Comments on: Oh the pain http://www.dinocrat.com/archives/2008/06/09/oh-the-pain/ Sat, 22 Nov 2008 03:01:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: gs http://www.dinocrat.com/archives/2008/06/09/oh-the-pain/#comment-312247 gs Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:29:48 +0000 http://www.dinocrat.com/?p=6500#comment-312247 <i>How nuts is it to give such pricing power in the futures market to a cartel in an industry in which insider trading is perfectly legal and common?</i> As nuts as suing OPEC? <i>(As nuts as not even bothering to drill for our own oil?)</i> It's worse than not bothering. The government is outright <b>refusing</b> to drill when industry is eager to proceed: e.g. offshore, ANWR, Colorado shale. The government is also <a href="http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200806061637DOWJONESDJONLINE000841_FORTUNE5.htm" rel="nofollow">blocking</a> expansion of an Illinois refinery. (But if supplies of crude are adequate and refining is the primary bottleneck, you'd expect the price of crude to remain restrained while the price of petroleum products soared. On the contrary, percentage increases in gas prices are less than increases in crude prices.) How nuts is it to give such pricing power in the futures market to a cartel in an industry in which insider trading is perfectly legal and common?

As nuts as suing OPEC?

(As nuts as not even bothering to drill for our own oil?)

It’s worse than not bothering. The government is outright refusing to drill when industry is eager to proceed: e.g. offshore, ANWR, Colorado shale.

The government is also blocking expansion of an Illinois refinery.

(But if supplies of crude are adequate and refining is the primary bottleneck, you’d expect the price of crude to remain restrained while the price of petroleum products soared. On the contrary, percentage increases in gas prices are less than increases in crude prices.)

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