Learning From the Oil Shock

Land use strategist and green development consultant Chris Leinberger blogs about a growing shift from the suburbs to the cities: http://blog.islandpress.org/author/christopher

Or, read his book, The Option of Urbanism: http://islandpress.org/bookstore/details.php?isbn=9781597261364

Setting a new oil floor price, it is not so easy, as long the producer and direct consumer could be able gathering, discuss a common sheet as a plattform for the price settlement . These working paper, present the callculation : cost production, new instvestment, R & D, others related item. For stabilizing oil price in the future some effort should be done ; reduce fossil fuel consumption either by conservation and find alternative energy as balancer.

Great story. There is an energy Bill in the Senate right now that we could all be supporting but it seems to be invisible to the press. Why do we not read about S.2958? It the most comprehensive energy Bill to come our way in years and no one talks about it?

Great story. There are lots of players in the oil price game but the only one that is not going to go away is limited production versus expanding demand. The US can cut back until we are all sitting at home unemployed and China and India will still keep growing. We need a to develop our own energy, energy we do not have to compete with 5 billion Chindians over. There is a Bill in the Senate right now that is just what we need. Go support it. Another lower gas prices petition is not what we need. We need an actual energy Bill to support and S.2958 is it. Why is the media not paying attention to this Bill?

Readers, be informed, and beware! Sam Bodman, US Energy Secretary, is a Bush appointed Yes-man. Bodman states that insufficient production is making oil prices soar. Bush wants you to think that the OPEC countries are responsible for high oil prices, but the truth is, OPEC has been significantly increasing production over the past several months. Where is all that oil going? It's being stockpiled by US investment banks, who are creating a fake shortage to drive up the price. Congress has already started to investigate this criminal practice. Bush, who has deregulated the banking industry, tries to blame it on OPEC. By now you should be familiar with Bush's MO: he says you should be very afraid of Muslims.

Who you should really be afraid of are investment bankers at Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers. Check this out:

Michael Masters of Master Capital Management (a global investment manager) testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Government Affairs a couple of weeks ago. Quotes from his testimony:

"Today, Index Speculators are pouring billions of dollars into the commodities futures markets, speculating that commodity prices will increase. In the popular press the explanation given for rising oil prices is the increased demand from China. According to the DOE, China's demand for petroleum has increased in the last five years from 1.88 billion barrels to 2.8 billion barrels, an increase of 920 billion barrels. Over the same five year period, Index Speculators' demand for petroleum futures has increased by 848 million barrels. THE INCREASE IN DEMAND FROM INDEX SPECULATORS IS ALMOST EQUAL TO THE INCREASE IN DEMAND FROM CHINA. Index Speculators have now stockpiled, via the futures market, the equivalent of 1.1 billion barrels of petroleum, effectively adding EIGHT TIMES as much oil to their own stockpile as the US Government has added to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the last five years."

"The Senate has asked the question "Are Institutional Investors contributing to food and energy price inflation?" And my unequivocal answer is "YES." In this testimony I will explain that investment banks are one of, if not the primary, factors affecting commodities prices today. Clearly, there are many factors that contribute to price determination in the commodities markets; I am here to expose a fast-growing yet virtually unnoticed factor, and one that presents a problem that can be expediently corrected through legislative policy action..."

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission is ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL. They're supposed to be protecting us from these kinds of abuses, but Bush allowed loopholes in the CFTC regulations that you can drive a truck through. An oil truck, that is.

Links to Masters' Senate testimony, and 2 articles:
http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/052008Masters.pdf
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20011.htm
http://globalresearch.ca/

If our farmers and truckers do NOT get cheaper fuel soon, there WILL be an immediate food shortage.

Talk all you want about research into alternative fuels. Talk all you want about a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Talk all you want about how OPEC should be illegal. Talk all you want about how bio-fuels with corn SHOULD NOT be used. TALK TALK TALK - just like Congress. All talk and no action.

In the 80's, funding for research into alternative fuels was stopped - by a Democratic Congress.

As long as everyone just TALKS and no one TAKES ACTION, we WILL have a FOOD SHORTAGE, OIL CRISIS, HOUSING CRISIS, and A HEALTH CRISIS.

OBAMA and his CFR backers will only speed up our country's demise. We will become the North American Union within 4 years.

McCain will slow down the CFR's process. But, it will buy us time to clean out our government.

We don't need terrorists to destroy our country. Our LIBERALS and NEO-CONS have been doing just fine FOR DECADES.

WE MUST START WITH THIS YEAR'S ELECTION.
VOTE OUT ALL LIBERALS AND NEO-CONS.
TAKE BACK AND KEEP AMERICA THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Drill Drill Drill!!! More American Oil Means More American Jobs!!! More American oil means less dollars going overseas, More American oil means cheaper prices for you and me.

I am all for alternative fuels when they become efficient but 400 pounds of corn for 1 gallon of fuel isn't efficient.

Battery powered cars and Nuclear power plants are most likely the future but who knows someone might come up with a hydrogen mobile that actually works.

Big oil is so big because government regulation has made it an industry that is impossible to get into so the existing players swallowed each other up if you want cheap gas get rid of the regulaiton.

WHATS CAUSING THE OIL SHOCK?...........COULD IT BE ............SHOCK - AND - AWE.

380 parts per million.
Does that number mean anything to Robert J. Samuelson?
It should - at least if Samuelson is an intelligent or responsible commentator.
That???s the ratio of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as of last October. This ratio is expanding by 2 parts per year, so now the ratio is about 382 parts per million. If the ratio hits 450, the human race will face mass extinction. I got these quotes from the October 2007 issue of National Geographic which did not cover the ratio of methane in the atmosphere, an even more deadly gas than carbon dioxide.
As I am writing, the West is burning up with out-of-control fires, the South and Midwest have been struck with a record number of tornadoes; Iowa and other parts of the Midwest have been hit with floods, causing record high corn prices - These are only warning signs of the effects of global warming. It will get worse - much worse, each year we pump more carbon into the atmosphere.
In face of these realities, Samuelson???s campaign to liberate oil companies from the constraints of off-shore drilling borders on criminal insanity. Giving oil companies the right to drill and kill without any regard to the environment will not lower gas prices. It simply lures us away from facing the inevitable - a world without oil
There are alternatives. Corn ethanol is not one of them. According to National Geographic we could produce fuel from algae. Yet I do not see any discussion of algae technology or any attempt to cover corporations like GreenFuel Technology or entrepreneurs like Isaac Berzin. Ironically, Samuelson didn???t even read the last issue of Newsweek magazine features an interview with Genome pioneer Craig Venter who proposes a specially engineered bacteria that will convert carbon dioxide into fuel. Samuelson???s myopic article emphasizes the need for a radical change in this country - both in leadership - in the political and corporate spheres and as well as a change of our view of economics.

In addition to folks driving fewer miles and buying more fuel efficient cars, speeds seem (at least to me) to be down quite a bit, especially for trucks.

It would be nice to see a drop in fatalities and serious injuries as a result.

Oil producers are gaining power and influence? No! Just the opposite is true. The high price forces us to become less oil-dependent. Once it has happened, the importance of oil and its producers will start diminishing. They will lose poweron the long-run!

Brian - You are truly schitzophrenic! You start the article talking about the liklihood that 6.5 billion people on the planet might have exceeded our environment and Peak Oil can change the landscape of our planet to end on a low note of assruing the general public that we can convert waste to fuel if we guarantee a price. Meanwhile you have 6.45 million humans and growing exponentially.

Wake Up!