White House Wants to Keep Gas Prices High

[UltimateHoboW/Shotgun]

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/02/29/...s-prices-high/

With the national average of gas prices hitting $3.65 a gallon, nearing $6 in some parts of the country, and poised to head even higher, America’s families are wondering when the bleeding at the pump will stop. But for Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu, those steep prices aren’t even a concern. In fact, he says his goal is not to get the price of gasoline to go down.

Chu delivered those stunning remarks in testimony before Congress yesterday. When Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.) asked Chu whether it’s his “overall goal to get our price” of gasoline lower, Chu said, “No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy.”

As shocking as his remarks are, they shouldn’t come as a surprise. Chu has a long record of advocating for higher gas prices. In 2008, he stated, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Last March, he reiterated his point in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, noting that his focus is to ease the pain felt by his energy policies by forcing automakers to make more fuel-efficient automobiles. “What I’m doing since I became Secretary of Energy has been quite clear. What I have been doing is developing methods to take the pain out of high gas prices.”

One of those methods is dumping taxpayer dollars into alternative energy projects like the Solyndra solar plant. Another is subsidizing the purchase of high-cost electric cars like the Chevy Volt to the tune of $7,500 per car (which the White House wants to increase to $10,000). In both cases, those methods aren’t working. Solyndra went bankrupt because its product couldn’t bear the weight of market pressures, and Chevy Volts aren’t selling, even with taxpayer-funded rebates. What’s the president’s next plan? Harvesting “a bunch of algae” as a replacement for oil.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is seemingly doing everything it can to make paying for energy even more painful by refusing to open access to the country’s oil and gas reserves and blocking new projects that would lead to the development of more energy in America. Case in point: the president’s decision to say “no” to the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that would have delivered hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from Canada to Texas refineries, while bringing thousands of jobs along with it.

Sensing impending political fallout from the high cost of gas, President Obama last week spoke on the subject and attempted to deflect blame for the pain. He said that there is no quick fix to high gas prices and the nation cannot drill its way out of the problem, but as Heritage’s Nicolas Loris writes, the president ignored reality and dished out a series of half-truths. Among them, the president claimed oil production is its highest in eight years, that increasing oil production takes too long, and that oil is not enough. Loris writes that while production is up on private lands, unrealized production on federal lands and offshore could have yielded even more output, increasing supply and driving down costs. If the president had said “yes” to Keystone, oil could have reach the market quickly. And as for the president’s push for alternative energy, those sources simply cannot stand the test of the market.

There are steps the president and Congress can and should take today to bring down the cost of energy. Namely, end the de facto moratorium on drilling, open offshore areas that are off-limits to drilling, place a 270-day limit on environmental reviews for energy projects on federal lands, remove regulatory delays, and approve Keystone.

As Loris writes, “The market would respond if Congress and the Obama Administration allowed it to work.” But Secretary Chu and the Obama Administration are evidently not interested in market-based reforms that bring down the cost of energy. Instead, they’re bent on keeping energy costs high in order to placate the environmental left. And now Americans are paying the price.

[Spider]

good grief , dont need a write up like this , to know whats going on .....well maybe you do hobo cause you are one stupid son of a biatch .......
Dems want high prices to force more green energy .....
Reps want it cause of profit .....
one of the unforeseen disasters of Cheneys 2000 closed door energy meetings ..........

[barryr]

The bozo liberals want green energy despite the fact it costs more and has had little impact, but hey, let's screw our economy into oblivion anyway since ideology is more important than having any sense.

[UltimateHoboW/Shotgun]

In another thread compared Oil to Gin and its going from $10 to $100 a bottle. Thinking Green is water. What he's not telling you is its not water. Its bottled spring water and its $100,000 dollars and its only offered in 5 places in the entire nation. That corner store is going to look good for about 100 years at this pace.

[snowspot66]

Originally Posted by barryr

The bozo liberals want green energy despite the fact it costs more and has had little impact, but hey, let's screw our economy into oblivion anyway since ideology is more important than having any sense.

Well maybe if we started subsidizing the **** out of it like we do with fossil fuels we'd see cheaper green energy. An entire industry doesn't spring up to such a massive scale overnight.

[pricejj]

Originally Posted by snowspot66

Well maybe if we started subsidizing the **** out of it like we do with fossil fuels we'd see cheaper green energy. An entire industry doesn't spring up to such a massive scale overnight.

We already are...Ever hear of the "Green Jobs Stimulus"?

[barryr]

Originally Posted by snowspot66

Well maybe if we started subsidizing the **** out of it like we do with fossil fuels we'd see cheaper green energy. An entire industry doesn't spring up to such a massive scale overnight.

Not in 20 years either like green energy has had.

[Drunken.Broncoholic]

No crappy Volt for me. Forcing green energy that doesn't even work.

[UltimateHoboW/Shotgun]

[Rohirrim]

What can the POTUS do to control gas prices?

[W*GS]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

What can the POTUS do to control gas prices?

Very very little. At least that's what the right-wingers said when gas went over $4/gallon when Bush was Prez...

[Spider]

Originally Posted by W*GS

Very very little. At least that's what the right-wingers said when gas went over $4/gallon when Bush was Prez...

[DenverBrit]

This crop of GOP candidates and their uneducated followers need to get beyond FOX news and read something about the issue they claim to be so certain about.

Gingrich and his idiotic claim to reduce gas prices to $2.50 would be a good place to start.....along with the clowns who think the POTUS, or any politician, can do anything about oil prices.

Does supply and demand mean anything to the GOP anymore??

"Oil is a global commodity with a global market price," says Paul Bledsoe, senior adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., who emphasizes the only way to bring down oil prices would be to bring huge new supplies on the market quickly—not a likely prospect, he says.

But what about the untapped oil supply here in the U.S.? While much has been made of increasing oil production at home to offset rising prices, the truth is, Bledsoe says, the few million barrels or so the U.S. would be able to add to global oil supply in the short term wouldn't make much of a dent on oil prices now.

"The ability of the U.S. to hugely expand production such that it would impact the price of oil any time soon is practically nil," Bledsoe says. "It's such a big market that even if we could develop more domestic production and add a few million barrels to global production it would have little effect except on the margins."

[Arkie]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

What can the POTUS do to control gas prices?

Hopefully nothing

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by UltimateHoboW/Shotgun

white-house-wants-to-keep-gas-prices-high/[/url]

Nominated for stupidest post of year.

Corporate America/world controls fossil fuel prices Einstein.

[UltimateHoboW/Shotgun]

Originally Posted by Bronco_Beerslug

Nominated for stupidest post of year.

Corporate America/world controls fossil fuel prices Einstein.

Are you high?

[W*GS]

Originally Posted by UltimateHoboW/Shotgun

Are you high?

Are you clueless?

A: Yes.

[UltimateHoboW/Shotgun]

Originally Posted by W*GS

Are you clueless?

A: Yes.

projecting

[Pseudofool]

Even if deep-down a politician wanted (and had the power) to keep prices high to lower dependency, he or she would NEVER artificially inflate gas prices during an election year. It would be political suicide. It's fine to disagree with Obama, but why insist on spreading criticisms that don't make sense?

[DenverBrit]

With all the crying about energy independence and the need to drill, drill, drill, it turns out that the US is exporting more barrels than it imports.

The last time the U.S. was a net exporter of fuels was 1949, when Harry Truman was president. That year, the U.S. exported 86 million barrels and imported 82 million barrels. In the first ten months of 2011, the nation exported 848 million barrels (worth $73.4 billion) and imported 750 million barrels.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/indust...ort/52298812/1

[TonyR]

I'm sure all the neocon blathering about bombing Iran is really helping keep oil prices in check...

As Obama noted in his address to AIPAC over the weekend:

Already, there is too much loose talk of war. Over the last few weeks, such talk has only benefited the Iranian government, by driving up the price of oil, which they depend upon to fund their nuclear program. For the sake of Israel's security, America's security, and the peace and security of the world, now is not the time for bluster; now is the time to let our increased pressure sink in, and to sustain the broad international coalition that we have built. Now is the time to heed that timeless advice from Teddy Roosevelt: speak softly, but carry a big stick.

http://campaign2012.washingtonexamin...s-aipac/408866

[El Minion]

[Rohirrim]

Good ole Bernie:

Rampant speculation has artificially pushed up gasoline prices to nearly $4 a gallon. Sen. Bernie Sanders “is fighting back,” ABC News reported. A letter signed by 70 members of Congress – 23 senators and 47 members of the House – told federal regulators to enforce provisions of the Wall Street reform law and curb speculation in crude oil markets.

They stressed that gasoline prices are up despite high supplies and low demand. According to the Energy Information Administration, the supply of oil and gasoline is greater today than it was three years ago, when the national average price for a gallon of gasoline was just $1.90. Today, the national average is more than $3.70 a gallon at a time when the demand for oil in the U.S. is at its lowest level since April of 1997.

Citing a recent report from Goldman Sachs, a major oil speculator, Forbes magazine said excessive oil speculation adds $.56 to the price of a gallon of gas. Exxon Mobil, the Saudi Arabian government, the American Trucking Association, Delta Airlines, the Petroleum Marketers Association of America and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis agree excessive oil speculation significantly increases oil and gasoline prices.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by El Minion

Wow! That shows what a bunch of "sluts" they are.

[Pseudofool]