Morphy Institute of Reason Thought & Humor

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Gasoline, oil prices continue to tumble

Oil prices, and gasoilne in particular, are described as being 'in free fall' ( Gasoline, oil prices continue to tumble ). All this just after widespread predictions of $100 a barrel crude. And this is with winter approaching and the situation in the Mideast no better than it was a few weeks ago. There are rumblings about this being politically motivated, with the election season heating up. I was wondering about the ties between the Republican party and the enegry business, and heard that 85% of their donations go to Republicans. I couldn't document this, but ran into this interesting list doing a Google (circa 2001):

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1336960.stm :
Biggest industry donators to Bush campaign
Enron $1.8m
Exxon $1.2m
Koch Industries $970,000
Southern $900,000
BP Amoco $800,000
El Paso Energy $787,000
Chevron Oil Corp $780,000
Reliant Energy $642,000
Texas Utilities $635,000

I had to look up Koch Industries. Yep, another energy company, but they also 'serve consumers’ needs for beef, fuels, fertilizer and plastics'.

posted by Dr. Steven Morphy-Godchaux III at 9:09 AM

6 Comments:

  • My buddy at here at my work (a staunch democrat) swears that the republicans - who have the staunch support of the energy sector - arrange to have Energy (gas) prices low leading up to the November elections so the voting public is in a good mood going to the polls. He recommends topping off your tank during election week because afterwards, the price will shoot up under the guises of "holiday travel", "cold snap driving demand up" and other sundry excuses to raise prices.

    By Blogger Thurston J Morphy III, at Wed Sep 20, 11:13:00 AM CDT  

  • Ask your friend if he believes that the twin towers were brought down by a controlled demolition orchestrated by the administration. And don't forget the loch ness monster, oh.. and UFO's too.

    By Blogger Murphy "Mac" Morphy, at Wed Sep 20, 12:02:00 PM CDT  

  • On the contrary, he’s not a conspiracy theorist at all. He understands that Big Oil & Gas sees campaign contributions to the Republicans and a little help with prices around election time as a cost of doing business. The quid pro quo is the facilitation by the Republicans of advancing the interest of big corporations like oil & gas at the highest of legislative levels. For the record, he also thinks Elvis is actually dead and the September 11th was the fault of Muslim extremists who got lucky in successfully pulling off the craziest caper in recent history.

    By Blogger Thurston J Morphy III, at Wed Sep 20, 03:19:00 PM CDT  

  • A good article on this by James Surowiecki called Pumped Up. It's about the consolidation in the oil industry, especially in refining. The last paragraph sums it up: "The good news is that there’s no conspiracy. The bad news is that there’s also no free market."

    By Blogger Dr. Steven Morphy-Godchaux III, at Wed Sep 20, 03:44:00 PM CDT  

  • I didn't believe the conspiracy theories about the price of heating oil in California. Then a lil' ole scandal by the name of Enron broke. They were rigging prices out there. I usually don't subscribe to conspiracy theories. But I would not be suprised at all to find out the Big Oil was testing the market to see just how high they could go with gas prices. The price went up too quickly and back down too quickly. And, while the Administration may not have been "in on it", I bet the Anti-trust division of the Justice Department is not looking in to this price fluctuation.

    By Blogger Philip Seymour Morphy, at Thu Sep 21, 01:01:00 PM CDT  

  • I see 42% of Americans polled think the administration is manipulating oil prices: Prices at the pump keep tumbling. That's a lot of conspiracy theorists.

    By Blogger Dr. Steven Morphy-Godchaux III, at Sun Sep 24, 09:36:00 AM CDT  

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