Simply Politics & News

[fuagf]

omegahpla .. couple of links for you re your ..

I'd love a detailed account of what exactly Bush put into place that lead to the fuel prices sky rocketing.

Airline industry blames Bush for skyrocketing fuel prices
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=861&dat=20040109&id=DpwMAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4GEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2930,2102147

16 Republican senators agreed that Bush policies did have an affect on oil prices ...

Senate Democrats are pursuing legislation that would bar the federal government from socking away oil until prices fall, and 16 Republican senators on Tuesday said oil shipments should stop. All three presidential hopefuls support such a move.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latest-news/bush-says-no-magic-wand-to-lower-fuel-prices

How Bush Pushed Gasoline Prices Sky High
By Katherine Yurica

On March 5, 2003, Senator Carl Levin, the Ranking Minority Member of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, released a report prepared by the minority staff that reveals why gasoline prices soared under the Bush administration. It has to do with the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) and some odd decisions by the Department of Energy (DOE) after consulting with White House officials.

According to the Senate Report, the Bush administration added forty million barrels of oil to the nation’s reserves in 2002. That wouldn’t be a problem in and of it self. But the purchases represented an extreme change in energy policy; they were made in a strong market, with a tight supply of oil, which increased demand, which in turn pushed up the gasoline prices to their highest levels in twelve years.

The Senate report said in a one-month period in mid 2002 the Bush administration purchases caused crude oil prices to soar, raising the cost of heating oil by 13%, jet fuel by 10% and diesel fuel by 8%. The bottom line was the Bush policy change cost citizens between $500 million and $1 billion.

When crude oil jumps from $20 a barrel to $30, the Senate report says, the costs to U.S. taxpayers are an additional $1 million per day. “Over three months, the additional cost of filling the SPR approached $100 million,” which will ultimately be borne by U.S. taxpayers.

Why did Bush do it? For one thing, he was advised to do it. It has to do with the secret National Energy Policy advisory group headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney has steadfastly refused to release the names of those who advised the administration on energy matters. However, according to an article published in the Sunday Herald in Scotland (October 6, 2002), by Neil Mackay, it was former Secretary of State, James Baker who personally carried an advisory report to Cheney in April of 2001. Assembled at the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy of Rice University, the task force consisted of oil and energy executives. The report, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century is referred to simply as the “Baker Report” or “report” below. [...]

The Baker report was not irresponsible, it also warned the president, “One problem with trying to refill the reserve at this time when markets are strong is that any purchases made by the U.S. government would add to the current tight supply.” In other words, prices would go up!

At one point, the Baker report recommended that purchases of reserve additions be accomplished through direct “budgetary allocations.”

Trying to teach a new president the facts on SPR oil rights and wrongs must have been a heady proposition. There were many object lessons in which to point. The Baker report singled President Bill Clinton’s use of his “discretionary authority to lease oil to the market on a time-swap or exchange basis” as an example of a no-no. First, according to the Baker experts, Clinton’s exchanges reduced the size of the SPR at a time when more oil might have been needed. Next, the report chided, a president must not earn “far less in interest” than he could have, by using better methods. Perhaps Clinton’s biggest faux pas according to the Baker experts is that he used the drain-down of the reserves “to address winter heating-oil inventory concerns,” which indeed reduced heating oil from $37 to $31 per barrel. That was a big no-no. The Baker report advises a president must not use the SPR as “a market buffer stock to damp prices and price volatility.” (Translation: A president must not help the poor to heat their homes at a reasonable price at the expense of oil company profit taking.)

Hence in the National Energy Policy report, the NEPD Group “recommends that the President reaffirm that the SPR is designed for addressing an imminent or actual disruption in oil supplies, and not for managing prices.” (At page 8-17.)

That recommendation signaled a significant policy change: it denied the president the
right to withdraw oil at times when prices are unusually high due to manipulation of the market.

What were the superior choices left for the President? The report advises taking advantage of “the market’s forward price structure…if the market structure were backwardated, with future prices lower than current prices, the government would be able to replenish the reserve with more oil than it had leased on an auction basis. If the market structure were in contango, with future prices higher than prompt prices, the government could lease its cheaper spare storage capacity to industry, thereby also providing revenue to build government-owned reserves at a later time.”

But the method the Bush administration chose was to fill the SPR without regard to crude oil prices at all but simply at a constant rate of speed
http://www.yuricareport.com/Energy/How%20Did%20Oil%20Prices%20Get%20so%20High.htm

The Price of Oil and the Bush Dollar .. Don't Blame the Oil Sheikh's
By DAVE LINDORFF .. Philadelphia, PA

In fact the real culprit behind these higher oil prices is the Bush Administration, which, thanks to its massive deficits and tax give-aways to the rich and corporations, to its war spending, and to its failure to combat unprecedented and ever-larger trade deficits, has been causing the dollar to plunge in value.

Oil is a commodity and it is priced in dollars. If dollars decline in value, then the price of oil will rise in inverse proportion.

One need only look at Europe to see what this means.

Over the period from February 1, 2003, just before the start of the Iraq War, when oil prices began to rise in earnest, to Feb. 1, 2005, the price of a barrel of oil in dollars rose about 30 percent, from $30.13 a barrel to $42.91 a barrel. But over that same period of time, the Euro, Europe's new combined currency, rose 21 percent against the U.S. dollar, from .93 Euros to the dollar in February, 2003 to just .77 to the U.S. dollar in February, 2005.

For Europeans, then, the net rise in oil prices over the two years of the Iraq War has been just 9 percent,
or less than 5 percent per year-hardly the kind of energy inflation that would cause economic problems.
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff04092005.html

A UK bite ..

He said: “Avoiding unnecessary car use, using buses and trains and choosing more fuel-efficient cars will save money and cut transport’s contribution to climate change. The Government must help motorists by investing extra oil tax revenues in public transport and cycling facilities, encouraging greener motoring and pushing for tough EU laws on the fuel-efficiency of all new cars.”

* The Daily Express is crusading to cut fuel duty and readers can show their support by signing the petition at www.express.co.uk/fueltax
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/49237/Cars-vanish-from-the-roads-as-high-price-of-fuel-bites/

How was Bush's record on the issues mentioned in that one?

The purpose of the post is simply to offer you evidence that many thought Bush policies
did in fact contribute to your petrol price burden. And, to help you fulfill a love desire.

I'd love a detailed account of what exactly Bush put into place that lead to the fuel prices sky rocketing.