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

To: TideGlider who wrote (559915)	4/4/2004 11:31:52 PM
From: richardred	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

It seems even the Arab's know the true problems causing high prices President Bush wants to show resolve – in a muscle-flexing manner – and tell American voters he's forcing producers to take American consumers' concerns into consideration. But the problem is that American derivatives suffer due to internal factors and not due to crude shortages in the market. No new refinery has been built in the US for a quarter century, and environmental laws – federal and state – put pressure on certain types of gasoline leading to shortages and price rises. As for the stocks in the 26 countries of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – advised by the IEA, it is building fine. There are 2.5 billion barrels now in reservoirs, and the building rate is 800,000 bpd. There's no fear of a shortage with the abundance of more than three million bpd in the market; the fear is actually of a price crash with a slight drop in demand. It seems to be purely politics, and not business, that's creating the havoc around oil market procedures taken by producers. Ahmed Mustafa is an Arab writer based in Qatar