That’s where the Liberals want to go with it. Witness the first paragraph of a San Francisco Chronicle article.
Reports that President Bush is studying a military strike on Iran’s nuclear program drove oil prices Monday to heights not seen since Hurricane Katrina tore through the Gulf Coast last year.
Meanwhile, if you read down to the 9th paragraph, where many people, according to studies, do not make it, especially with on-line articles, you start finding out about geopolitical fears and tight supplies, oil traders keeping a tight eye on Nigeria, due to the fighting there, the USa, China, and India using more oil, hurricanes, refining plant issues, and more. But, apparently Bush’s fault.
While those issues, other then Bush Derangement Syndrome, have played a large part in the cost of gas (the traders are the ones that are really doing it), what about the gas industry itself?
Despite the ethanol industry’s efforts to ramp up production, experts are predicting nationwide ethanol shortages in wake of next month’s phaseout of the fuel additive MTBE.
The energy bill Congress passed last year eliminates a 2 percent oxygenate requirement for gasoline. MTBE has been the oxygenate of choice since a mandate was established about 10 years ago as part of the Clean Air Act.
MBTE has been shown to contaminate ground water. The oil lobby is actually voluntarily removing it from the process. This does not help their profits, if you are wondering. But they are trying to protect the environment. Something that the unhinged Big Oil haters, with their limousine’s and private jets, should love. But, I am sure that the Left will be slamming Big Oil, rather then say “hey, thank you for protecting our water supplies. Though, perhaps, the result is not intentional:
Methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, is an oxygenate used to make gasoline burn more completely and cleanly, but is known to contaminate ground water. It has accounted for about 10 percent of the volume of every gallon of gasoline with which it is blended – or 1.4 percent of the nationwide supply – but refiners plan to stop using it next month because Congress refused to grant them protection from contamination-related lawsuits.
And said suits could drive up prices even more.
But, it is all Bush’s fault, I’m sure.
You forgot to mention: Which party routinely prevents the construction of new refineries, protests additional drilling to increase production of domestic oil, insists upon multiple blends of gasoline–seemingly one for every county in the nation–and expects retailers to sell their product at cost, yet bitches and moans about the price. (Forget for a minute that despite all the hoops and hurdles the oil companies must jump through and over, we still have not seen the massive shortages we saw back in the Carter days.) And lets talk about nuclear power plants….
True, quite true, all of them. I was just taking the scene as written ;)