabia to raise output, but thus far has secured only token increases. Analysts echo their frustrations by pointing to the myriad of trade deals that President Clinton signed with OPEC members while he was in office.
6. Domestic Supply: Pres Bush has done little to increase U.S. production particularly off the coast of Florida where 62% of the offshore oil deposits rest under lock and key. Pres Bush would not send the drills anywhere close to the clean beaches of the Florida panhandle. The Clinton administration in the late 1990s had proposed selling exploration leases for some 6 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico. But in 2001, after Florida Gov. Jeb Bush protested loudly, the government reduced the potential leasable area by about 75 percent - http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=053002&ID=s1156519. Perhaps in response to criticism, Pres. Bush proposed to Congress that they open up ANWR [Alaska National Wildlife Refuge]. However, two professors at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies estimate that the amount of recoverable oil in the ANWR wouldn’t exceed 1% of global supply. While it represents 23% of the proven offshore oil deposits, it is in a hard-to-get-to area that would cost the most of any off shore supply to produce and would present the most costly efforts to protect the delicate tundra and wildlife.
7. Fuel Economy: The Bush Administration has done little to mitigate demand for oil products. Since 2/3 of the oil consumed in the US is used for transportation purposes, it would follow that an increase in motor vehicle fuel economy would go a long way in reducing demand. In 2006 the Bush Administration made an effort to mandate an increased fuel economy by 1.8 mpg over 4 years. Individual states responded to this weak legislation by enacting stricter standards. The Bush Administration called the stricter state standards “an obstacle to the accomplishment of the new federal standards" and took the states to court. Fortunately, the US federal courts sided with the states. June 30th, 2008 http://www.currencytrading.net/2008/8-ways-the-bush-administration-has-caused-the-oil-price-boom/
8. Alternative Energy: Alternative energy is being heralded both as the solution to America’s addiction to oil and a strategy to deal with climate change. The only person who has not firmly jumped on the bandwagon is President Bush. While the President likes to boast of his support for the alternative energy sector, the numbers indicate that funding has hardly budged over the duration of his presidency. Now, the Democrat-controlled Congress is moving to punish oil companies that don’t invest in alternative energy by imposing a "windfall profits tax." President Bush is spearheading the effort to block this bill. Republicans have already scuttled a similar bill which would have required utility companies to generate a modest 15% of US electricity in 2020 using renewable energy methods. Instead, President Bush has thrown his support behind ethanol, which has caused corn prices to shoot up more than 75% in the past year from $4 to over $7 a bushel affecting almost everything else at the supermarket.
9. Presidential Leadership in Public Persuasion. A C-SPAN survey (http://www.infoplease.com/spot/presrankings1.html) of “Presidential Leadership in Public Persuasion” lists the five top presidents as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and John F. Kennedy. And so the use of the Whitehouse as a Bully Pulpit has been dormant since Pres. Kennedy encouraged Americans to go to the moon. Our next president needs to encourage and promote radical innovations in energy efficiency and get behind incentives to get new and alternative energy products to market quickly. This one certainly did nothing except to move the country backwards. Congressman J. Randy Forbes (Republican VA-04) has introduced legislation that calls for a “New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence” with seven energy goals that will move the United States towards 100% energy independence in 20 years. President Bush's energy budgets have provided paltry amounts for energy efficiency and alternative and renewable energy, far less than the $2 billion the oil and gas industry have received in tax breaks each year. Back in 2006 Bush pledged renewable energy initiative and then turned around and gutted the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL). His budgets have slowly sought to sink the NREL with his current budget allocation of $181.5 million or $48 million less than the 2003 NREL budget of $229.5 million.
10. No Real Energy Policy. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/opinion/30friedman.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin Two years ago, President Bush declared that America was “addicted to oil,” and that he was going to do something about it. Well, now he has. Now we have the new Bush energy policy: “Get more addicted to oil.” It’s too bad that he will not give us a strategic plan to end our addiction to oil and build a bipartisan coalition to deliver it. He could be using his last days in office by working with Congressional Democrats instead of blaming them for $4-a-gallon gas. Documents have exposed an administration that for the last seven and a half years has been in hoc with oil companies, companies that were invited to take part in drafting the nation’s energy and environmental policies. Hence, it should come as no surprise that, as oil prices have climbed (and continue to climb) to record levels, the Bush Administration has stood idly by and failed to take meaningful action while other countries were and are moving smartly and progressively forward in solving their energy problems by getting off the oil addition. There are many examples all around us but here are some of the more successful developments, developments we could be actively doing but are not. Even more frustrating, these are developments the Bush administration should have been stressing in his energy policies.
(1) Brazil is now the world leader in “flex car” technology using ethanol. http://skeptically.org/oil/id12.html
(2) A South African company is profitably using its coal to satisfy nearly half of its transportation needs. Wait - something is wrong here. How can they do it while being signers of the Kyoto Protocol while we can’t and are not signers? http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6960234/description.html
(3) Europe has begun a massive switch to biodiesel with over half of their vehicles now running on diesel, which unlike in the U.S., their diesel is cheaper, all because of government mandates for refining priorities. The only priorities American refineries know is how to make the most money -http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/03/20/diesel-becoming-more-expensive-than-gasoline-in-europe.. Biodiesel can be mixed in any proportion with diesel made from fossil fuels, and pure biodiesel reduces net carbon dioxide emissions by 78% compared to 100% petroleum diesel, a perfect marriage for environmental concerns and an energy hungry public. And to think that we could be producing all of our fuel for our vehicles; trains, and airplanes from algae-based biodiesel - http://hamptonroads.com/2008/01/odu-experiment-turning-sewage-algaebased-biodiesel-flourishing.
(4) We have had the potential to get off the oil habit for some time now with the cleanest of fossil fuels, one that the U.S. owns more of than any other country (except Russia). We could have and still can lead the world with vehicles that run on natural gas. We have the supply lines and the technology to easily convert. So while our government has put forth no effort to convert to natural gas vehicles and little effort to unlock natural gas deposits offshore and on protected government land (it’s all about oil only drilling these days) -- the Canadian Natural Gas Vehicle Alliance is making an all out effort to promote natural gas vehicles http://www.cngva.org/about.htm.
(5) The Former Soviet Union country of Estonia is using its abundant oil shale to extract natural gas and produce electricity as its chief export and for over 80% of its own electrical use. Our own Green River Formation, holding huge oil and gas reserves, is being studied for oil only extraction. Just ask Estonia how they are able to do it. http://www.worldoil.com/magazine/magazine_detail.asp?ART_ID=2658
(6) And why is it that Germany is building thousands of biomass plants using their garbage for profitable energy production while we have to pay to have our garbage hauled away?
(7) Why is it that Spain is using its citrus waste to produce 16% of its ethanol while Florida throws away most of its annual 8 million tons of orange peel? http://biopact.com/2007_02_10_archive.html
(8) How did we let ourselves slip from 40% of global solar production in 1997 to now just 8%? Could this have something to do with First Solar moving from Toledo, Ohio, to Germany in April 2008 with 540 high-paying engineering jobs? While the German government was actively adding solar incentives, the Bush administration did nothing when Congress continued to put the damper on solar incentives? http://www.renewables-made-in-germany.com/en/biogas
(9) And why did the administration fail to encourage the extension stimulus for wind energy in the 2007 energy bill while European governments were ramping up their support for wind energy? The founder of one of the biggest wind-power corporations in America said that this legislation was a disaster, and being a capital-intensive industry, financial institutions will be pulling out in 2009 http://www.trainsnotlanes.info/.
(10) And how is it that France generates 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear power while over half of ours comes from dirty coal? Could it be that the Bush administration allowed some of the nation's dirtiest power plants to make major modifications without installing costly new pollution controls by strong arming EPA officials to drop health hazard findings from the Clean Air Act? http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/07/anglers_environmental_control.html
Reference. Most of this article was taken from “8 Ways the Bush Administration Has Caused the Oil Price Boom” Jun 30 2008 By Adam Kritzer
http://www.currencytrading.net/2008/8-ways-the-bush-administration-has-caused-the-oil-price-boom/
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