Tag: Oil Companies

What About Those Gas Prices?

The GOP is reeling from the mass of bad PR they have gotten from the candidates unrealistic stances on contraception….so how do you change the subject?  GAS PRICES!

Gas prices are going up and up and of course it is election time and the opposition will make it all the president’s fault…..Mitt has promised two dollar a gallon gas when he is elected president….now sports fans….HE IS LYING!

For one, the president has little control over then price of gas……think Exxon at this point……will they give up profit to make Mitt happy?  And then there is the promise of more drilling domestically….good plan and it will take at least 5 years for that to take effect and there is NO guarantee that it will lessen the price of gas at US pumps……now at this point think Chevron……will they give up profits because the oil came from the US soil?

Let us not forget about speculation which has more to do with the price of oil than who is president….or who promises something they could NEVER deliver short of nationalization….now there is something to think about….

Could the price of gas come down?  Sure when the price of oil does.

But with all that in your head think about something else…..from USAToday:

Looking at your heating bills or gas prices, you may find it surprising that the United States is enjoying a mini oil boom. It’s producing more crude oil and, for the first time in decades, has become a net exporter of petroleum products such as jet fuel, heating oil and gasoline.

The U.S. exported more oil-based fuels than it imported in the first nine months of this year, making it likely that 2011 will be the first time since 1949 that the nation is a net exporter of such goods, primarily diesel.

That’s not all. The U.S. has reversed another decades-long trend. It began producing more crude oil in 2008 than the year before and accelerated that upswing 3% in the first nine months of this year compared with the same period in 2010. That production has helped reduce U.S. imports of crude oil by about 10% since 2006.

Read it!  The US has exported more oil than it imported!  Could that exported oil be used here in the good old US of A to keep the price of gas down?  At this point think Texaco…….profits are the common denominator……profits will lead the way and as long as that is the motivation there will be NO way to bring the price of gas down…..

Pain At The Pump

A lot of lip flapping going on and We all suffer from pain at the pump….we bitch and we moan and we drive down the driveway to pick up the morning paper……we are a country of addicts…..gas addicts!

one of my pages describes this…..lobotero.wordpress.com/will-the-addic… …..I wrote this about 4 years ago and it is all repeating itself as it has time after time…..

And then when things are offered up the attack machine goes into full swing….like to end all subsidies to oil companies…..

Obama has proposed eliminating subsidies to oil and gas companies, which the administration pegs at $4 billion. Republicans have argued that they are necessary to keep the energy industry competitive and encourage domestic oil exploration.

A Boehner spokesman quickly shot down the possibility that the speaker was moving closer to the president’s proposal.

“The speaker wants to increase the supply of American energy and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and he is only interested in reforms that actually lower energy costs and create American jobs,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said. “Unfortunately, what the president has suggested so far would simply raise taxes and increase the price at the pump.”

Oil prices are controlled by speculation and there is an answer to that problem also…..

The Wall Street reform law enacted last year required the commission to impose so-called position limits, which would restrict the amount of oil that speculators could trade in the energy futures market. The law called for the tough new regulations to take effect by Jan. 22. The commission balked. Now, three months later, the price of gasoline has gone up 80-cents a gallon because of the commission’s hands-off approach to the markets it is supposed to regulate.

Only two of the five sitting commissioners support strong limits that the new Wall Street law envisioned. It takes three commissioners to adopt a new rule. The president, Sanders said, should insist that the law be enforced and demand the immediate resignation of commissioners who refuse to do their job.

You may not appreciate the financial reform bill that was signed into law last year, but there is a way to control the price of gas and to blame Obama ‘s war on subsidies as the reason for raising gas prices is just plain WRONG!

Even Goldman-Sachs has reported that the rise in gas prices is caused by speculators…..and to allow it to continue will bring any economic recovery to a grinding halt…..so to oppose any effort to get these speculators to cool down is NOT in the best interests of the country….

But a economist with  Platts and energy information group has said and he should know….

The tax breaks on oil are part of the endless discussion about how to tax an economic activity. Do you tax it at 0%? Do you tax it 100%? Or do you tax it in between? You want to tax it at the rate that provides the most money for the government while not inhibiting economic activity.

But that is not a subsidy. My demand for oil isn’t going to change one iota because of the changes that are under consideration, and therefore it won’t change the price of gasoline.

Oil companies will argue that the changes in the tax rate could change supply.  Now you could build some theoretical model that says, if the tax rate is changed, it MIGHT inhibit production, and therefore down the road, supplies would be less than they would be otherwise. Therefore, the price could be higher and my demand might be less. This is not as crazy as it sounds. If the rate on these forms of exploration went to 100%, obviously, no company would produce that oil, the overall market would tighten, and the price could go up. But that’s not in question; the administration is not proposing a 100% tax rate.

There you are…..we have an answer….now just DO IT!  You want to cut spending….then start here and prove that you Repubs are not anti middle class….just a thought!

And The Prez Speaks……Again!

From the VOMITORIUM

I guess I will make today “Energy” day…….

Today Obama made his speech on energy….and hot damn we have a ….YAWN!  Will some please tell these people to stop all the damn lip service to our dependence on foreign oil?  He basically said the same crap that started with Nixon….and thanx to Politfact for the info……

Richard Nixon kicked off his 1974 State of the Union speech by commenting on how it was the first of its kind to feature energy as the No. 1 priority. He went on to say that even if the embargo is lifted, “conservation will continue to be necessary.” And private enterprise will “develop the new resources, the new technology, the new capacity America will require for its energy needs in the 1980s.”

Gerald Ford picked up the thread, calling in 1975 for more synthetic fuels, home insulation, efficient cars and the like. And in 1976 he advocated “technology to capture energy from the sun and the Earth.”

Jimmy Carter was an avid conservationist, and talked at length about the subject during his State of the Union speeches, such as in 1981 when he endorsed technology such as “photovoltaics, which generate energy directly from the sun.”

Reagan made very little reference to dependence (go figure)…..Bush I the same….Clinton was not that forthcoming with views on the dependency thing….and now Obama…..

Please stop it!  For nearly 50 years presidents have been pointing out that we are dependent on foreign oil and for 50 years NO one gives a sh*t….so why NOT just give it up…..as long as big oil has a control of Congress we will always be dependent….and if you think all that will change with domestic drilling…all I can say is…….HA HA HA HA HA!

Stop Whining!

OMG!  Gas has gone up to $3.54 a gallon the world as we know it is ending!

All the crises in the Middle East is driving speculation on the oil and supply of oil and as they speculate we are paying more and more for the black life’s blood of the US…how can we continue with such a drag on the economy?

First of all….shut up!  Stop the damn whining!

Second, just how short is your memories?  All this played out3 years ago when oil price hit in the neighborhood of $150 a barrel…..and all of you were just as wimpy as now….but NO one called for the use of the Strategic Reserves at that time…..but now your panic is calling for such a lame idea….Lame?  Yes, lame!  Three years ago after the speculators had a good week or so, the market stabilzed and all went back to pretty much normal….

Listen, if a camel farts in the Middle East it will effect the price of oil…this is something that pampered little shits will just have to accept…..and if you people would forgo the status symbols such as the vehicles that get 2 gallons to the mile, then you would Not be as freaky as you are now……use your mind and shut bellowing like a wounded buffalo every time the price of gas goes up….If you must have these beasts call luxury then by God just buck up and take responsibility for your action…..for your egocentric behavior…..

A simple economics lesson for you slow witted……oil prices go up and they go down….it is called a cycle…..and NO amount of whining or bitching is gonna change that…..so to consider the use of SPR just so you do not have to pay a few bucks more is just way to petty and it will NOT stop this from happening……

Get over yourselves!  Stop whining!

A Ranting I Will Go #2

From time to time I either see, read or hear something that makes me hit myself in the head and ask just how stupid are they?  Usually the TV is the prime source of aggravation, but this time it is a bumper sticker……while driving to the store I got behind a Hummer, you know the vehicle that gets 4 gallons to the mile?…..anyway the sticker said…….”Drill Here….Drill Now….Pay Less”…..

Okay the section out there with the mental midgets…….if oil is drilled for here, how many really think that you will pay less?  (Pause here to give the multitude a chance to contemplate the question)……..

Do you seriously believe that if gas is $4 a gallon and it is drilled for here the price will come down?  Exxon, Shell, Texaco, etc….will screw themselves out of all that profit?  But I guess if I was driving a Hummer I would be delusional also……

Just yet another illustration of the sheer stupidity of the American people….they buy into some lame ass slogan and embrace it as fact……you tell if that is a way to go through life?  The statement is stupid, ignorant, moronic and completely fictional….but then that is how Americans vote…..(yawn)…..

Wait there is More!

On MLK Day a bomb was found along the parade route and disarmed before it could do any damage…the officials said that they did not know who placed it or what is was suppose to do (paraphrase)…..think about that!  They did not know what it was suppose to do…..how about f*ck up the parade and injure many people….that is called DOMESTIC TERRORISM!

Now, why has there been very little about this on the news?  Short of an initial report………apparently if it had been a Muslim who did it it would be a two week diatribe on all the stations…..why is domestic terrorism not that important for the media?  But yet they will show ambulance driving slowly from a hospital to an airport…….I kept waiting for a white Bronco to go by…….(thanx to Phillip for the anology)

Now tell me that the media does NOT drive national conversations!

“Live With It…Life’s Hard!”

Recently I wrote a piece on the new “claim czar” and how he was NO friend to the people that he was suppose to be helping and few thought I was a bit hard on him and his new rule as the “claims czar……but as usual I was RIGHT!

From the horse’s mouth comes the news for Gulf residents…..

Gulf fishermen have reacted in anger to a decision made Friday by Obama’s appointee to oversee the “independent” claims escrow account funded by BP. Millionaire lawyer Kenneth Feinberg announced that he would subtract from any damage award the fishermen ultimately receive from BP money they have been paid for participating in the Vessels of Opportunity (VoO) cleanup program.

Through VoO, BP contracts local vessels in order to assist in highly dangerous oil containment and cleanup activities. Vessel owners reportedly earn about $5,000 per month through their participation in the program. Fishermen say that BP is rejecting their boats over arbitrary requirements and that even among those declared eligible to participate, only a fraction have been put to use.

Feinberg announced the ruling at a meeting with fishermen in Biloxi, Mississippi on Friday. Fishermen protested from the floor and some stormed out of the meeting in anger, declaring that it is now “pointless to work under the Vessels of Opportunity program, set up by BP to help clean up the damage” from the disaster, Reuters reported.

Did you really think that BP would pay the whole cost of the clean-up?  No!  Really?

The timing of Feinberg’s decision is revealing. It came the day after BP claimed initial success in capping its runaway Macondo well and in the midst of an Obama administration campaign to drive the disaster “off the front page,” as one Republican critic complained on Sunday.

Should the well be capped, the fishermen and others affected by the disaster can only expect Feinberg to draw a harder line as the blowout fades from media attention.

Bend over Gulf Coast….the screwing has just begun!

Oil Spill Theater

Daily Agitator

Just like ALL issues or situations…the political theater is in full swing……the Gulf oil spill is a train wreck that I cannot stop staring at…..and the politics of the spill are so f*cking absurd that I cannot stop keeping up with ……

We have the CEO of BP who cannot take his foot out of his mouth….we have news organizations that are trying to link the spill to Obama and his band of radical environmentalists and we have state politics speaking and accusing and….all in all playing politics….with a disaster of this magnitude, that should be treason or some equally serious crime…

Mississippi’s Haley Barbour has gone on record as saying that the drilling moratorium is more disastrous than the spill…,.and then there is Louisiana’s  gov. Jindal…who has spent more time in front of the cameras than Paris Hilton….he has accused the government of slow action…he has accused BP of withholding info and cash…he has…..oh Hell he has accused everybody but Christ for the oil problems.

He has especially bitched about not having the proper tools at his disposal to fight the oil spill…..B-U-T!

a CBS News Investigates report that Gulf coast governors haven’t been fully utilizing the 17,500 National Guard troops authorized by the federal government to help them with the oil spill,  Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office offered a tart response.In a statement sent to ProPublica, Jindal spokesman Kyle Plotkin said that Louisiana would “call up more National Guard troops as the Adjutant General tells us he needs them.”

He followed up with a harsh criticism of the federal government’s response efforts.

“We spend more time fighting red tape and bureaucracy than we ever should have to if the federal government understood this oil spill as the war that it is.”

Jindal’s statement doesn’t address the specific question of why Louisiana is using only 1,053 of the 6,000 National Guard troops available to the state. The governor said that he would “deploy every resource” available to win the war against the BP oil spill, and complained that Coast Guard and BP authorization were required for individual tasks, which apparently slowed down the deployment of National Guard troops. However, the governor’s office told CBS News that he has not specifically asked for more National Guard troops.

He is playing a political game…..he is following the GOP line that the government is to blame….every time I see him on the tube he is throwing out political barbs at the president….he seldom answers direct questions of what HE is doing….he is playing the people for political advantage……personally I think the pigs like this are the assh*les we can live without.

2010 Anal-Ocity #25

And they just cannot shut up!  Repubs are showing their true colors when it comes to the Gulf oil spill…..Barton apologizes to BP for them having to contribute to a fund to pay costs of the spill and now Mississppi’s governopr Haley Barbour is echoing the same type of sentiment about the oil spill…

Mississippi’s Republican governor, Haley Barbour, said on Sunday that the temporary moratorium on offshore drilling imposed by the Obama administration is worse than the catastrophic oil spill caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig.”Governor, what’s worse, the moratorium or the effects of this spill on the region?” asked “Meet the Press” host David Gregory on Sunday. Barbour responded, “Well, the moratorium… the spill’s a terrible thing, but the moratorium is a terrible thing that’s not only bad for the region, it’s bad for America.”

Amazing huh?  A moratorium is more devastating than the spill…….and the people of Mississippi voted this idiot into office….TWICE!  This shows his lack of concern for the people of the state and how they make a living…there is also the fact that he, like Barton, are only reciting what most Repubs are thinking and believing….and this is a guy who could make a run for the presidency…..if he wins…God save the country!

Politics Of An Oil Spill

From the VOMITORIUM

By now hopefully you have heard about the world’s largest oil spill and all the drama that has gone with it trying to put a ‘cork in the hole’….all the political back and forth….all the political theater….all the accusations….and all the lunacies…..but with all that said there is another part of the story that few seem willing to cover, other than a 30 second sound bite and the rumblings from the radio loudmouths that have NO idea what is happening other than their convoluted sense of reality……and what would that be, Professor?…….the politics of an oil spill…..

There has been a wealth of hearing on the Hill about the spill and the response and who is to blame…..Newser.com has reported on yesterday’s House hearing with the CEO of BP….

While other congressmen were heaping abuse on BP CEO Tony Hayward in this morning’s hearings, one Republican abruptly shifted gears in his opening remarks and apologized to the man in the hot seat. Rep. Joe Barton told Hayward he was “ashamed” of the pressure the White House put on BP to create the $20 billion escrow fund to cover losses to victims of the spill. “I think it’s a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would call a shakedown,” the Texan said. “In this case a $20 billion shakedown.” Barton said the administration has no authority to ask for this “$20 billion slush fund” and that litigation provides adequate due process for awarding damages. “I apologize,” he said to Hayward. “I do not want to live in a country where every time a corporation does something wrong, it’s subject to a political process that amounts to a shakedown.” Later, Dem Rep. Ed Markey begged to differ, noting that litigation by victims of the Exxon Valdez spill took years to be settled, and criminal charges in the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India more than a quarter century.

Smoking’ Joe Barton of Texas?  Would like very much to see which of the oil companies pays his salary in Washington….of course, the GOP jumped his butt and forced him to apologize to the American people….which he did but he was NOT sincere….

Oh, there is always more when dealing with something as hot and volatile as the oil spill….there is a fight going on in the Senate about the liability of an oil company when they cause an environmental and economic disaster……

From Meredith Shiner of Politico:

Democrats attempted Thursday to create unlimited liability for oil companies, and for the fourth time since the Gulf crisis began, Republicans objected.

But Republicans worry that by setting unlimited liability for companies wishing to drill for oil, smaller domestic companies effectively would be shut out of the market. Inhofe, echoing the sentiments of colleague Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who has rejected Menendez’s requests in the past, said that by passing this bill, Congress would be favoring the Big Oil entities Democrats have been maligning.

The Repubs want to save the “mom and pop” oil ops……..okay reality check!  How many “Mom and Pop” oil ops are there in the gulf?  Sorry but it takes lots of money to drill in the Gulf and if you are drilling there you are NOT a “Mom and Pop” operation.  It sounds good that they are trying to protect us “small” people from the government, but this one is just f*cking silly.
And then we have my fav…the governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour…who recently said:

Mississippi’s Governor Haley Barbour  said Wednesday he has concerns over the $20 billion BP is required to put into an escrow to compensate victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Mr. Barbour says he has concerns because BP may need the assets in order to fund drilling and oil operations.

“If they take a huge amount of money and put it in an escrow account so they can’t use it to drill oil wells and produce revenue, are they going to be able to pay us?” the governor told The Associated Press.

“We need them to generate revenue to be able to pay us,” said Mr. Barbour, a Republican. “I worry that this escrow account reduces the chance of that rather than increasing the chances of that.”

The part about this is that there is politics being played with the lives of the people of the Gulf Coast…..I am sorry but this is not acceptable….but at least we as voters can see who is on the payroll of the massive oil companies…..so far I would bet the Vitter and Barton are for sure and possibly Barbour, who is a lobbyist by trade……Remember that at election time!

The World Is Watching!

From the SCRIPTORIUM

The world is watching a well head located a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico…….and what do they see?  The massive oil flow has been replaced with a massive mud flow coming from the broken pipe…and some say that this “top kill” technique may be working at helping seal the ruptured oil pipe….

If true it is all so much good news for us here on the Gulf Coast…believe me we need some good news with the latest Hurricane prediction was not so good for the upcoming season.

The live feed from the Gulf floor is compelling…it is like a train wreck that you cannot stop looking at …..but the feed appears to show no oil escaping, just drilling mud blow back….but that begs an answer to a couple of questions (yes, there is always questions)

1–is the sight of the mud blow back just covering up the oil as it continues to escape?

2–Is the mud sealing the leak or is it just being forced back out?

3–Is the pumping of mud just a smoke screen which is doing nothing to give the relief well a chance to punch through and solve the problem?

Update:  Not important now….the Top Kill failed and now on to the next big idea…..cut off pipe install new valve…..I am beginning to think that the “best” minds are anything but that…..if that fails…it looks like the 2 relief wells will be the answer the whole time…..was all this just a cover and the 2 wells were the answer the whole time?