Quote Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny
Once more there is no shortage of oil. There is only a shortage of profitable oil and even thats debatable. The enviormentalist are whats behind the high cost of oil. The left should be celebrating higher oil prices not bashing Bush for it.
Why should anyone celebrate a policy based on remaining behind the curve? It is reactive government. Typical of Dubya's admin though. Blecchhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! I've seen the same in industry and by folks with the same political viewpoint: folks who can't tell the difference between being ahead or behind of the trends. When you are behind with a resource with inelastic demand curves you get spikes, and you experience tremendous lag. Even if oil can be produced to fill the growing demand (and it can) it means that less financially viable sources (higher production and exploration cost) need copious justification before they commit. That produces serious LAG my friend. LAG is a DRAG on the global economy. It means higher prices and slower economic growth. Do you want that? I don't.

"Shortage of profitable oil?" That means the price is too low to support current demand because we are using too much and the SUPPLY is not there to support it. In otherwords the price is going to keep going up because we can't meet demand at today's prices.

The article is referring to price controls, and rebutting the popular political concept of price controls as they are nonsensical. He is right about that.

The one thing that stands out when you compare this oil run up to others, is that it is demand driven, not supply driven. That is what has changed.

The environmentalists did not drive up demand. Nor did the left. Most of the supply is outside the U.S. so if you believe environmentalists have been the problem there, you must be on shrooms.