There’s a difference between “bitching” and trying to educate. Right now people are bitching to their officials about the wrong things.
They bitch they want windfall profit taxes, which won’t do anything to lower the price since US oil companies don’t set the price, and based on the history of windfall profit taxes will likely raise prices.
They bitch they want more alternative energy research. Ok, that’s great for the supply issue that’s coming many many years down the road, but it does nothing to help $4+ gas today. It needs to be done, but the focus this year should be shorter term.
They bitch they want more pressure on OPEC to produce more oil. Again, not a supply issue.
They bitch they want gas tax holidays. There might be some trickle down benefit (trucking costs go down etc) but it won’t help much. The desperate tone it gives off could even cause investors to drive the price higher.
They bitch they want more drilling. Boosting domestic production would be a great thing, but even if we rubber stamped it today through some history making display of partisan cooperation you wouldn’t see a drop of new oil for years.
They bitch they want more refineries. Again, boosting domestic refining capacity would be a great thing. It would no doubt help with the price of gas and would insulate us from price spikes due to localized natural disasters. But it won’t help with gas prices for years while these refineries are being built.
So people need to be educated about what could make a huge difference in the cost of oil TODAY. There are two things.
-
Get the dollar’s value up. When the world buys oil with dollars and the dollar isn’t worth much it takes a lot of them to get a barrel. The fed has admitted the dollar is a priority now. They sacrificed the dollar with the low interest rates needed to help the housing market.
-
Address the speculation problem. The quickest way to pop the oil bubble is to change the margin requirements for oil futures contracts to match the requirements they use on stocks. We came close last week but they had to go and tie the legislation to windfall profits so it got blocked. If more people start bitching about it though you’ll see this get pushed through by itself which would give it the support of both republicans and democrats.