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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: isopatch who wrote (73875)	9/19/2000 10:27:21 PM
From: Tomas	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 95453

The $25/bbl legacy - Oil & Gas Journal, September 11-17 issue Hey, Mr. President! Yes, you: Bill Clinton. A minute of your time, please. You've been telling leaders of countries like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria that the price of crude oil should be $25/bbl. This is tricky business. See, everybody does best when the market, not government leaders, determines what the price of oil should be. Producers, consumers-everybody. Government leaders never get it right. Look at OPEC: Every price target the group ever set-smoke and ashes. Deregulation It's history, man. Letting the market set oil prices was an early US step toward deregulation, which made possible this unprecedented economic expansion that shows no sign of letting up. Who cares whose political party used to say deregulation would crush consumers? In those days, hardly anybody from any party even knew how to spell "entrepreneur." What matters now is that deregulation has been good for consumers and, along with marginal tax rates lower than they were back then, great for overall prosperity. And who cares whose party used to oppose tax cuts by insisting the country couldn't grow its way out of government deficits? What matters now is that times are good, the deficit's history, and you get to take the credit. So why blow it by pretending that you know best what oil prices should be? Sure, consumers want lower prices. It's what consumers do. But the market will take care of them. It always does. Just give it time. There are a few things you can do to help, though. First, get the Environmental Protection Agency off refiners' backs. During your second term, practically every move by EPA involving refiners has amounted to maximum squeeze. The agency reports that the air's getting cleaner then regulates refiners like it's getting dirtier. Go figure. So refineries are closing. The ones that are left have to run at capacity and localize products so much they can't move them around when supplies get tight. That's why gasoline got so much more expensive around Chicago than anywhere else this summer. Of course, you probably know that. Your Energy Information Administration explained everything. So how come Carol Browner, your EPA honcho, went on television to complain about there not being any explanation for prices being so high? Don't people in your administration talk? They're going to have to talk this winter if the weather's normal. There's not enough oil and gas in storage, and prices could go higher before they get lower. Just a warning, Mr. President. Would you mind passing it around your administration? It might cut down the name-calling. There are other things you can do if you want $25/bbl oil, Mr. President. You can allow more oil and gas leasing of federal land, for example. More leasing, more oil and gas, less price pressure, more lease bonuses and royalties for the treasury, more jobs, more prosperity. That's how it works. (You're not really going to declare the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain a national monument, are you?) And you've got to do something about Al Gore while he still works for you. He really believes all that weird stuff about global warming. Hey, glaciers melt. Temperatures rise; temperatures fall. It's nature. People don't have as much to do with it as your vice-president wants everybody to think. If he has his way on global warming, though, taxes will rise big-time. No harm in that, he says. Right. And no help to a president evangelizing $25/bbl oil. Easy to forget See what's happening, Mr. President? Good times make it easy to forget what started the economy on this long roll: deregulation and lower taxes. With all due respect, your dollar-denominated assertions about where oil prices should be seem to overlook lessons of history, actions of your administration, and positions of your vice-president. So if regulation and taxes do get out of control again, then what? First thing you know-boom!there goes prosperity. Then-boom!-there goes the budget surplus. Of course, the bad stuff would all happen during somebody else's presidency. But you had all the information you needed to prevent the damage. We're talking legacy here, Mr. President. Not everybody forgets. Just thought you'd want to know.