Charles Krauthammer has written favorably of adding more taxes to the cost of gasoline:

For 32 years I’ve been advocating a major tax on petroleum. I’ve got as much chance this time around as did Don Quixote with windmills. But I shall tilt my lance once more.

NB: 32 years ago, Dr. Krauthammer was a speechwriter for Walter Mondale, bitterly ( Read more... )

This is an interesting, and somewhat technical, article on the details of the Deepwater Horizon spill and attempts to cap it. The problem, the writer suggests, goes deeper -- perhaps 1000 feet deeper. Lots of details and links.

I am no fan of BP -- the Climategate letters and other documents have shown them to be pushing hard at the Global ( Read more... )

"A good politician must be able to predict, with absolute certainty, events a week, a month or a year from now … and afterwards be able to explain why they didn't happen." (attributed to Winston Churchill)On September 4th, oil had dropped from a high of about $148 per barrel to about $108. I predicted that, prior to the election, it would drop ( Read more... )

(From a conversation with
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It's too soon to make anything big out of this -- but the mild effect of Gustav seems to be overcome by the boost of the McCain/Palin ticket:Oil prices hit their lows for the day early Tuesday. Prices tumbled nearly $10 from Friday's settlement of $115.46 a barrel, according to NYMEX, as traders bet that damage to Gulf oil infrastructure from ( Read more... )

This statement is on the website of the Democrats in the Senate.The EIA report often cited by Republicans likewise estimates that it will require seven to twelve years from approval before there is any oil production from the ANWR area. (Energy Information Administration, Potential Oil Production from the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National ( Read more... )

A side note: The "oil crisis" is not the same as a general energy crisis; the US's electricity comes mostly from coal and natural gas and is largely domestic in source. Oil is less than 2% of our electricity production ( Read more... )

The name is apparently a pun -- this website beats the drum of doom for the oil industry.

As I commented to Marmoe, who sent me to the site, it has elements of truth but is also misleading.

First, a point of agreement:Speculation ( Read more... )

There is a widely promoted notion that oil prices are being driven up by speculators. This is just wrong, but it does allow blame to be shifted from where it belongs.

(I've been involved in futures trading as a field of study for more than thirty years. The other software running on my machine at the moment is futures analysis.)

Zero Sum Game

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