This month, as unleaded gasoline prices increased for 17 consecutive days (to a national average of $3.647 per gallon - up 11% thus far this year) and West Texas Intermediate crude joined Brent crude in breaking through a $100 per barrel level, energy prices emerged...
For this article, let me be brief about the following facts, which are oil and water under the bridge. BP’s off-shore oil leases, like all off-shore oil leases, are leases to use federal property. (Hat tip to this article in The Freeman.) The land and water are...
he order by a federal district court in Louisiana overturning President Obama’s six-month general moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates many of the mistakes the administration has made in handling this environmental disaster. ...
As the Greek welfare state collapses, citizens there have been rioting over cutbacks in social spending necessitated by mounting government debt. The rioters apparently fail to recognize that whenever a government routinely promises to spend more money than it has,...
On April 6, the Obama administration released its new nuclear strategy; on Thursday, the prez inked a new nuke treaty with the Russians in Prague. This week, he's hosting an all-world atomic affair in Washington. It's a veritable "no-nukes-palooza." Problem is, not...
Today I received a message from United Airlines pushing a particularly misguided political agenda. It is one of the most disgraceful public displays of incompetence and evasion by American business in recent memory. According to the airlines, speculators are to blame...
Despite Congress' periodic hauling of weak-kneed oil executives before their committees to charge them with collusion and price-gouging, subsequent federal investigations turn up no evidence to support the charges. Right now oil company executives are getting a bit of...
Environmentalists come to their senses when non-drilling philosophy costs them something. It’s two-faced hypocrisy.
In searching for villains for rising food and oil prices, some commentators have turned to speculators, namely people trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and similar exchanges around the world. A sample of the claims: "Biofuels and droughts can't fully explain...
With gasoline prices exceeding $4 a gallon in some states, politicians are responding as usual: Blame Big Oil First. Several prominent senators have once again summoned industry leaders to Capitol Hill, subjecting them to yet another barrage of rhetorical questions,...
“Conservation” as a source of energy is a contradiction in terms.
"Proven" oil reserves, oil that's economically and technologically recoverable, are estimated to be more than 1.1 trillion barrels. That's enough oil, at current usage rates, to fuel the world's economy for 38 years, according to Leonardo Maugeri, vice president for...
Politicians and commentators from both parties are decrying our "addiction to oil." They exhort us to embrace costly programs to reduce our consumption of oil as quickly as possible. The primary rationale for this is national security. Our oil consumption is dangerous...
Gasoline Rationing Scheme but Economic Freedom Will Improve the Environment and Promote National Security
Does gasoline at 10 cents a gallon and falling sound impossible in today’s world?
Since 1976, because of environmental regulations, not a single additional oil refinery has been constructed in the United States.
One of the beauties of an economy coordinated by price movements is that nobody has to understand it in order for it to work. If vast new iron ore deposits are discovered tomorrow in Timbuktu, 99 percent of the people on this planet may be wholly unaware of it -- and...
If there is anything worse than partisan demagoguery, it is bipartisan demagoguery. Republican leaders have now joined the Democrats in blaming the oil companies for the fact that prices rise when demand expands more than supply. Prices have been rising under these...
Environmentalism thus stands a very strong chance of ultimately reverting to the more traditional socialism of massive government construction and engineering projects.
The Supreme Court's recent 8 to 0 decision (Justice Alito not yet participating) shot down a claim that oil companies were colluding in setting prices. That claim was upheld by the far-left 9th Circuit Court of Appeals but neither liberals nor conservatives on the...
The first revolt of the American colonists against their British rulers was immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson as "the shot heard round the world." Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident has now become the shot heard round the Beltway. The accidental shooting...
Like a dictator who is unhappy with the outcome of an election, The Times is unhappy with the outcome of the choices of tens of millions of American citizens expressed in their purchases of motor-vehicles and fuel for those vehicles.
Environmentalism thus stands a very strong chance of ultimately reverting to the more traditional socialism of massive government construction and engineering projects.
If politicians were serious about wanting to reduce the burden imposed on consumers by the high price of oil, all they would need to do would be to abolish the restrictions on energy production that they have up to now been supporting.
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