| Tuesday, April 25, 2006 |
| Bush noxious gas fix |
Is it surprising that George W. Bush's answer to easing gas prices is to suspend environmental rules for gas formulations that are intended to produce cleaner air? Not a bit. Will it help? Signs point to "no." From Bloomberg today:
The plan to waive rules governing fuel blends could do more harm than good, according to Bob Slaughter, head of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, the refining industry's trade group, based in Washington.
Refiners are replacing MTBE, a gasoline additive that fouled drinking water supplies, with ethanol because of changes in fuel rules in the energy legislation Bush signed in August.
Over the past week, shortages have occurred in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland, according to the AAA, the nation's largest motoring club. About 60 service stations in the Dallas area experienced spot shortages earlier this month.
``The President offered a piecemeal approach to alternative energy based on programs authorized in years past,'' Representative Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, said in a statement released after Bush's speech.
Part of the reason, is that high fuel costs are in part because of refinery capacity (and in the Northeast, that does include slow processing of summertime fuels by refiners short on ethanol), but are even more impacted by international events, like the U.S.' continued saber rattling at Iran. That has prompted headlines like this:
-- Iran will halt cooperation with the UN's nuclear agency should the country be subjected to sanctions, negotiator Ali Larijani said. He said that such penalties would have ``important consequences for oil,'' Agence France-Presse reported. ... and that keeps the price of a barrel going in only one direction: up.
If Bush wants to actually do something about gas prices, he could take a cue from a guy who said the following during the presidential campaign of 2000:
“I think the president ought to get on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say, ‘We expect you to open your spigots.’ … The president of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price.”
Here's who said it. Instead, our oil man (and his oil friends) in the White House are leaving the phone on the hook. They could also stop threatening to nuke Iran, but then, what fun would that be. A windfall profits tax could go a long way toward funding that alternative fuel stuff Bush keeps prattling on uselessly about. And not waging simultaneous conflicts with the entire oil producing world? That would be freaking fantastic.
Instead, going forward, we'll get to choke on the air and on the price at the gas pump.
Tags: Bush, Current Affairs, News, News and politics, gas prices, Oil, Iran, the environment |
posted by JReid @ 2:18 PM   |
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