Oil, Peak Oil, Deep Oil and BALONEY!

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While Barack Obama campaigns as an anomaly not corrupted by Washington politics or special interests, he has repeatedly contradicted this illusion by accepting big bucks from convicted entrepreneurs as well as oil company executives, steering millions of federal earmark dollars to his wife’s employer and a top donor and hiring powerful corporate insiders to run his campaign.

Now the “squeaky clean” newcomer to big time politics is heavily promoting ethanol, made almost entirely from corn, as a source of energy because many of his top advisors and prominent supporters have close ties to that industry. In a story published this week, a major national newspaper lays out why the Illinois senator so strongly endorses ethanol.

It turns out that Obama’s national campaign co-chairman, former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle, serves on the boards of three ethanol companies and his top advisor on environmental issues, Jason Grumet, used to work for a bipartisan initiative (National Commission on Energy Policy) that strongly supports ethanol.

Obama is also very tight with Illinois agriculture giant Archer Daniels Midland, the nation’s largest ethanol producer. Incidentally, a few years ago Archer Daniels Midland became the first company to sell food directly from the U.S. to Cuba since the implementation of the decades-old embargo and, perhaps not coincidentally, Cuban communist Dictator Fidel Castro has endorsed Obama. In fact, months ago he said an Obama-Hillary Clinton ticket would be unbeatable.

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President Obama is continuing his outreach to American business, though the principal business he wants to reach out to is General Electric. Mr. Obama seems to have decided that what’s good for GE is good for America, or at least for himself.

It has been a banner year in government largesse for America’s fourth-largest corporation. This month, the Federal Communications Commission approved the 51 percent/49 percent NBC Universal joint venture between Comcast and GE. Last week, GE announced a White House-backed plan for another joint venture with a Chinese avionics company. Mr. Obama capped the good news by naming GE Chief Executive Jeffrey R. Immelt as head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness - this after GE eliminated 18,000 U.S. jobs in 2009 (the most recent data available).

Times certainly have changed since the summer of 2010, when Mr. Immelt was quoted telling Italian businessmen America was in a “terrible” national mood during the “tepid” economic recovery and that U.S. business disliked Mr. Obama as much as Mr. Obama disliked business. GE later said those comments were “taken out of context.” Mr. Immelt says he’s worried about China because he’s “not sure that in the end they want any of us to win, or any of us to be successful.” He apparently, however, is willing to give the People’s Republic access to advanced American aerospace technology. On Monday, Mr. Obama claimed the $45 billion in deals with China his administration brokered would create 235,000 new U.S. jobs. Even if that figure turns out to be true, it would equal just 58 percent of the new unemployment claims filed last month alone.

Last summer’s grumbling aside, Mr. Immelt has long been an Obama champion, seeing opportunities for profit in the administration’s emphasis on so-called green technologies and in opening foreign markets. The GE CEO envisions a future with less emphasis on free markets and more “coordinated commitment among business, labor and government.” In 2009, he praised government intervention in the economy, telling shareholders that “in a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier and a key partner.”

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Whether or not there is plenty of oil here, or there, fact it, we can kiss cheap gasoline goodbye.

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Higher Inflation Is On The Way
Feb 28th, 2011 by Charles Kadlec in Economic Liberty

This article was originally published on Forbes.com on February 22, 2011

Reported inflation is headed higher — much higher.

The stakes have seldom been higher. With the unemployment rate still above 9%, and federal debt at record levels, this latest error by the monetary authorities is likely to be the most costly since the Great Inflation of the 1970s. Monetary instability will slow employment growth and further erode confidence in government at the same time that higher interest rates will add billions of dollars to the interest cost on the national debt. Yet, failure to act in a timely basis will lead to an even greater crisis.

When it arrives, the Federal Reserve and its defenders will call it “cost-push” inflation and blame it on economic growth, the weather, Arab sheiks, China, and perhaps greedy companies and labor unions.

The actual cause of the looming crisis is the same as the cause of the Great Inflation of the 1970’s: a too easy monetary policy that has devalued the dollar by 40% against gold during the past two years.

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Originally posted by seeweed:
We may not be running out of oil, but I believe for sure we are running out of cheap oil. More and more, oil has to be drilled out of deep water, or difficult places.
Oil wells were drilled years ago in Tishomingo Co, and from accounts, oil was found, but it was very heavy and not economically viable to extract. There are huge deposits in the oil shale out west, but in order to extract it, it takes a lot of water which is about as precious out there as is the oil.
To add a chiller to the "drill baby drill" crowd , even IF, and I say this with much reservation, the US could fulfill all it's oil demand domestically, it would not affect the price very much at the pump. (Although it would be a better thing than buying it from less friendly countries).
Whether or not there is plenty of oil here, or there, fact it, we can kiss cheap gasoline goodbye. We have known this for 40 years, I don't understand why it is still so hard for so many to face.

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Originally posted by marksw59:
Okay, what's the catch? I agree with beternnone? AND Flatus? Yikes.

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Originally posted by beternU:

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Originally posted by marksw59:
Okay, what's the catch? I agree with beternnone? AND Flatus? Yikes.

There is hope for you yet!!

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Originally posted by seeweed:
We may not be running out of oil, but I believe for sure we are running out of cheap oil. More and more, oil has to be drilled out of deep water, or difficult places.
Oil wells were drilled years ago in Tishomingo Co, and from accounts, oil was found, but it was very heavy and not economically viable to extract. There are huge deposits in the oil shale out west, but in order to extract it, it takes a lot of water which is about as precious out there as is the oil.
To add a chiller to the "drill baby drill" crowd , even IF, and I say this with much reservation, the US could fulfill all it's oil demand domestically, it would not affect the price very much at the pump. (Although it would be a better thing than buying it from less friendly countries).
Whether or not there is plenty of oil here, or there, fact it, we can kiss cheap gasoline goodbye. We have known this for 40 years, I don't understand why it is still so hard for so many to face.

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“We have too much capacity,” said Lynn D. Westfall, the chief economist at the Tesoro Corporation, a midsize refiner, who estimated that the industry’s capacity of 18 million barrels a day must be cut 5 to 8 percent. “We need refineries to be shut down.”

Refineries, especially smaller ones, have been closing for many years. The number of refineries in the United States fell to about 150 in recent years from more than 300 in 1982. At the same time, the nation’s refining capacity grew by about 13 percent, as companies expanded their most efficient refineries.

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Some of the nation's biggest oil companies are looking at permanently reducing how much gasoline and diesel fuel they make, a move that analysts say would almost certainly trigger higher prices for drivers. "Refineries will have to be closed," said Fadel Gheit, senior energy analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. "Unless this excess capacity is permanently shuttered, a recovery in refining margins is unsustainable."