Maybe it's time to panic about gas Not that $2 a gallon is pricey, but production peak is nearly here.
By Robert Little
and Lorraine Mirabella Special to The Morning Call
May 30, 2004
Breaking the $2-a-gallon gasoline price barrier was unpleasant, and your lightened wallet may be eliciting visions of Nixon-era rationing and fill-up lines beyond the horizon, but geologists and economists think the industry and the economy will be just fine. Gas is cheap, they say, when you consider the rising costs of everything else.
But another consensus has emerged among the experts: This might be a good time to panic anyway.
The problem isn't that gasoline prices are too high but that prices over the past decade have been far too low, this reasoning goes. Americans have forgotten how to conserve and the energy industry, always hungry for profits, spent those years neglecting its refineries and distribution systems and all but ignoring the frightening reality that the planet may actually be running out of oil.
The consequence is a growing imbalance between the world's increasing thirst for fuel and the oil industry's increasing difficulty providing it — a problem that could lead to economic mayhem, price swings, gas shortages and pump lines that make the 1970s seem like a comparative utopia. This new crisis could strike in 30 years or five years or even three months, depending on whom you believe. And this time, 1970s-era answers like a 55-mph speed limit or a trans-Alaska pipeline won't be any help.
So while you're fretting over your broken budgets and the horrors of a $40 top-off, some industry analysts think you should also give thanks that America's commuter society is finally getting a decent jolt of gas-price hysteria.
''Trust me, this $2-a-gallon price will be a blessing,'' said Matthew R. Simmons, a Texas banker who specializes in the petroleum industry. ''We should be worried about energy in this country, and maybe this will get people focused.'' (SNIP)
Kidnappers cut throats of nine hostages, 25 rescued [Khobar]
Sydney Morning Herald ^ | May 30, 2004 | AFP
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Dead Briton dragged through streets after Saudi attack: reports(Saudi terrorist attack) AFP via Yahoo! News ^ | 05/29/04 |