have been saving you now if Clinton hadn’t denied it 10 years ago….next question?

nt

The price that justifies the drilling is dependent upon blood.

If gas rises another $5-6 a gallon, the incidence of violence related to gasoline and gasoline theft will go hyperbolic very fast.

People in this economy are already hurting and if you double their energy costs going into the winter, you’re going to see a lot of people snap. It’ll be very ugly.

And I’m only half joking.

Can someone please explain how, when oil is sold to the highest bidder on the international market, this will bring down gas prices ten years from now. Especially since, right now we buy 25% of the gas and with China’s use increasing, almost exponentially, it will be an even smaller percentage in ten years.

Unless the oil fields are nationalized and the oil sold exclusively in the U.S., drilling in ANWR or offshore will be like spitting in the ocean.

Not to mention, why not drill where oil companies already have leases?

Thanks for the feedback.

That’s true enough, but people don’t have as much of an option when it comes to heating their homes, and there are a lot of people in the country who simply must drive. Particularly in exurban and rural areas of the country, gasoline at $10 a gallon would be a real hardship, particularly if the price of heating oil rose commensurately.

I live in such a town: one stoplight, a gas station, a pizza joint and a convenience store is our “business district” and people here need to drive 15 miles to get to the nearest grocery, or the post office. You can get a good idea of people’s financial situation by watching how they pay for things like milk, bread, beer and cigarettes at the convenience store:

For the past two months, the owner has been getting increasingly nervous because the number of people paying with change (and coming up short and leaving IOU notes) has been rising each week. They’re not paying with change because they just bought a new leather sofa and are throwing out their old cushions, either.

The recent small break in the price of gas has been a genuinely felt relief here, small as it is. My seat-of-the-pants guess, based on watching this phenomenon and his increasing agitation, is that a lot of the people paying with change would be in big trouble if their home heating bills doubled this winter.

And do you know who benefits from that in the Northeast? Hugo Chavez and Joseph Kennedy II, because of his Citizens Energy heating-oil company.