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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (132898)	3/22/2001 5:12:08 PM
From: Kevin Rose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

I have a somewhat basic understanding of economics. I also understand price and supply manipulation, and monopolies. Do you? Answer for me: 1) Why do we pay 2-3x as much for natural gas as the rest of the country? 2) Why do we consistently pay more for gasoline than the rest of the country, even though we are closer to the supply than most states? 3) Why do you support price and supply manipulation by denying it exists?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (132898)	3/22/2001 5:17:39 PM
From: Roger A. Babb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Zoltan, the price of natural gas is up because of the same misguided deregulation efforts that are driving up the cost of electricity. And the horrible policy of using natural gas to generate electricity instead of spending more capital to build clean coal technology. You would never sink the capital and the seven years or so necessary to build a coal plant under free market system, the huge discount rate used by a market company would discount away any benefit from a project that consumes capital for seven years before returning revenue. Such large projects will be built only under a long term contract with fixed returns. With the 20 to 40% discount rates now in vogue, the quick-build but high operating cost gas-fired combustion turbine will always win out.