http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/May2008/21/c2698.html

We certainly need to start more drilling and refining right here in America ASAP!...on Drudge the headline numbers keep going up...now projected $12 a gallon!!!!...wheres my work at home radio job! Hope the gov't won't intervene

The price of oil is not going up due to demand. It's the traders and speculators who have created a bubble which is why it's going up, as most other commodities are as well.

"We certainly need to start more drilling and refining right here in America ASAP!"

Drilling, no. Refining, yes. However, I'd approve more drilling in Texas. Can't really make the state anymore toxic than it already is. Heck, lets send our nuclear waste there too.

We can stash it in W's storm cellar!

W's storm cellar is already full of the brush he has been clearing on the Ranch for the last seven years during his presidential vacations there.

Andrew

Hopefully he didn't bury his golf clubs so as soon as this pesky war is over he can get back on them links

OK, then lets stash it at Mt Rushmore. It'd be cool to see it glow in the dark!

Our foreign oil comes from a variety of places. No surprise, only one of the top producers is a true democracy with a free press. Two of the eight are members of NAFTA. All but one of the countries on the list are noted by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as horrific places to live. Over half the countries on the list regard women as second class citizens. Most countries on the list have populations that are suffering great hardship under a leadership with ties to terrorism, slavery, drug trafficking and massacres of indigenous peoples. Poverty is a problem in every country on the list, but only one truly addresses it.

Here are the top eight importers in March of 2008:

A parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy that lives in peace with their neighbors: 1.727 million barrels per day

A theocratic kingdom known as one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world that harbors direct investors and supporters of terrorism: 1.535 million barrels per day.

A federal constitutional republic with a drug epidemic, widespread corruption, gang warfare, a dismal human rights record and a shaky economy: 1.232 million barrels per day

A brazenly and openly corrupt regime that imprisons and murders citizens as well as journalists every day as a proxy for the superpowers and petrochemical giants: 1.138 million barrels per day.

A poor parliamentary republic with a soft dictatorship that is aggressive toward other countries: 858,000 barrels per day.

A sovereign country involved in a bloody civil war that we are currently occupying with troops: 773,000 barrels per day.

A poor nation under a single party system where half a million people died in a 27 year civil war and human rights abuses are still going on: 375,000 barrels per day.

An impoverished hotbed of Islamic extremism that also just ended a decade of civil war: 232,000 barrels per day.

The importation figures are from the Energy Information Administration.

Energy independence comes from needing less of the resource, not merely depending on a few hundred thousand barrels from short-term domestic strikes. The environment and world peace are more important factors in the long term. The links between terror, global climate change and petroleum are clear. Oil has likely peaked and it is long past time to figure out a new way without it.

"wheres my work at home radio job! "

Already there bro. Believe me you'll love it.

Broadway writes:
We certainly need to start more drilling and refining right here in America ASAP!...on Drudge the headline numbers keep going up...now projected $12 a gallon!!!!...wheres my work at home radio job! Hope the gov't won't intervene

They won't, it's going to be like Alaska, the oil companies will see the profit in exporting this oil to China AND it will never see the inside our tanks. All in the name of padding an oil executive's pay package. Your a fool to believe otherwise.

Question? Are the "demand" countries of China and India...how are they able to afford gas price going up? Are they more affluent than the US or is their just more population there taking smaller pieces of the pie/oil? It does not ad up. If Americans are having problems buying gas to get to work...what's going on???

I know the world oil problem today is being caused by many factors. Guess I'm recommening my grandkid to learn to be a futures trader. Where do you go to school for that?

Wheres my Exxon/Mobil stock broker to buy a few shares and retire???

Their currency is worth more than ours, and their standard of living is a lot lower than ours.

One key thing to remember is that the VALUE of a gallon of gas has not changed much. The big delta we are seeing is a direct result of our failure to compete globally and that's a result of policy.

Another perspective maybe:

For me, gas is about 10 to 12 cents a mile. For others with more hungry cars, double that and maybe add a little.

So, just say a quarter of a dollar per mile.

Can you walk a mile for a quarter worth of food? What about the time to travel that mile?

From that perspective, it's a good deal.

What makes it a poor deal is how we have built out our society. In other nations, there is less driving overall. Lots of people walk for lots of reasons. There are communities that are more self-sustaining that operate around that too.

Right now, Americans don't have a problem buying the gas to get to work. It's not cheap, but it's not the end of the world.

What we do have a problem with is buying everything from everybody else!

Fuel used to be on the order of a few cents per mile, and that's what we built out on. At that time we were more community oriented and we produced a lot of stuff here too.

Our currency was strong, backed by the production of goods and services, and the trust needed to maintain the Petrodollar, the core unit of oil trade.

Now we don't make goods so much, and we have improved on many services, so that's not a loss, just a shift. Maybe a good one, depending on the kinds of services.

We don't have the trust anymore though. The petrodollar is being broken and that's a really big deal. Without it, we lose a LOT of leverage on how these things go and the result of that is our nation coming to parity on what we pay for fuel, compared to many other places.

Many people in the world pay by the litre! Think about that, the kinds of cars they drive and how they use them and what that means for us going forward.

I think it means we either step up, bust our ass and do the work required to leverage other energy sources, not unlike what Brazil did. Or, it means we adjust to a much lower standard of living.

The latter means denying nations that currently produce a lot of goods, a market for them. I don't know what that really means.

The former could very easily spin this whole thing in a positive direction, where we can take the leadership position again and our standard of living will be a direct function of how successful that really is.

One other thing about our GNP is that is is now composed of mostly financials --virtual production, not actual production. It used to be just the opposite.

I don't think that's sustainable, unless it's balanced by some real wealth being produced by the classic innovation applied to labor over time equation.

We've just got to pull our weight, or we sell our futures to the oil execs, one gallon at a time.

And they are lobbying for that huge! Why?

Because they know they will get all they can get, leaving us to either live less after being exploited, or we will build again, leaving them to exploit that when the time is right.

Think of it from their perspective! It's a win-win for them, and a simple matter of how ugly we want it to go for us! If we go easy and just sell it until we are totally broken, they make more. If we bust our ass, they don't make as much right now, but they still make more.

Up to us people. It's not them, but us.

Frankly, I don't trust anything the oil industry has to say relative to drilling in the United States. Their conduct has been nothing short of repugnant. They take greed to a new level – and with an arrogant swagger to boot. They economy could collapse and the only thing big oil is worried about is making money. The statements they've made before Congress recently speaks of an industry so out of touch with reality that to believe anything they say makes a fool out of all of us. Why in the world would they need $18 billion dollars in tax breaks over ten years then charge $4.00 for a gallon of unleaded gas? Plus their conduct overseas is shamefully hideous. The oil industry is as bad as those in the blood diamonds market.

And for George W. Bush to defend the oil industry and blame the Democrats just goes to show where he expects to receive the lion share of donations for his presidential library once he’s out of office. Like Bill Clinton taking money from Denise Rich of the Mark Rich pardon affair, you can count your bottom dollar that every oil executive on planet Earth will be writing George W. Bush a check for services rendered. I'm sure that once they’re out of office, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will be sitting on the Board of Directors of at least one petrochemical giant.

We need comprehensive energy reform in this country. It should be a top priority. But under the leadership of dunderhead George W. Bush, there is only one answer to the energy problem, ANWAR. To think they made fun of Jimmy Carter so many years ago for forecasting such a crisis. Even Richard Nixon talked about lessening American dependence on foreign oil.

I wonder if DUHbya and Co. will invade New Mexico?

Maybe they'll figure it out before they SHOCK an AWE Albuquerque?

This published by Breitbart.com:

Torn between protecting the poor and saving their budgets, governments across Asia are being forced to slash fuel subsidies as world oil prices smash through 130 dollars a barrel.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan have decided to wield the axe on multi-billion-dollar subsidies despite fears of unrest as inflation spikes and the region's poor pay more for fuel on top of the surge in food costs.

Even regional giant India, which until last week was happy to see state oil companies lose millions of dollars a day selling discounted fuel, said Friday that a price hike was inevitable.

But while most price-setters could see the writing on the wall, China again dismissed rumours that it would change its central pricing system as it focused on containing inflation ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

"In Asia generally, those countries that subsidise oil will be under pressure to remove their subsidies while those that don't will be under pressure to do something for low-income earners," Royal Bank of Scotland economist Euben Paracuelles told AFP from Singapore