Franklin Delano Roosevelt
I remember back in the seventies and early eighties when it cost thirteen dollars to pull a barrel of oil out of the ground here in the States. In Saudi Arabia, it was only three dollars a barrel.
Now the world has seen crude at seventy five dollars a barrel. Every excuse known to man has been forwarded to explain this phenomenon.
Iraq, Iran, Hubbert's "peak oil" prophecy, Nostradamus and about any other form of nonsense imaginable.
In 1973, OPEC agreed to trade petroleum only in US dollars. Seems this was the same year Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard.
No longer was the US dollar backed by gold. It was worth whatever respect the world had for the US. Essentially, a handshake.
Now this wasn't the first time the US currency was removed from the gold standard, but it is the most important and the most damaging.
Once again gasoline is over three dollars a gallon in many places in the US. For rich people, this is no more than a nuisance if that.
For most American's though, despite the silence and inaction as the price of petroleum products reaches an historic high, these prices are murderous. For poor people, well the car gets parked.
The storage tanks in the US are full. This was the statement of a member of the Saudi Oil Ministry. Refining ability on the other hand is at another all time low.
Despite this Regime's admission to pathetically low ability to refine the crude, not a refinery has been built in over 25 years.
This activity allows price gouging on an epic, historic scale. Now many countries the world over, are learning the bad habits of the US. Profit over People.
In fact, no one on earth knows how much crude exists. It follows then, that neither side of this debate are telling the truth, and therefore cannot be trusted.
It is fact that unless the US builds back the refineries it destroyed during the late eighties and nineties, this problem will never resolve.
If the "Crazies" as the people in the current Bush Regime were called during the Reagan years remain in control of anything to do with oil, this problem will only escalate.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
