jps wrote:
On Sun, 15 May 2011 19:25:53 -0700 (PDT), "*e#c"
wrote:

On May 15, 9:59 pm, wrote:
SEATTLE - With no relief in sight at the gas pump, one of our state's
senators is going on the attack.

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell says oil speculators are to blame for
budget-busting prices - and she says it's time to rein them in.

As drivers wonder just how high gas prices can go, Cantwell and other
lawmakers have been grilling oil company execs.

The quick answer seems to be speculation - investors looking for a
quick profit.

"I think we found when these oil company executives testified before
Congress last week that at least one of them said that supply and
demand would mean that oil prices really should be about $60 or $70 a
barrel," Cantwell says. "That would mean Washington drivers would be
paying $2.50 a gallon instead of $4 a gallon."

Cantwell and 15 other U.S. senators say it's time for new rules over
the oil markets to be enforced.

"There is a lot of money flowing into this that is purely from large
institutions, and I think we need rules to make sure they aren't
making the market or are doing things that are artificially driving up
the price," she says.

President Obama opened another front on the war on high prices by
offering new oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's
National Petroleum Reserve.

The president's move comes just days after oil companies complained
that government restrictions are stifling domestic oil production.

"There are shackles on us," said James Mulva, chairman and CEO of
Conoco-Phillips. "Put us back to work - open up, give us access to the
lands, let us start drilling, put our people back to work."

Cantwell says reigning speculators would be a much quicker fix.

"Overnight," she says. "We saw with electricity, we saw with Enron,
how prices got 3,000 times the rate they should be - and once those
federal regulators acted, the price dropped overnight."
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell says oil speculators are to blame for
budget-busting prices -

You're JUST figuring this out? Wow.

What makes you say that? I expect most people understand this but
it's one thing to understand it and another to have enough
corroborating information to cite the problem and call for change.


You just gotta love the dumfochs who actually believe the bull**** about
small profit margins spewed by the oil industry.

"We only make 3 cents, 5 cents or 8 cents a gallon and we need those
subsidies."

What a pile of bull**** that is.

Of course, it is "according to generally accepted accounting standards,"
which, loosely translated, means "the numbers are what we say they are,
no more, no less."

We all know how trustworthy and reliable the big accounting firms are.