Clinton vows to take on OPEC

[Clay Davis]

HILLARY Clinton has vowed to confront OPEC, after oil broke the $US120 a barrel barrier on the eve of the next nomination showdown.

"We're going to go right at OPEC," Clinton said, on a last-minute campaign swing ahead of Tuesday's Indiana and North Carolina primary clashes against her Democratic rival Barack Obama.

"They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world," Clinton said, sparking cheers in a crowded fire station.

"They decide how much oil they're going to produce and what price they're going to put it at," Clinton said.

"That's not a market. That's a monopoly," Clinton said, in her latest condemnation of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, as her campaign takes on an increasingly populist tone amid rising gasoline prices.

OPEC, which produces 40 per cent of the world's oil, comprises Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

Clinton has said she would amend US anti-trust law to allow the US to confront OPEC, and also promised to tackle the group through the World Trade Organisation, if she is elected president.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23654023-2703,00.html

What an idiot of a politician.

This tough-talking bowser rhetoric isn't going to pump any more oil from the ground.

 

[MightyFighting]

Yes, the problem is the wells are running dry.

Ain't nothing H-Rod can do about it.

 

[bit_pattern]

Seconded.

What a ____ing joke. Appealing to people's fear of foreigners, disgusting. If she had half a brain and any sort of integrity and intestinal fortitude she would take on the hedge-traders, who are driving the price of oil and who mostly trade out of the US.

 

[bit_pattern]

It's a rare day that I agree with Tom Friedman but there you go...

No energy to tackle the energy crisis

Thomas Friedman
May 3, 2008

IT IS great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on petrol, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer's travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our petrol tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we'll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton petrol-holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz, of Global Business Network, describes as the true American energy policy today: "Maximise demand, minimise supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most."
Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

But here's what's scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you would want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — petrol consumption and petrol-guzzling cars — and you would want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Are you sitting down? Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again — which often happens — investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That's how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.

The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President George Bush said he would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Bush — showing not one iota of leadership — refused to get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, runs two years.

"It's a disaster," says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of the biggest wind-power developers in America. "Wind is a very capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready to take 'congressional risk'. They say if you don't get the (production tax credit) we will not lend you the money to buy more turbines and build projects."

It is also alarming, says Rhone Resch, Solar Energy Industries Association president, that the US has reached a point "where the priorities of Congress could become so distorted by politics" that it would turn its back on the next great global industry — clean power — "but that's exactly what is happening". If the wind and solar credits expire, says Resch, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000 jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion worth of investments that won't be made.

While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America's premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany — 540 high-paying engineering jobs — because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.

In 1997, says Resch, America was the leader in solar energy technology, with 40% of global solar production. "Last year, we were less than 8%, and even most of that was manufacturing for overseas markets." The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brown-out.

Thomas Friedman is a New York Times columnist.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opini...1209235151930.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

 

[Total_Juddshanks]

This is one of the few instances where a front page story on CNN has elicited a genuine LOL from me.

Seriously, what is she going to do, threaten to boycott OPEC if they don't do her bidding? Complain about the 84% positive coverage that big oil gets in the media? Take them to the WTO and then cry when the decision goes against her? Claim to have located enormous oil reserves in midwest America whilst hiding from sniper fire?

The simple equation is-

1.) There is huge demand for oil and limited supply
2.) The cost of a product reflects the relationships between supply and demand.

This is what big kids call economics.

That is just astonishingly stupid, populist crap, as dumb as anything Bush ever came up with.

Surely Americans are finally going to realise the utter contempt for their intelligence such a transparent, utterly meaningless vote grabbing statement displays?

 

[JW Frogen]

The only way the US can take on OPEC is with a renewed alliance with South Korea.

Hyundai Getzs’ for every American!

Who said the Korean war was a bad idea?

 

[Elle]

Nigeria oil rebels considering Obama truce appeal
04 May 2008 16:04:22 GMT
Source: Reuters

LAGOS, May 4 (Reuters) - Rebels who have stepped up attacks on Nigeria's oil industry in the last month said on Sunday they were considering a ceasefire appeal by U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has launched five attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta since it resumed a campaign of violence in April, forcing Royal Dutch Shell <RDSa.L> to shut more than 164,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).

"The MEND command is seriously considering a temporary ceasefire appeal by Senator Barack Obama. Obama is someone we respect and hold in high esteem," the militant group said in an e-mailed statement.

MEND did not say when or where Obama, the leading candidate for the Democratic ticket for November's U.S. presidential election, made the appeal. It said it hoped the government would use any ceasefire to improve conditions for its detained leader, Henry Okah.

The militant group also claimed responsibility for an attack on Shell facilities in southern Bayelsa state on Saturday, which caused a spill and prompted the company to shut some production.

The attack came a day after a federal court ruled that Okah should be tried for treason and gun-running in secret. Angered by the ruling, MEND had threatened prompt reprisals against the oil industry.

Peace talks between the government and militants to resolve the unrest in the Delta stalled after Okah was arrested in Angola in September. He was extradited to Nigeria in February to face trial.

The volatile Niger Delta is the heart of Nigeria's oil industry, which exports around two million barrels per day (bpd), but energy multinationals have been struggling to cope with a wave of violence in the vast area.

As part of a campaign for greater local control over oil revenues, MEND launched violent attacks in early 2006 which shut a fifth of Nigerian output and drove up world oil prices.

The latest wave of attacks and an eight-day strike by senior oil workers at U.S. energy giant Exxon Mobil <XOM.N> which ended on Thursday, had slashed Nigeria's output by 50 percent, helping to push oil prices to new records.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L04445785.htm

 

[Clay Davis]

There's diplomacy and then there's sabre-rattling. Hillary Clinton is looking more like Bush every day.

And Obama's the only one that sees sense on this "fuel tax holiday" plan.

 

[medusala]

Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on petrol, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer's travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our petrol tanks. What a way to build our country.

One of the worst policy decisions by Howard. Regardless of one's opinion on Global Warming (and Rudd the hypocrite is a fully paid up member) the govt should have kept CPI indexation on fuel tax.