Tammy Bruce: Asinine Quote of the Day

Asinine Quote of the Day

"We can't drill our way to lower prices."

This gem is from Senator Dick "Turban" Durbin about oil. He'd be right if we were talking about toilet paper, but we're not. Durbin, the other senator from Illinois, is also well-known for calling our troops at Gitmo "Nazis." And because we're talking about oil here Senator Durbin if we drilled in Anwar, thereby increasing the supply of oil, prices would go down. It's that pesky thing called "supply and demand." To say nothing of the fact that the more of our own oil we use, the less dependent we are on the worldwide demand, therefore able to price our 'private reserve,' if you will, as we see fit.

Instead, the geniuses in congress have decided that we should stop sending 70,000 barrels into our strategic reserve, which we have to keep, of course, because we don't drill for our own oil, but rely to some degree on Islamist tyrants for theirs.

Posted by Tammy · May 13, 2008 05:41 PM · Permalink
Fed Incompetence

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What a retard. No, Senator, increasing the supply of something has NEVER made prices go down. Except, you know, always.

Posted by: Dave J at May 13, 2008 06:25 PM

Sad to say it, but on this point Tammy is wrong and Durbin is right. The geologists estimate there are some nice oilfields to be found in Alaska, maybe 5 to 15 billion barrels...which is a lot, and every little bit helps, but this is not nearly enough to save the nation from dependence. (Contrast this to Saudi proved reserves of 260 billion barrels, and you begin to understand why Alaska won't save the day.) (By the way, some of that Alaskan oil gets sold to Asia, because it's closer to the Asian market than to America, and thus more efficient to export it.) And it's also generally reasonable that we add to the strategic reserve when there's greater slack in the global oil trade, rather than when supply is tight and prices are being bid out of sight.

Posted by: Talkin Horse at May 13, 2008 10:15 PM

Talkin' Horse wasn't reading carefully.

Durbin didn't say "We can't drill our way to independence, which would have been correct. He said "We can't drill our way to lower prices, which is about as silly a thing as a man can say.

If you understand that the current price of oil is simply a factor of world supply and demand, you understand that drilling is invariably the thing that brings prices down.

Of course, in the current situation, we could also take measures to strengthen the dollar against foreign currency, which would pretty much automatically bring the price of crude down (for us), and rather quickly. And, we could streamline the application process for new oil refineries and allow oil companies to build a few, which would affect the supply of refined products almost 10 years from now. And we could suspend taxes, which comprise somewhere between 10% and 20% of the price of gasoline.

But drilling is really the one thing that must be done to reduce oil prices; and of course, ANWR is not, by far, the only oil available near the US. The more oil on the market, the lower the price overall. Simple economics. Get a clue.

Posted by: philwynk at May 14, 2008 06:36 AM

Because oil is essentially fungible, one barrel being like any other barrel, an increase in supply will lower prices no matter where it is sold, or to whom. We also have giant reserves in the Beacon formation under North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana which dwarf the Saudi alleged reserves. In addition, there are billions of barrels of oil for the taking (as Cuba and China are) under the Gulf of Mexico, and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Posted by: St. Thor at May 14, 2008 06:41 AM

Do any of the morons in Congress ever consider the long range effects of moves like this? It is obvious that they do not. I hope Bush tells them to put this idea where the sun does not shine.

Posted by: Sean H. at May 14, 2008 06:52 AM

Will President Bush tell them to "put this idea where the sun doesn't shine"? I doubt it. While I think that Bush has good intentions, it has become my belief that he's spineless. He lets the Left and the Democrats walk all over him, and consequently, they keep walking all over him while they keep promoting assinine ideas that have driven the price of gasoline to $4 per gallon. There is no supply shortage of oil in the world. It's a shortage of refined oil products like gasoline. Because we have less refineries today than we did in the 1970s, and with an increase in the number of vehicles on the road, we are using more fuel with less supply out there. Add that to the fact that China and India have large emerging middle classes, who are giving up their bicycles for cars, and you have more demand and less supply. We need to start drilling for oil and natural gas here in this country. What will it accomplish? Because oil prices have a hair trigger, just mentioning that we will be increasing our domestic supply will cause the price of oil to plummet...less money for terrorists in the Middle East, less money for Hugo Chavez, and less money for Russia and China who are betting the farm on high oil prices causing the collapse of the United States of America forcing us into the one world government controlled by the UN. Of course, maybe this is the real goal of rich anti-American Marxists like Durbin, Pelosi, Kennedy, the Clintons, and Obama.

Posted by: Chip Clemmer at May 14, 2008 08:48 AM

O! O! Oh! Let me guess... Durbin is a member of the democratic socialist party!

No wonder he doesn't understand supply and demand.

Or that he doesn't know the second largest oil reserve in the world is due north in Canada's oil sands.

But the real simply solution is right here in the States. Want change??

BUILD MORE REFINERIES!

Posted by: locomotivebreath1901 at May 14, 2008 09:47 AM

Locomotivebreath, the Alberta tar sands aren't the SECOND largest estimated reserve: they dwarf Saudi Arabia by orders of magnitude, though it hasn't been cost-effective to extract them...until more or less now at $100+ gallon.

Precisely because everyone now thinks oil will spiral up in price out on control, and energy will continue to be expensive, is why more supply will come on line and it's much more likely that in three years gas will be back at $1.50 a gallon rather than, say, the sky-is-falling $10 a gallon everyone's unrealistically worried about. It's a bubble already, just like real estate was three years ago, but a much more sensitive one.

Posted by: Dave J at May 14, 2008 05:10 PM

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