David Drake: When Will Oil Hit $200 A Barrel?

Thursday, May 22, 2008

When Will Oil Hit $200 A Barrel?

It may be the mother of all doom and gloom gas price predictions: $12 for a gallon of gas is “inevitable.”

Robert Hirsch, Management Information Services Senior Energy Advisor, gave a dire warning about the potential future of gas prices on CNBC’s May 20 “Squawk Box”. He told host Becky Quick there was no single thing that would solve the problem, due to the enormity of the problem.

“[T]he prices that we’re paying at the pump today are, I think, going to be ‘the good old days,’ because others who watch this very closely forecast that we’re going to be hitting $12 and $15 per gallon,” Hirsch said.

High gas prices is what the Democrats want. They want to use it as an election year issue to further and advance their own Liberal agenda. The Democrats don't plan to do anything about the price of a gallon of gasoline until January 2009.

The Democrats conducted yet another Dog and Pony Show with Oil Executives on Wednesday: The Hill:

Peter Robertson, vice chairman of the board of Chevron Corporation , noted that “Congress has recently made some hard policy choices on renewables and energy efficiency.

“We hope you can also make the equally hard choices to open up more federal lands and allow us to responsibly produce more American oil and natural gas, which can supply us for decades to come,” Robertson stated.

He argued that “punitive measures that weaken us in the face of this international competition are the wrong solution at this critical point in our history.”

ConocoPhillips’s Lowe agreed.

“We urge you not to pass measures that have public appeal but would be counterproductive, such as tax increases that diminish our investment capabilities, reduce the attractiveness of high-cost domestic production, or disadvantage U.S. oil and gas companies,” Lowe told senators. “This has been tried before with extremely negative results: reducing supplies, eliminating jobs and resulting in higher prices. The nation cannot afford to make that mistake again.”

Oh yes, we've seen this Dog and Pony Show from the Dems in the past...too many times. Hello - people, what the Dems are doing regarding energy and oil is the Jimmy Carter presidency all over again. Dems never learn from their mistakes. They just continue on a biased political path of making the same errors over and over again.

Have the Dems ever - ever once - proven the oil companies guilty of "price gouging"? Nope, never. Not once. Ever.

The Democrats want to cripple our country and they are hell-bent in using the price of gasoline as their political tool. What answer do Democrats have for energy? Tax the oil companies even more. Oh yeah - that's a swell answer. It's like telling someone in a sinking boat that taking on more water will keep them afloat.

What good is keeping the small percentage of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge free from oil drilling doing us? Well, it's a wedge issue used by the Democrats to keep us hostage to high oil prices.

It was 1995 when then-President Bubba Clinton vetoed drilling in ANWR. Back then, Dems said it would take ten years before we even started pumping oil out of ANWR. That would have put us in the year 2005. Huh - that was three years ago. Same story on drilling off our coastal cities.

I hope the Liberals and Progressives are enjoying the sky-rocketing price of a gallon of gas. They're the ones who for years told us we weren't paying enough for it. They must be happy now, surely they weren't using the low cost of gasoline as a political issue, were they? No, they wouldn't do this.

You think our energy policy and its costs are out of control now? Just wait until the Democrats get their sweaty, meaty paws on it.

My prediction is that oil will hit $200 per barrel by the end of this summer - say the end of August. What's yours?

©2008

UPDATE: Take a look at this blog entry, "The Price of Oil - To Infinity and Beyond."

H/T: Modesto (thanks, man - for a great link)

Labels: Dog and Pony Show