Wednesday, December 21, 2005

The U.S. Senate's Struggle For Higher Oil Prices

The idiots in the U.S. Senate tonight decided to block further oil drilling in Alaska. Great news for the governments of Saudia Arabia, Iran, Norway and Russia who will continue to receive large "windfall profits", but bad news for the rest of the world who will see their economies damaged by high oil prices. Whether through monetary inflation by the central banks or through agricultural subsidies or by blocking oil drilling you can apparently always trust governments to make the things we buy more expensive for us.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Can you provide more details? Specifically, would Alaska oil supply be large enough to reduce oil prices in the USA? How will drilling in Alaska will reduce Saudi Arabia large "windfall profits"

To me, it seems that drilling in Alaska is at best, a short term solution.

Maybe, as opposed to trying to solve the problem by increasing the supply of oil, we should be finding ways of reducing our consumption of oil by way of (i) developing alternative sources of energy, (ii) developing and encouraging the use of gas efficient engines, (iv) constructing energy efficient buildings and (iv) making cities more attractive and suburban life less (or at least connecting suburbia with job areas by means other than cars)

Should the oil problem be reduced to finding ways to make it cheaper? I could be perfectly wrong, but I thought the oil issue is broader than just making the consumer happy.

11:38 PM  

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