Ex-oil chief calls for gas rationing

Another political statement to confuse and place blame. This mostly helps the Democratic Congress. Consider what was said. From Google, he's a global warming, carbon caps, environmentalist and obviously buys into that agenda. He's donated lots to the Democrats (for example, the max in 2007 to Hillary); less to Republicans (these guys like to appear on both donation lists). He does not mention the Congressional actions disabling the energy industry. After the the President lifted the executive order banning drilling, how many drill rigs are moving offshore? None - because of the Congressional bans. There is no Presidential nuclear ban. Their is no Presidential coal ban. There is no Presidential laws restricting energy. There are no Presidential laws governing who and why one can sue. It's Congressinoal. The Congress, fueled by the Democrats' anti-energy green-environmental lobby, has effectively shut down the US energy industry. We have so much energy resources that we should be a net exporter of energy. The reason we're not is the Congressional bans, Congressional regulations, Congressional allowed environmental radical lawsuits, and Congressional micromanagement. And they all originate from the radical left. For example, a very short pipeline on the North Slope to transport oil from part of the "thousands of acres of currently leased lands" Peolosi likes to talk about has been delayed for years due to the radical left's lawsuits. A president of an oil company would seem to know green lawsuits and related regulatory overhead consume a large percentage of their cost and time. It's impossible to consider a person whose company makes billions of profit in the industry as ignorant of the cost structure, that leaves determining which agenda he's pushing. Sane people will just toss this into the shredder.

Isn't he the pot calling the kettle black! -- others "failed to exhibit the courage". Shell is the one oil co. doing business in the US that is working in iran aiding its illicit nuclear program. And Hofmeister was able to do it only because Shell is not a US co. and is not bound by US sanctions.

No new refineries, no new domestic sources, NIMBYism reigns supreme, environmental regulations constrain everything; what the hell do we expect.

This is pathetic!Rationing?Please.Lets make it worse.Get Congress involved?I hope this congress is wiped clean of the scum.They don't want to drill,well some heads are gonna roll!This is the worse Congress ever.They could care less about the people we need them out!

This guy sounds pretty Carter-esque. He has been revealed as one who buys off on the Algore man-made global warming lie. Sure, $65 is a good price...it's high enough to return a healthy profit to shareholders and appease the radical islamists that control OPEC. It also ensures the CEOs receive their mega-million bonuses and keeps the average tax payer-er-"consumer" with only one foot in the poor house instead of two. However, the true magic of $65 for oil companies is twofold: first, their profit margins (there's that most "evil" and misunderstood word again) won't be so excessive so it will keep the Marxist libs like Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, Reid et al from clamoring about "seizing those profits" via a windfall profits tax. Second, it will give them the perfect excuse to claim that "current market prices are too low to provide sufficient excess capital to finance new oil production and explore new sources of energy". Meanwhile, they keep us taxpaying working stiffs barely puttin' back and forth to the daily grind. Follow the money...this clown and those like him stand to make big money from the modern day indulgence scheme called "carbon offset [credits]", Don Quixote-style windmill chases and other asinine ploys to make us feel guilty and knuckle under to the "climate change" pseudo-science. He is so typical of his lib fellow travelers; "I got mine, screw you", "Do as I say, not as I do" and "We know what's better for you than you do, knave". Have any of these "most enlightened" idiots stopped to consider that maybe, just maybe, the Islamic Jihadists that want to kill us have taken notice of how effective hurricane Ike was at negatively impacting our economy? I'll bet CNN is on 24/7 in the caves, mosques and palaces in all of those "peaceful, loving" middle eastern OPEC countries. When will we stop listening to these so-called "experts" whose main interest is to maintain the status-quo and vote out the congressional resistance (Pelosi, Reid etc.) to our desire for increased energy availability. Not only do we need to drill, we also desperately need to build new refineries quickly AND disperse them as widely as possible to prevent our being crippled by a future terrorist attack or natural disaster. Time to tell the Marxists/socialists in congress and the environmental movement to just go to hell.

The Congress and Senate are busy working on more important issues like as the State of Pennsylvania just passed a no smoking in public ban. Once the big problems are tackled then government can take on the small ones like energy, economy, jobs, security.

Hofmeister makes a lot of sense until he refers to the gas rationing days of the Carter administration as, "successful." That's as laughable as remembering the embarassment of the Carter presidency. The real short term solution is for Congress to elimate the 40+ boutique fuels bottlenecking our limited refinery capacity and replace them with 1 or 2 national fuel formulas nationwide. If any state or city bureaucracy wants to deviate from the national formula in the future, require that they create the refinery capacity to meet their imposition. Congress needs to appoint an objective panel to investigate whether gasoline formulations are maximized for powerful combustion and clean burn. Currently, gasoline is formulated to combust less like a firecracker and more like the fuse. That's inefficient, a scam and Congress is complicit.

"President Bush unnecessarily waited 7 1/2 years as gas prices soared". Industry "expert"??? Gas price graphs show no such thing: http://www.randomuseless.info/gasprice/gasprice.html The fact is that when Bush took office the average price was just over $1.80 a gallon and then it plunged by a third to around $1.20 in '02 (so much for Bush and "Big Oil" conspiracists). It slowly worked its way back up until Katrina and Rita when it spiked, dropped, spiked and dropped again ending at about $2.40. So for the first 6 years of Bush's term prices went from $1.80 to $2.40. But then something drastic must have happened. Starting at the beginning of 2007 prices spiked hard and have been high ever since going from $2.40 to $4.40. Now what happened in 2007? It must have been something significant. I wonder what it was? Oh, that's right, the Democrats won control of Congress and any notion of an energy bill that was anything but an environmental bill would pass Congress vanished. Bush was not completely idle. Bush did push for opening ANWR but Senate Democrats, many of whom voted for ANWR when they knew Bill Clinton would veto the bill filibustered. And Clinton did veto ANWR in '96 citing that it would not help the market since it would take 10 years to get the oil - hey that's more than 10 years ago! Sure could use that million or two barrels a year now. Sure Bush could have done more. He could have pushed for off-shore, more nuclear and oil shale but who doubts what the Senate Democrats would have done with such a bill too.

Oh BS!!! oil is finally under $100 a barrel because people are finally using less thus shortening demand. Now this oil exec wants to ration oil guess what then that limits the supply so bingo the prices go right back up. If we are such a country of capitalism. Then lumberyards should get to charge as much as they want for lumber during a hurricane. They have the supply and we demand it. Lowes ought to raise their generator prices they have the supply we demand it. Thats the excuse the oil execs use. So now we demand less and they want to cut the supply. You need to play monopoly and do not pass go and go directly to jail you bunch of crooks.

I believe that most of the comments on this article reflect an absolute misunderstanding of Mr. Hofmeister's beliefs and his vision of where we, as a nation, should be headed to solve our energy crisis. The so called "rationing" he's speaking about, in the 1970's, was a valuable, timesaving measure for all of us that had to go through the gasoline crunch. What started out as a nightmare, i.e. 1-3 miles long lines of cars waiting to get gas and of course by the time you got near the station, they were out of it, ended up - with the rationing - in a calm, easy to live with, day to day scenario. The rationing was only this ---- (remember this was in 1970 when gas was less than 1/2 the price it is now) --- people whose license plates ended with even numbers could get $10 worth of gas on even numbered days. People whose license plates ended with uneven numbers could get $10 worth of gas on uneven numbered days. Special allowances were made for businesses or people who's livelihoods depended on driving. EVERYBODY was happy, co-operative and so-o-o glad to be out of the mad dashes to the gas pumps, only to find out there wasn't any gas. And suddenly there wasn't any more hoarding of gasoline in any container you had that would hold it. We all had gas and knew when the next time we could get it would be. Perhaps you're not experiencing the lack of gas, like we are here in NC. They are closing some schools, colleges, government offices, retail stores, etc. tommorrow, because there are no stations around here that have any gas at all. Our Governor announced today that we should be getting some large shipments tommorow night. The operative words here are "should be". Who knows what that means? Other Southern states are in the same boat, but had THEY handled it the way Mr. Hofmeister suggested, we would all have enough gas to go around. "Well, WE don't have to do anything," THEY said, "WE didn't have to do anything after Katrina." Of course you didn't, you idiots! There weren't any rigs or refineries offline after Katrina! But we knew immediately that we'd lost rigs and refineries after IKE, but THEY DID NOTHING! Have you ever noticed how governments seem to react the week of or after the crisis? I think their motto must be "Don' tax your brains! Think only about TODAY!" Anyway, right now all they can do is beg people to please not drive unless they absolutely must. That's not going to save any fuel, because most people don't have any gas to drive anywhere anyway, and there are a gazillion cars lining the sides of roads, whose drivers have called tow trucks to come get them because they're out of gas. That's not gonna' happen, because the towtrucks are sitting in line waiting to get gas, or are parked at their stations, out of gas themselves. This need never have happened.

I'm commenting two months after this article appeared. Since the thread was begun, oil prices have fallen, as has the economy. The election is over and everyone is adjusting to the "new world" that we find ourselves in. I read the comments on this article with great interest and I found John Hofmeister's site, "Citizens for Affordable Energy." (http://www.citizensforaffordableenergy.org/index.htm) I think the comments in this thread provide a picture of the emotions and differences involved out there. It can be very heated, especially when the prices were strangling us. I have my own opinions on energy production and the environment. I agree with Hofmiester on one key point. The problems are man made. Regardless of what your position is on global warming, the lack of alternative energy development, the cost erraticism, Mideast dependency, etc. are issues that should be being addressed by us all. Instead of cooperating and dialoguing, we fight. An example is in the debate on global warming. Are the polar caps melting because of us or are we in a natural cycle? Both sides are willing to fight to the death over their opinions. It is totally bipartisan and politicized. People are making a fortune off this debate. Regardless, we are dumping tons of hydrocarbon waste into the air daily. I lived in China for three years in the middle part of the decade. People over 80 were dying in masses of leukemia and stomach/intestinal cancer. I had the daily weather displayed on my Yahoo page everyday. There were only two forecasts; rainy (or snow) and hazy. Hazy meant a yellow sky from pollution. If the sun don't get us, the hydrocarbons will. We have got to start working together for the future of our children and grandchildren to pass along a world of energy alternatives and health. We've got to make it clean, one way or another. Regardless of the politics involved, this is basically what Hofmeister is saying on his site. It's not going to be easy to change. In fact, it will be hell. But, we've got to start talking about it. And, we as the people have got to take control of our elected officials and demand a proactive stance, not reactive. Those days are behind us. See if you don't agree with me when the gasoline prices soar again to $4.00+. We all need to be hammering them now to come up with a plan to prevent this.