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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (56945)	7/29/2004 7:28:49 PM
From: quehubo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793913

Presently we are the worlds biggest consumer of oil by a very large margin. We have the only military than can protect the Gulf. I have said many times that when some large nation in the gulf area falls the worlds oil consuming nations will be compelled to do whatever it takes to keep oil flowing from the gulf. Realistically our dependence on oil from the gulf region will only grow from here because oil supplies outside the gulf area in total are in steep decline. I hope Kerry promotes strong increases in fuel economy, and promotes including vans and trucks in the standards. But no politician has the fortitude to bring that one to fruition. Spend some time studying global demographics and oil supply patterns and you will be better suited to appreciate our future dependence on ME oil.

To: Lane3 who wrote (56945)	7/29/2004 9:54:28 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793913

Aren't customers fungible just as oil is fungible? Yes karen the customers are fungible and the oil is fungible. Which means it doesn't matter who buys what from where, the oil had better keep flowing from the Gulf or we're all going to feel the shortage. In a nutshell.

To: Lane3 who wrote (56945)	7/29/2004 10:56:30 PM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 793913

When you talk about fungibility, it means that any part is pretty much the same as the rest. I would argue against the fungibility argument, because of the costs involved. You can't tell a barrel of Texas crude from a barrel of Saudi crude just by looking at them, nor a barrel of north Atlantic crude, nor a barrel of Mexican crude, nor a barrel of Nigerian crude, nor a barrel of Russian crude, but what it takes to get those barrels to the refinery is vastly different between barrels. Nevertheless, it's true that we can't simply walk away from Middle East oil at present. Even if we don't need it, our trading partners do, and we can't function if they can't function. It would certainly solve some problems if we locked ourself away from the rest of the world, as Japan did in 1633, and China did for centuries, off and on, but would cause far more problems than it solved. These days Japan and China need oil, too. So does Europe. And they all need the Pax Americana. As do we.