Friday, March 07, 2008

Oil November 2000: $28 A Barrel. Oil March 2008: $106 A Barrel. Replacing The Bush-Oil Industry Plutocracy: Priceless!


In the highly disputed November 2000 election, the oil industry interests which were the major supporters of buying the Bush Administration into power and creating an oil industry run plutocratic form of government in the U.S. were able to get their way on a wide range of tax and environmental issues dealing with the oil industry as well as allowed to develop the foreign policy that created the drive to war in Iraq, yet oil prices did not fall as result of all of this. Oil actually increased from $28 a barrel in November 2000 to topping $106 a barrel at one point in today's commodity trading.

The oil industry has been given every possible favor and advantage with the Bush Administration that it helped to buy into power. For example, with the EPA, the oil industry was given a special pass to delay until 2014 to remove the cancer causing benzene that is in such high quantities in Alaskan oil. Currently only BP produced oil uses a complex filtering site to filter out this dangerous cancer causing substance from the Alaskan oil. Automobile pollution control systems do not filter out this highly toxic substance that pours from car exhausts. Yet despite these special rights and costing cutting advantages by the oil industry, oil prices only continued to rise like a skyrocket.

And the oil industry attempted to secure cheaper oil by ramping up the nation to invade Iraq under absurd claims by the Bush Administration that the heavily weakened government of Saddam Hussein which was subject to both tight UN controls, sanctions and weapons inspections presented some WMD threat. Again this did not result in cheaper oil, as the U.S. only became bogged down in a protracted conflict with first hardliner supporters of Saddam Hussein such as hardcore Baathists, then caught between a civil religious sect war between rival Sunni and Shiite sects as well as Al Qaeda elements when Bush challenged them to attack U.S. forces in his "Bring it on" invitation.

The Bush Administration brought in 43 members of the oil industry, including former executives and major stockholders including Bush himself, compared to 33 members who were associated with defense contractors, and the only net result was war and war for oil that failed miserably to bring on better prices for the American consumer.

It was thought that Iraq contains 225 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, which would have constituted a 98 year supply for the U.S. Instead all of the sectarian and Al Qaeda generated violence only made the easy development of this oil very difficult and actually decreased the oil output of Iraq below that of the days of Saddam Hussein.

The oil industry formed plutocracy government of Bush did bring about better prices to the American consumer. Only huge profiteering at record levels for the oil industry has resulted, and Republican members of Congress even attempted to block a Democratic drive to tax these record profits.

The American consumer will now be looking at $4 a gallon gas very soon and outrageous heating bills for oil heated homes because the oil industry was given the control of the American government and this has only resulted in oil approaching a level nearly 4 times the price per barrel since the oil industry bought Bush into power.