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What is going on seems to be parallel to price hike events of 1973. A 1992 book, titled 'A Century of War', by William Engdahl give insight as to the cause of the 1973 oil shock. Chapter 9 gives a good overview of careful orchestrations, by people in high places, that led to riches for oil companies and large banks, but poverty for marginal citizens around the world. Beneath the current 'Hot Air' is the truth, but capable people don't seem to be trying very hard to dredge it up.

Igor: Which financial show do you write for, SNL or Comedy Central? Only journalists and politicians think they know things that they are too uneducated about to know they don'tknow! The only time I held my breath about windfall profits taxes on XOM et al was the fear that this type of big brother inanity would prevail. I challenge your readers who read the big words and don't just look at the pictures to check their qualified plans and see how much of their retirment is dependent on 'Big Oil.' Oh, And Barack Hussein Obam's rationale for not supporting drill here and now: there wouldn't be any price relief for 5 yrs. I remember Clinton saying the same thing when he was in office; hint we would be pumping now...how long do you back of the class survey of earth science liberal arts majors think it would take to come up with a commerically viable large scale substitute for the internal combustion engine and fossil fuels...and substitutes for all of the uses of long chain carbons! Donkeys!...(Read more of this comment) (Show less of this comment)

I do believe that we need to abandon oil as a fuel source and work on other sources like hydrogen and fuel cell technologies.
Also removal of tax shelters for the oil industry and windfall profit taxes should help correct the problems with undue energy prices across the commodities.
Public transportation in our area is fairly poor so this should be improved since public transportation needs to become more available because of the claimed lack of significant oils and usage increases from India, China and others.

We don't need more oil. We don't need more Hybrids. We don't need electric cars. What we need are: Hydrogen generation systems, more Ethanol production, CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) engines on cars, fuel cell cars.

Why is it that none of the above are ever mentioned on articles about energy? Could it be something like 'payola', maybe?

I like the thought of drilling for oil in ANWAR and off shore of North America. We have an oil and gas distribution system that took 70 years to develop and it works great. How long will it take to develop a distribution system for alternate fuels like hydrogen, e85, electricity, ethonol, and etc. How long will it take to decide which fuel will become the dominant one? Or rather I should say, how much money will the lobbists have to pay congress to 'pick the right fuel'?

vrtwo

So Igor, what did you really say? I liked the thought of NOT drilling more in CONUS. Why use our oil when we can use someons else's at the same price.
We need to keep our oil as long as possible.

Actually the providers of oil are doing us a favor;without the high prices, we would never conserve and Congress would never act to implement conservation. If oil companies earned less, that would be less for politicans pockets and campaign contributions.

The solution is to encourage higher prices so tha American public will conserve, ride public transit and move closed to where their jobs are.

One more thing I will not miss about the incompetent Bush Administration---trying to kill AMTRAK. A tax of 2 cents should be immposed on every gallon of gas and diesel sold and the tax be given to AMTRAK, which consistently has ridership increases.