Posted by Heading Out on May 6, 2011 - 10:30am

If you read many of the pieces that I write here, you will soon notice that I am convinced that this country and most of the civilized world has a problem with future oil supply. That problem is getting worse rather rapidly, and this is causing the price increases that you have noticed every time you visit a gas station. It is popular and easy to blame the current increases on either speculators or the “evil” oil companies. While both may play a role on the edges of what is going on, the harsh reality is that prices now are largely controlled by those nations who form the OPEC partnership. Saudi Arabia, who supplies the largest portion of OPEC oil, has said that it is uncomfortable with current oil prices, since they are getting high enough that they could cause another recession. However that did not stop them from raising their prices in April and they now need the high prices to help pay to keep Saudi Arabia from seeing any of the riots that are happening to other countries. One has to know how to separate the popular myths from the actual reality.

And if legislatures at both state and national level are to make the right choices about what to do as oil prices keep going up (bearing in mind that it was a cause of the major recession in 2008) they too need to know what is really going on. There are alternate strategies for changing domestic production and alternate fuels (such as the growing supply of natural gas) that could be a significant help in the near future. Some of those that seemed to be promising, don’t always work as fast as promised, as we found out with cellulosic ethanol. They (and the rest of us who try and explain what’s happening) need to know not only what is going on, but as things change, what the effects of new rules events (such as banning drilling for a while in the Gulf of Mexico) are having on current and future supplies. It is only in this way the rational and useful steps to help get America, and the rest of the world, off this addiction to OPEC oil can be picked out, and put into place.