Oil Is Well: The Shortage Is a Myth, and Not a New One

Oil Is Well: The Shortage Is a Myth, and Not a New One
Written by Rod D. Martin
Tuesday, June 06, 2006

“America has no shortage of oil. . . Washington, D.C. has a shortage of the political will required to let American workers go get it.”-- Rep. Richard Pombo

With oil prices reaching record levels, the left is up to its old tricks, blaming the president and calling for lots of expensive big government “solutions.”

As part of this push, leftists argue that we’re running out of oil.

But clearly, this argument is not new--and it’s dead wrong.

In 1874, Pennsylvania’s state geologist fretted that America had only a four-year supply of oil left.

He was wrong.

In 1914, Washington claimed we had only a ten-year supply.

It was wrong.

In 1940, the government announced that reserves would be depleted within 15 years.

Wrong again.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter lamented that within a decade, we wouldn’t be able to import enough oil, “from any country, at any acceptable price,” to meet our needs.

Hardly shocking, the peanut farmer from Plains was wrong, too.

Actually, the world’s estimated oil reserves grew from 60 billion barrels in 1920 to 600 billion by 1950, 2,000 billion by 1990, and 3,000 billion by the year 2000.

More @ http://tinyurl.com/o5sfm chronwatch

Well affixing my tin-foil hat firmly on my head I'll go one step further with my conspiracy theory. It's not just the Left and the Eco-Twits who have an are holding up oil production and refining, its the governments and the Oil Cartel working in tandem. By working together to keep new oil fields from being exploited and not building new refining facilities the Oil Cartel and government keep production down and prices up.

Sounds far-fetched you say! You ever hear diamonds or gold? You know the little bits of sparkle and shine that cost the earth to purchase and dangle from the necks of the rich and bored. Diamonds and gold are held off the market by the producing nations and companies like De Beers in order to keep the prices up and stable. There was panic in Mudville some years ago when the old USSR threatened to flood the market with diamonds and gold. It never happened because the USSR was bought off at the time and made to see the error of such a crazed idea.

If all the diamonds and gold in the world that have been mined were released on the market, you could pave your driveway with a sparkle effect. The same is true of oil, scarcity drives the price up and by extension it drives up profits and profit is the bottom line.

So yes the Left/Eco-twits does bear some responsibility for the high price of oil, however government, producers, and refiners are laughing all the way to the bank.