Global Warming and Energy

Some eco-loon dumped a bunch of iron into the ocean to see if it would sequester carbon.

Funny how gasoline prices are coming down right before the election.

"The drop could provide a boost to consumer spending and influence next month's presidential race, where gas prices have been a hot-button issue for much of the campaign. Several battleground states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, are enjoying big price drops."

Imagine that.

"Gas prices have remained stubbornly high well past their traditional Memorial Day weekend peak, due largely to supply shortages and refinery woes on the West Coast and Midwest. But with oil inventories rising and production issues ebbing, prices have been easing the past week, a trend likely to accelerate. "This is very much gravity at work,'' Kloza says. "The faster prices soar, the more prone they are to panic sell-offs.""

The refinery problems just happened to get fixed right before the election? That's awful convenient. I don't buy it. The oil price has changed very little over the last quarter. It sounds more like somebody is manipulating the market to me. I bet Obama is releasing oil from the strategic reserve. He did it last year. I imagine he's quietly doing it now and we won't find out about it until after the election. Maybe George Soros or somebody bought up a bunch of futures in the spring and is selling them off now too. I do believe demand is falling because the economy is sinking again.

Here's last week's oil and gas report. According to this inventories, excluding the strategic reserve, are up. Imports are up. Blends are up, meaning that more ethanol is in our gas. The article doesn't provide the status for the strategic reserve. It's like people have been building reserves all summer, during the heavy driving season, which pushes prices up, and now that that season is over, they're reducing reserves, pushing the price down.

Apparently prices are down because the market is expecting Obama to top the strategic reserve.

"The most intriguing aspect of the debate over an upcoming SPR release has gone almost unnoticed. The White House is likely more than happy to have oil traders lose sleep wondering if President Obama will send prices plummeting the next morning. To the extent that this fear can discourage traders from buying oil, the president may have a weak, blunt, but not altogether futile weapon against ever-rising prices that does not require lifting a finger. His decision to tap the reserves last year after Libyan oil production collapsed, even when most analysts did not feel it was justified, signaled to the oil market that the president knows he has some oil in reserve—and he’s not afraid to use it."

Great.

Last year's deadly tornado season was a aberration, not part of a trend.