-
Website
http://www.americablog.com/ -
Original page
http://www.americablog.com/2008/10/saudis-move-up-next-opec-meeting-in.html -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
.
"I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply," Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, told reporters here today. "Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot."
That worked well.
"We have to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much," Republican John McCain said again Wednesday night during the candidates' final debate.
Democrat Barack Obama joined the refrain recently, declaring at a Wisconsin rally that a push for alternative energy "will stop us from sending $700 billion a year to tyrants and dictators for their oil."
The claim, however, wildly exaggerates the amount of money going to unfriendly nations. It also significantly inflates spending in general on petroleum imports, especially considering recent dramatic declines in oil prices.
The number appears to have originated with Texas oil mogul T. Boone Pickens, who is campaigning hard to displace some of those imports with windmills and domestic natural gas.
An examination by The Associated Press of government oil import costs in 2007 and the first seven months of this year, the latest figures available, indicates the $700 billion overstates total spending by nearly one-third — and possibly as much as one-half. Only about one-fourth of the imports come from countries that might be considered unfriendly, such as Venezuela and Iran, and from the politically volatile Persian Gulf.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5idc2IOEXP3Zv...
been one of our greatest sources of petroleum, and landscapers.
.
These myths are counterproductive.
I'd like someone to explain to me how fire alone causes a steel skyscraper to fall into its own footprint.
Ahhh, NO, we didn't save their asses from Saddam. We lied to them about Hussein having tanks massed on the border in order to get them to buy into our attack on Hussein...Meanwhile, Hussein had agreed to leave Kuwait...No, we didn't quite want that. We wanted to spank his ass. Why should Saudi Arabia trust us EVER? Ask yourself, why hasn't the foreign policy of the US been any different under ANY administration since 1945? Three letters: O i l.
JGug
Speculators have been doing their job on wall street for the last 7 years ensuring the saudi's have plenty of money to jetset around the world racing horses and tossing money around at will...while the rest of us have had to make a choice between eating and putting gas in the car to go to work.
Izzat Sajdi
www.izzat-sajdi.blogspot.com
A reasonable price for oil is around $80 a barrel for MANY reasons, without that price there's no incentive to find alternatives and at least a dozen countries require that price for the oil they produce just to remain solvent.
Currently gasoline is $0.15 a gallon in 1964 dollars. Absurd!