Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
D.C. prayer rally to seek lower gas prices
UPI via James Howaard Kunstler
WASHINGTON, — A U.S. Christian group has grown tired of escalating gasoline prices and is set to stage a national prayer rally to lower the numbers at the pumps.
Various Christian clergy from around the country will convene around a Washington, D.C., gas station Thursday at noon to pray. For those who can’t attend, a live Internet site and toll-free prayer line have been established.
In a release, the Pray Live group said many people are “overlooking the power of prayer when it comes to resolving this energy crisis.”
Apart from sending a message to God, the rally had a message for humanity, said Wenda Royster, the group’s founder.
“It is our hope that seeing and hearing some of the nation’s most powerful preachers gathered around a gas station and the United States capital as a backdrop, will remind everyone who is really in charge of our world — God,” Royster said.
The Web site is at praylive.com. The toll-free phone number is 888-PRAYLIVE.
(26 April 2006)
Going a Short Way to Make a Point
Dana Milbank, Washington Post
Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.
Gas prices have gone above $3 a gallon again, and that means it’s time for another round of congressional finger-pointing.
“Since George Bush and Dick Cheney took over as president and vice president, gas prices have doubled!” charged Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), standing at an Exxon station on Capitol Hill where regular unleaded hit $3.10. “They are too cozy with the oil industry.”
She then hopped in a waiting Chrysler LHS (18 mpg) — even though her Senate office was only a block away.
…At about the same time, House Republicans were meeting in the Capitol for their weekly caucus (Topic A: gas). The House driveway was jammed with cars, many idling, including eight Chevrolet Suburbans (14 mpg).
America may be addicted to oil, as President Bush puts it. But America is in the denial phase of this addiction — as evidenced by the behavior of its lawmakers. They have proposed all kinds of solutions to high gas prices: taxes on oil companies, domestic oil drilling and releasing petroleum reserves. But they ignore the obvious: that Americans drive too much in too-big cars.
… After lunchtime votes, senators emerged from the Capitol for the drive across the street to their offices.
Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) hopped in a GMC Yukon (14 mpg). Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) climbed aboard a Nissan Pathfinder (15). Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) stepped into an eight-cylinder Ford Explorer (14). Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) disappeared into a Lincoln Town Car (17). Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) met up with an idling Chrysler minivan (18).
Next came Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), greeted by a Ford Explorer XLT. On the Senate floor Tuesday, Menendez had complained that Bush “remains opposed to higher fuel-efficiency standards.”
Also waiting: three Suburbans, a Nissan Armada V8, two Cadillacs and a Lexus. The greenest senator was Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who was picked up by his hybrid Toyota Prius (60 mpg), at quadruple the fuel efficiency of his Indiana counterpart Evan Bayh (D), who was met by a Dodge Durango V8 (14).
(27 April 2006)
Both Republicans and Democrats alike are skewered.
Quick Fixes Won’t Solve Looming Oil Crisis, Scientists Say
Ker Than, LiveScience
With the cost of oil at or near record territory and gasoline prices hovering around $3 a gallon, the government is advocating new measures to sooth growing public concern over rising prices at the pumps.
But the fixes are only temporary and largely symbolic, scientists say. They will do little to address the more serious threat of what will happen when demand for oil outstrips the ability to produce it.
And that’s an inevitable problem that could be just around the corner, though nobody knows exactly when it will occur.
…Energy experts no longer debate about whether Hubbert’s peak will occur, but when. On this point, estimates vary wildly. Kenneth Deffeyes, a Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, believes it has already happened-in late 2005. Others figure we still have another 20-30 years.
One thing that many experts do agree on, however, is that when we do hit the peak, steps like those Bush is advocating will not be enough.
“It was a pocketbook issue,” Larry Nation, a spokesperson for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), told LiveScience. “It’s not a long term fix by any means.”
Amos Nur, the Wayne Loel Professor of Earth Sciences at Stanford University, expressed a similar sentiment.
“It’s more or less symbolic,” Nur said about Bush’s proposals. “I don’t think it’s going to make any real difference because it doesn’t really deal with the basic problem that we’re facing.”
(28 April 2006)
UPDATE:
Fox News picked up this story!
Experts: Global Oil Production May Peak Soon
I Smell Gas
A subject that makes congressmen stupid.
Jacob Weisberg, Slate
Few topics seem to addle the collective brain of Washington like high gas prices. Politicians who raise this issue can generally be assumed to be partisan, cynical, demagogic, and dishonest. But one must not discount the possibility that something about the subject actually makes them stupid.
With gasoline prices now spiking around $3 a gallon-near their inflation-adjusted 1981 peak-we are witnessing stupidity on wheels. Republicans, who as incumbents fear that they will be blamed, are in a kind of frenzy to abandon free-market principles, basic economic reasoning, and increasingly, reason itself. Their week began with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert calling upon the Bush administration to investigate possible price-gouging and market manipulation. The Republican leaders went so far as to recommend “sweeps” of gas stations to confirm that price increases reflect “changes in market conditions” and are not merely attempts by businesses to earn money. The next day, President Bush joined in calling on the Bush administration to launch an investigation. As it happens, a Federal Trade Commission investigation into possible market manipulation is already under way from last year, when Bush and Congress asked for one following a post-Hurricane Katrina gas-price rise. While he was at it, Bush also asked Congress to repeal the tax breaks they joined together to give to the oil companies last year.
…Democrats, who can barely restrain their glee at this political opportunity, bandy the same implausible complaints about gouging and “speculation” and speak even more enthusiastically about confiscating oil-company profits. They also have their own distinctive form of gas-price stupidity, which is to ignore the conflict between the environmentalism they espouse and the cheap fuel they demand.
(26 April 2006)
Related:
Bush runs on empty (Financial Times)
Perspective: Bush’s dim pitch for energy (CNET)
Editorial: Phony war on gas (Washington Post)
