Friday morning paper tells us oil prices dropped yesterday for the first time in nine days. The companies in Libya had to idle between 500,000 and 750,000 barrels a day in production. That is less than 1% of global daily consumption. That was the bad news. The good news is that lost shipments from Libya can be made up quickly from large surpluses held by member companies, including the US. There is 1.6 billion barrels of emergency crude. That is enough for 145 days of oil without missing a lick.
In the meantime during this emergency, that was not an emergency, we gasoline buyers paid TWENTY CENTS a gallon or more at the pump. Let's say that during those nine days 100 million of us bought ten gallons of petrol. That would be 2.00 each more we paid. So we paid in 200 million dollars to the non-emergency, emergency fund. Surely then, rebate checks would be in order. Never happen. These are extremely low figures. It probably would reach to a billion dollars or more.
This is true in all businesses. Supply and demand affect what we pay. We have all seen big price increases at the grocery store because of the weather and related vegetable damages. Could there be some gouging taking place, as well? Sure could.
So what do we do as we await our rebate checks? The President says, "We think we'll be able to ride out the situation.". That's easy to say when one's transportation is a limousine with a full tank of gov gas. Some others may have to bicycle or walk out the situation.
Here in Texas massive cuts of personnel is in the crystal ball. From education to prisons folks are on the bubble. We have a 25 BILLION shortfall expected. This isn't enough to dig into our "rainy day" reserve fund. Appears to me we are having a hail-storm instead of a rainy day need.
You shouldn't gripe unless you have a solution. I have it. However, it is so simple it will never fly. We tack on another 10-20 cents a gallon tax for our gasoline as was done in the emergency non-emergency. We burn a lot of gas in Texas. Let the SUV's and DUALLIES and big trucks help us with the shortfall. Why wouldn't that work? Too simple!
