Bottom line though from everything I am reading and hearing as well as watching in testimonies on the House floor on Cspan is this really is not a supply and demand issue. The oil is there and tanker ships are running full steam but are not backlogged. Refineries are running at about 85% capacity when generaly they run over 95% capacity. Demand from China and Indai is certainly up, but not up so rapidly as to explain why oil was arounf $66 a barrel last year and now it closes for $135 a barrel. The real issue is the same thing that allowed the Enron fiasco and the houseing market crisis. Oil futures on the speculative markets are being manipulated by the very companies selling the oil. It is speculation that is making up about $2.00 per gallon right now. Oil industry analyss and economist are saying that in normal supply and demand free market, the price of gasoling should be right around $2.50 a gallon. The other $2.00 is pure rape of the consumer.
While domestic production sounds like the answer it really is not. A dept of Energy report shows that 89% of all known oil reserves are in areas already permited for drilling and that only 19% of he rest is in sensitive areas and the total quantities are simply a drop in the bucket. America uses 25% of the world`s oil and acording to this DOE report, if we tapped all known oil sources and drilled to full capacity we could come up with about 3% of our total needs.
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