How is that $3/gallon gas working out for you?
I mean, can you stand it? Can you get around? Can you keep up the mortgage payments? Can you save a little bit by combining trips or ride-sharing. Can you keep going as you are and maybe afford a new, smaller car?
Or are you about to lose it all?
The reason I ask is that, according to the government, most folks are doing OK, they’re driving as much as ever. And if we can keep prices where they are we have an historic opportunity in The War Against Oil.
Right now alternatives can’t convince bankers to make loans on projects that won’t come on in 2-5 years, because they can’t assure those bankers that they will be able to sell the resulting product, at a profit, at the prices they anticipate will exist then.
At $3/gallon, even with U.S. refiners doing everything they can to restrict their own production, that’s a huge incentive for foreign refiners, like Venezuelan refiners, to come in with tankers full of gas and take those profits home.
In other words, the price is unlikely to stay this high for long. It’s going to fluctuate. It’s going to go down for a spell. Then it’s going to go up. Then down, then up. That’s the way markets work.
If we can set a price floor, if we can guarantee that current
prices will hold long enough for alternatives to get to market at a
profit, then the situation starts to change. Once supplies are ample at
the floor price, you can put policies in place which favor domestic
supplies, then domestic alternatives, at the floor price. Or you can
set a lower floor for renewables, maybe just 5% lower. That will help
push oil out of the market, while keeping supplies stable.
We need to take this opportunity now, however. We can’t wait for
foreigners to take our gasoline market and learn how to manipulate it,
as U.S. refiners have done. If we do that we’re worse off than before
— we’re sending money right out of our gas pumps overeseas, losing refining market
share, and paying this variable price for gasoline that may go down to
$2.40 gallon this winter, then go up to $4 next summer, then $2.60,
then $5.
Want to end the blackmail? Want to control your own market?
Take the $3/gallon opportunity. Seize it. Now.
