Pumping More Crude, Keeping Prices Up

BEGINNING ABOUT THE TIME Obama became president, American production of oil and natural gas have been significantly increasing, a fact which proves decisively that Obama is a genius, and a great president. Just kidding. Actually, its coincidental. But give Obama credit; he has done nothing to stop the flow. Maybe he isn't such an anti-capitalist after all. Advances in drilling techniques, allowing collection of shale oil and natural gas is largely responsible. Just recently the United States surged past Russia as the world's number one oil producer, at a hefty eleven million barrels a day. However, the refining capacity in America has not increased in decades, thus there is a glut of crude oil in America, and existing refineries might have to go twenty four seven, since we don't seem inclined to build any more. Combined with a slightly decreased demand for gasoline , and the United States is becoming less dedendant on foreign oil, which for decades has been the American dream. Increase in domsestic oil supply. Decreased demand. Don't you just know that one of these fine days quite soon the price of gas is gonna come a tumblin' down. Kinda strange that it hasn't already started. Or has it? Well, we'll see, but one can bet one's bottom dollar that if, over the next few months, the price doesn't continue to slide downward, considering the big supply and low demand, people are going to start asking questions. There should never again be four dollar a gallon gasoline in the United States, at least not for a very, very long time. This is just basic truth, in a free market. The problem, of course, is that in the oil industry there is no free market. There is a monopoly, a monopoly of about five huge corporations, working together to keep economic conditions as favorable as possible for corporate profit. When the price of gas starts going up again, as you somehow sense it will, the oil cartel is going to say something weak, like "the environmental movement wouldn't let us build more refineries, so we can't refine and bring to market any more processed oil product now than we ever could, no matter how much crude we pump." You can hear it now. And enybody who believes that is welcome to it. The big five could build as many refineries as they want in Mexico, just south of Texas and just south of California. It really begins to seem as if the fuel (oil) industry has no more desire to build more refineries, to increase refining capacity, thatn the wackiest of the environmental wackos. Why should they? Doing so would increase supply, and depress prices and profit margin. IN the corporate world, that is the greatest sin. The chinese are using coal and oil at a prodigious, alarming rate, but they are also investing a lot in research and development of wind and sun energy, renewable and clean. Good for them. We need to do the same thing in the U.S.A., instead of getting lazy, as we usually do, about sun and wind, when oil is cheap. But then again, in the politically powerful corporate oil industry, wind and sun energy are sinful.