Lou Dobbs Tonight not too interested in finding the truth about the minimal effect drilling in ANWR would have on oil prices, but highly incensed a Hillary Clinton supporter a governor receives a few interruptive boos at a Barack Obama event when she speaks for ten minutes about who, Hillary Clinton.
Uh Lou, the Governor deserved the boos, it's not about Hillary Clinton any more... and Obama's staunch supporters weren't booing her because she supported Hillary, but because she continues to promote Hillary and the idea Hillary was the target of "sexism." That's been debunked, but few are picking up on it because they love controversy.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0806/17/ldt.01.html
Drill, drill, drill, that's the refrain on many programs discussing the high price of oil now and what Congress should do.
Fox 'n Friends this morning speaking to a Democrat congressman who supports drilling in ANWR. Rep. Gene Green (D-TX)... millions of acres under lease... enforce it... large areas could be productive...
Crisis says Brian Kilmeade... need extraordinary measures...
Green wants to make sure speculators aren't taking more out of it... want make sure what we do is environmentally safe.
Previous guest just relayed to the trio speculators actually drive down prices, not up.
Green is asked if the former guest is telling the truth (doocey snickers while asking the question) Green responds the speculators impact the price anywhere from 40 dollars up ...drives up the cost of barrel of oil... sometimes free enterprise can run amuck... we have to sometimes put limitations controls on it...
Yep... CATO experts ought to love that Rep. Green. But think the trio at Fox 'n Friends will balance the discussion?
Why not a real debate with the two guests facing off so we can get at the truth, not the hype.
The big push is for more drilling. Watch the mainstream media push along for whatever their reasons.
One network, CNN, over the past week, interviewed a guest - a reporter from U. S. News and World Report, Marianne Lavelle. We found the article on which the reporter made her remarks.
Now imagine, this article was written in May, yet nobody bothered to interview the writer until this week. And only one network, one time.
Checking for the transcript for the correct date. So far, haven't found that.
CNN Transcripts for June 17, 2008
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/2008.06.17.html
Net the Truth Online
Speculators don't deserve all the blame for oil prices
By James Saft ReutersPublished: June 19, 2008
It's always nice to have a scapegoat, and in the end it often doesn't matter much if it's witches, sunspots or, in the case of soaring prices for food and energy, those nasty speculators.
A growing chorus, from U.S. lawmakers to OPEC producers, has laid the blame for commodity price inflation on "hot money" bets by investors.
Facing considerable political pressure, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the United States and its British counterpart reached a deal with ICE Futures Europe to impose regulations on U.S. crude futures traded in London, though it said that it had found "no smoking gun" linking price rises to speculators.
It is impossible to know for certain if leveraged speculative bets by hedge funds and banks are a significant contributor to the run-up in commodities prices, but there are reasons to be skeptical.
First, the evidence doesn't support it. But almost as importantly, it is one of those arguments that, if true, would be almost unbelievably convenient.
Francisco Blanch, head of global commodities research at Merrill Lynch in London, said he found no link between speculative activity and systematic price increases in commodities.
"So far the available data doesn't support the idea that speculators are driving prices up: quite the contrary," Blanch said. "We are in a stage of denial with regards to inflation."
There has been a massive rise in recent years in contracts held on exchange-traded commodities futures, which some argue shows speculative activity.
But, Blanch pointed out, many of the markets that have seen the largest rises in this trading, like sugar and lean hogs, haven't seen the kind of price appreciation experienced by oil and others.
Blaming investors in index investments in commodities doesn't work either, Blanch argued, nor is there a clear correlation between open interest on futures and spot prices.
Indeed, many commodities that are not part of indexes, like coal, rice and iron ore, have gone up considerably over the past several years despite the fact that being outside the index makes them essentially immune to speculative money flows.
Researchers at Barclays point out that the size of assets committed to commodity index investment, which they estimate at $140 billion, is tiny in comparison to the $5.4 trillion of futures trading that happens every month in the 25 commodities that are commonly included in indexes.
To be sure, we can't dismiss the influence of speculators out of hand. Speculation, aided and abetted by regulation that is too lax and monetary policy that is too loose, has been at the heart of many spectacular asset market rises in recent times, with the housing bust a prime example.
The better explanations are fundamental.
There has been an explosion in marginal demand from Asia and emerging countries. And in many markets, notably oil, large producing nations may not see it in their best interests to maximize production, especially given the low rates of return now on offer for the money their oil will fetch. Companies are also being slow to ramp up production, preferring what they see as a safer strategy of buying back shares and paying out dividends...
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/19/business/col20.php
Arctic Drilling Wouldn't Cool High Oil Prices
Federal energy analysts say it would take 10 years for production to begin, and its impact could be very modest
By Marianne Lavelle
Posted May 23, 2008
Drilling for oil beneath the pristine tundra of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would do little to ease world oil prices, the federal government's energy forecasters said in a new report issued in a week that saw oil surpass $130 per barrel for the first time.
Congress has fought bitterly for years over whether to allow oil companies access to the Alaska refuge's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain, a habitat for seabirds, caribou, and polar bears. Oil company executives, called to Capitol Hill for a grilling over high oil prices, pointed to the untapped resources of ANWR and off the U.S. coastlines as evidence that Congress was as much to blame for the tight global supplies of crude as the petroleum industry.
But the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an independent statistical agency within the Department of Energy, concluded that new oil from ANWR would lower the world price of oil by no more than $1.44 per barrel—and possibly have as little effect as 41 cents per barrel—and would have its largest impact nearly 20 years from now if Congress voted to open the refuge today. EIA produced the analysis in response to a request by Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who noted that the last time the agency had taken a look at the economics of ANWR production was in 2000, when oil was $22.04 a barrel.
Higher world oil prices don't necessarily mean that oil companies could pull more crude out of ANWR, the EIA said. Some advanced methods of extraction may be limited by the features of the Alaska North Slope; for example, steam injection could endanger some of the permafrost, the EIA noted.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/05/23/arctic-drilling-wouldnt-cool-high-oil-prices.html
Related
McCain Reverses Course on Oil Policy; Obama's Disunited Party; Special Mortgage Treatment For Democratic Senators?
Aired June 17, 2008 - 20:00 ET
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have proven oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production. And I believe it is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and to put our own reserves to use.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
MATTINGLY (voice-over): The federal moratorium McCain is talking about has been in effect for 26 years, since 1982. Congress imposed it in a furious reaction to President Ronald Reagan's interior secretary, James Watt, who wanted to open up U.S. coasts for oil drilling.
At the time, members of Congress and much of the public were worried about the possibility of massive oil rigs ruining ocean views, the threat of air pollution, and the risk of oil spills. A huge one off Santa Barbara in 1969 coated 35 miles of California's coastline. Renewing the drilling moratorium became a yearly battle in Washington.
To end that, in 1990, the first President Bush announced that offshore drilling would be off-limits for 10 years along nearly all of California, Washington, Oregon, New England from Rhode Island up, and off the southwest Coast of Florida.
(on camera): President Clinton extended it to 2012. But the second President Bush is pushing to at least ease that ban. And the pressure to do that grows everyday with gasoline over $4 a gallon, because, when it comes to offshore oil and the waters of the United States, there is a lot out there.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Eighty percent of the Outer Continental Shelf is off-limits. That part alone, if we would just use that part of this oil, we would have actually a 35-year supply for gasoline for our cars. We would have heating oil for the millions of homes for the next hundreds of years.
MATTINGLY: As for the old worries about pollution, McCain says:
MCCAIN: It's safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: David back with me now.
And, David, let me ask you about that, what McCain just said. Did technology or advances really prevent these oil spills after the big hurricane? MATTINGLY: According to a government report that came out after those two hurricanes, the technology did indeed help that. There was -- it what they called a successful use of underground safety valves on these oil rigs that prevented a catastrophic release of oil into the Gulf.
In fact, this report defined the loss of petroleum products into the Gulf of Mexico from these two hurricanes as minimal. But there are environmental organizations who would argue about this. Those two hurricanes in total released about 16,000 barrels of petroleum products into the Gulf. And they say that was not minimal, no matter how the government might try to slice it.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0806/17/ec.01.html
Blitzer interview the chairman and CEO of Chevron, Dave O'Reilly.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0806/17/sitroom.03.html
Putting Your Home on an Energy Diet
by Marianne Lavelle
Thursday, April 24, 2008
http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/104904/Putting-Your-Home-on-an-Energy-Diet
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