Posted on 03/15/2012 6:01:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Damn right he can. He engineered a contract with America that enabled the pubs to gain control of the house. While speaker, he brought Clinton to the table and got welfare reform and a balanced budget. Remember Hillary whining about welfare reform? Bottom line, Newt can do it!
Of course they could do just that. But cutting supply would make the price we receive higher as well. And, with increased domestic supply, there is nothing to prevent offering domestic customers a lower rate because of lesser costs involved in serving them. E.G., last time I bought gas in Venezuela it was $0.15/gallon!!
Real World: (Now that I have solved the problem and finished my beer) All of these "solutions" come with a long start-up period. The important thing is to start. Just the signal of our intention and resolve will have a great effect on the market.
GW was a huge disappointment to me on energy (or oil) policy. In a way, we are paying for his lack of vision in absolutely failing to lock us into a policy and program of much more nuclear coupled with massive increases in domestic production.
What our sitting POTUS and his commie cohort ... being technically challenged... fail to grasp is that the world will run on petroleum for at least another 200 years and that seeking alternative power in the short term from the Sun, Moon, Wind, and Algae are scientific stupid pet tricks.
Remember Will Rogers? He said the answer to the NAZI submarine Menace was to "Boil the Oceans." As to how that was to be done was a "problem for smaller minds to solve." That's our Left today!
O.K.
What about the other ideas?
Well the main reason gas prices (and just about everything else) are higher is because the dollar has been shredded by the fed printing money as fast as the presses can roll.
So unless Newt can magically do away with that Trillion plus dollars dumped into circulation these last few years I don't see how he will fulfill such a promise.
Further if he could manage to get the Federal Reserve to reduce the money supply and it happens too quickly it can cause waaaay more problems then we have now. For one thing it would tighten bank lending to the point that very little business speculation (as in start up capital) and such would cause even more hiring problems.
Its one of those problems that you can get into very quickly but takes time to get out of least you make it way worse.
Drilling more will help somewhat but it will be a temp fix at best because economies like water seek their own level. To really fix higher prices you need to make the dollar stronger and to do such you must reduce the amount in circulation... but slow and steady and make sure you telegraph your moves so the markets can adapt as we go.
You forgot about one of the big price increasers: The EPA mandate for “designer gasolines”, which make refining more expensive and require truck/tank car shipment rather than pipelines.
“Who is to say it will not be exported?”
It wouldn’t really matter if it is exported. The world needs a certain amount of oil. They don’t care if it comes from the Middle East, Russia or your grandmother’s flower bed. The price of oil, per barrel, is based upon two things: 1) the current supply of oil in the world market that is being pumped out of the ground and 2) the expected amounts on the world market to be pumped out of the ground in the future (the speculators).
If the United States starts pumping to increase worlwide supply then both conditions affecting the price of oil will cause the price per barrel to decrease. The world markets will have more oil and they will also have the expectation of increasing future amounts being pumped out of the ground.
OPEC couldn’t realistically reduce their supply for the long term because the slack could be picked up, partially, by the United States. In all likelihood, OPEC countres would also increase supply to keep current profit levels up — less profit per barrel means they need to produce more barrels to keep the same profits. This cycle could then continue until prices are as low as they can possibly go and remain profitable for the oil companies.
The United States could easily change the game with its existing reserves and with new technologies for retrieving oil. In a free market, supply and demand on the global oil market works as effectively as supply and demand for a local turnip farmer.
Drill everywhere? - Yes open all areas.
Stop speculators - Speculation can only drive price high when the supply is tight relative to demand. Oil is traded around the world and those markets are beyond our control. We would be far better off increasing supply for a more stable market. This also gives OPEC less ability to inuence price.
I think Reason & Ron Bailey is a mixed bag of sorts. I agree that the ME sable rattling is idiocy but I do think that this country has the ability to lower O/G prices via open markets vs. Opec/Russia.
The British had that area - it was one of several mandates they owned...there’s song from the British military that even talk about what a dump Aden was when serving as a post...
The Brit’s developed and turned it over to the Saud Tribe - the largest camel thieving tribe in the area for security - they wanted them to run it and bring them up to our standards of living - which was a failure on the political side. The US might have introduced the concept of using the gases from production to burn and convert water to steam in turbines to generate electricity - up to that point - the ME oil production - those gases where going straight up into the air...they had no concept of what they were handed - only that it gave them instant funds to start promoting their Wabbi sect mindset...
again - either way - we created this monster! I learned all this from a Brit sitting outside of Doha one blistering summer day on a break waiting to get some chow back in 2003...amazing what the daily grunt knows...
— Ronald Bailey is Reason’s reckless irresponsible political demagogue pretending to be a “Science correspondent”
Federal and state taxes on gasoline add $1.00 to the price alone. If this clown bothered to learn the facts of the issue rather then mindlessly regurgitate his Obama worship dogmas, he would know $2.50 a gallon gas is VERY feasible. It’s our Government Class’s mindless pandering to the “Environmental lobby” that keeps our prices high.
I do like the way Ayn Rand explains it:"Rights are not involved in those primative societies.They make a deal with us. They want to bring us in to develop their oil and then they try to exploit and literally murder us by means of that oil. That is an unforgivable crime."
Close. They forgot Speculation about Supply and Demand.
Newt's plans not only address supply (our own oil), but also soothe concerns about our future supply, so prices fall, all the while diminishing OPEC's influence as well as Russia's over us and over world oil prices.
Newt's ideas are the snowflakes that will cause an avalanche of lowering energy prices, thus increasing our economy, employment and eventually the revenues required to fix the economic damage obama and the socialists have done.
Our kids and grandkids and their kid and grandkids shouldn't have to pay for the damage done on our watch. We have sold them out so we could have free stuff now. Their inheritance is the bill for our self importance, assuming the country still exists.
interesting...
The EPA has become a monster.
I refuse to believe gas can’t sell below $2.00 per gallon or even $1.50.
Keeping it here?? Cheaper than shipping.
The other thing to realize is that The House of Saud is not some ancient dynasty. They bluffed and battered their way to power over most of the peninsula after WWI. E.G. Mecca and Medina were bartered to them in exchange for making the ruling families of those two cities the kings of the newly created Jordan and Iraq! The House of Saud ruled Riyadh and you can still visit the remains of old Riyadh, a now abandoned city of mud brick.
St. John Philby essentially sold the Saudis on the US and vice versa. During WWII and the Fifties, we and Saudi Arabia became joined at the hip.
In 1933 geologists advised the (British controlled) Iraq Petroleum companythat the prospects for oil in the Saudi Arabian Hasa oilfield were poor, so the company allowed itself to be outbid for oil concessions by the Americans who paid $50,000 in a deal that yielded enormous profits. James A. Moffett, a senior oilman associated with what later became known as Aramco, the Arabian American Oil Comany, announced triumphantly "through luck on an investment of $50,000 you discover oil and on this basis you acquire a concession in Arabia for $500,000 and find yourself after an expenditure of $27 million owning a property worth billions.
The discovery of the large oilfield near Dharan in Eastern Saudi Arabia was a turning point in U.. Middle East policy. From then on the United States was in the region to stay. American used the desperate straits into which World War II plunged Britan and France who urgently needed U.S. aid, to abroage the Red Line Agreement of 1928 and thus ensure herself substantial control of Mideast oil.1<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Munich in the Middle East
pp 34-35
And of course, having the greedy British traitor Philby (a genetic thing?) on their team didn't hurt! Amazing the myths that he invented for the Saudis. Today, these worthy oriental gentlemen actually believe his PR... the gist of which was that the Wahabbi Muslims were akin to the great Protestant Reformers like Calvin ... Puritans striving to reform Islam; The House of Saud the equivalent of the Plantagenets!
The Saudi rulers ... whatever their very real faults ... are probably a lot better for us ...and for Israel ... than what waits in the wings to overthrow them. They use their enormous wealth to keep friend and foe alike under control.
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