Chicago Daily Observer

Nov 2008 85.60 -0.99

Dec 2008 85.60 -1.02

Jan 2009 85.90 -1.01

Feb 2009 86.10 -1.09

Mar 2009 87.11 -0.37

RBOB Gasoline

Nov 2008 1.9911 -0.0362

Dec 2008 89.40

Jan 2009 88.95

Feb 2009 89.13

Mar 2009 89.25

April 2009 89.42

RBOB Petroleum Nov 2008 2.1190

Nymex Crude Future 93.93 -4.60
Dated Brent Spot 89.71 -5.16
WTI Cushing Spot 93.97 -4.56

High 106.91

Low 95.04
Settle 96.37

When the public’s loathing of Congress is soaring, why is the re-election of Sen. Dick Durbin, an architect of that body’s many disorders, thought to be a cinch?

How low is Congress’ job approval rating? While President George W. Bush’s is a dismal 32 percent, according to RealClearPoli- tics.com, Congress’ is an even more wretched 21 percent. As the Senate majority whip and second in command, Durbin can’t escape blame.

One can find many reasons why Durbin shouldn’t be re-elected and his Republican rival Steve Sauerberg deserves a closer look: Durbin’s grinding partisanship, among the worst in the Senate, according to washingtonpost.com; the millions he has raised from clout-heavy, legal, securities, investment and real estate interests, according to OpenSecrets.org; his craven about-face on abortion; his unabashed love of earmarks. True, some voters might support Durbin for those reasons. But when measured by the Democratic mantra—the willingness or ability to change ... Read More...

Last 91.68
High 94.32
Low 90.55

Last 96.15
High 96.40
Low 96.35
Change -5.03

Nymex Crude Future 100.73 -1.85
Dated Brent Spot 95.33 -2.30
WTI Cushing Spot 100.60 -1.98

Barack Obama has made his economic thinking excruciatingly clear, so it also is clear that his running mate should have been not Sen. Joe Biden, but Rumpelstiltskin.

He spun straw into gold, a skill an Obama administration will need in order to fulfill its fairy-tale promises.

Obama recently said he would “require that 10 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term — more than double what we have now.” Note the verb “require” and the adjective “renewable.”

By 2012 he would “require” the economy’s huge energy sector to — here things become comic — supply half as much energy from renewable sources as already is being supplied by just one potentially renewable source. About 20 percent of America’s energy comes from nuclear energy produced using fuel rods, which, when spent, can be reprocessed into fresh fuel.

Robert McCullough, the “analyst known for his work with a Washington utility trying to prove that Enron manipulated power markets” (in the words of Newswatch: Energy), is back in the news with a report sure to appeal to the economically naive in Congress and elsewhere.

In his report McCullough concludes, “All available evidence indicates that the price spike of July 3rd was a form of market failure—most likely due to the significant concentration in the energy sector in recent years.” But his evidence for “significant concentration in the energy sector” consists of an estimate of market concentration (using HHI as his measure) based on the CFTC‘s Commitments of Traders data for trading on NYMEX. And of course, even if a trader held a large share of contracts on the NYMEX, that is far far from being anything like controlling a large share of the international oil ... Read More...

The mayor’s favorite pool boy—airport operations boss Dave “Pool Boy” Ochal—is at it again, throwing his vast political clout in the faces of his neighbors after the storms knocked out power this week.

Ochal’s Far Northwest Side neighborhood was without power for two days in the summer heat. Neighbors dug into their own pockets to pay for emergency generators and shipped their elderly, including some who required oxygen therapy, to live with friends and family who had power. Then neighbors said they witnessed a political miracle Wednesday night:

RALSTON: This energy story seems to be changing every day, I want to make sure I have it straight. It has been played up a lot in stories that you were against drilling, and tapping the petroleum reserve but you have reversed on that and now you are for both. You want to compromise on energy, so you don’t really favor drilling but for political reasons you are going to change your position. This is change we can believe in Senator?

Democratic candidate Barack Obama criticized Republican John McCain on Tuesday for taking a page out of “the Cheney playbook” on energy, overlooking his own support of oil-friendly policies that the unpopular vice president helped to craft.

Obama voted for a 2005 energy bill backed by President Bush that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production, a measure for which Vice President Dick Cheney played a major role. McCain opposed the bill, saying at the time that it included billions in unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry.

It was hard to not get twisted up in pretzel knots listening to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose explanation on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” about why she hasn’t allowed a vote on Republican energy legislation that would ease restrictions on offshore drilling was, to be polite, confusing.

It may have left some in the audience feeling bewildered as a seabird fouled by an oil spill.

Barack Obama is one crafty fellow, reaping political success out of career that got precious little done. He has accomplished very little legislatively in his entire career; his vaunted accomplishments in the Illinois Senate were more the result of the handicraft of his political ally and mentor State Democratic head Emil Jones (who tacked Obama’s name on legislation to bolster his career) than his own work on the issues .

Obama has done virtually nothing at the Senate level—he has not even seen fit to call a meeting of the Committee he heads, the Senate Subcommittee on European Affairs. Despite its name, Obama’s subcommittee has some oversight over Afghanistan. While he now says on the campaign trail that Afghanistan requires more focus and attention , he overlooked his own jurisdictional responsibilities in that theatre for the entire time he has served in the US Senate. He refuses to take time ... Read More...

Mitch McConnel (R-KY) proposes offshore drilling and Ken Salazar (D-CO) objects to offshore drilling over a series of increasing prices.

“There are things you can do individually, though, to save energy. Making sure your tires are properly inflated – simple thing. But we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling – if everybody was just inflating their tires? And getting regular tune-ups? You’d actually save just as much!” Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)

Estimated Impact:
90 Million Barrels of Oil savings annually with proper tire inflation.

There are:
10 Billion Barrels of Oil in ANWR
18 Billion Barrels of Oil in the Outer Shelf
1 Trillion Barrels in Oil Shale in the USA

In ANWR alone Sen. Obama is off by a factor of 100. In a time of high energy prices, perhaps we could both use proper inflation and drill for more oil. There is no convincing evidence that conservation and increased production are mutually exclusive.

Lets see, the price of oil has dropped nearly $14/barrel in the last two days. Perhaps the Feds should rescue the oil speculation industry before losses are too high for oil traders.

The New York Times says the Economic Slowdown has pushed oil prices down, which is hard to swallow given that the economy is still growing, manufacturing is still booming, consumer spending rose in May at a record rate, and the Dow Jones was up over 200 points, none of which are signs of a slowing economy. Perhaps people are using less gasoline, because they don’t want to pay so much for fuel, a possiblity that the Times ignores.

And perhaps we should all read the Waco Tribune, for some buried news, and a quote from a Chicago man, that didn’t make the New York Times:

Light, sweet crude fell $6.35 to $138.83 a barrel in electronic ... Read More...

Over the 4th of July holiday, I, like many of my colleagues, was able to speak with hundreds of constituents. Folks were more eager than ever to talk to me about unaffordable energy prices. And when they asked what Washington is doing to address this issue, unfortunately, I had to tell them nothing. But not because of a lack of Republican will.

Despite Democrat promises of ‘common sense’ plans to lower gas prices, the average price of a gallon of gas has increased by more than 76 percent since they took control of Congress.

To listen to Democrats, Congress can’t wait to crack down on all those greedy “speculators” who are driving up the price of oil. To listen to one Democrat in particular, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, is far more illuminating.

If the powerful majority whip is looking a little thin these days, it’s because he has been feeling the squeeze.

On his left is his party, wild to find a villain on whom to blame high gas prices, intent on deflecting attention away from its own antidrilling policies. It has settled on those unfortunate traders who deal daily in contracts for the world’s short supply of oil.

The Natural Resources Defense Council filed a federal court appeal Wednesday, alleging that BP Whiting’s air permit will allow an expanded refinery to emit substantially more pollution than the Clean Air Act allows.

The environmental group hopes the lawsuit will send BP and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management back to the drawing board to draft a new, more stringent permit.

A little more than a month ago in this very paper I wrote that it was time for the GOP to go after the Democrats on the energy crisis that has been brought about by Democrat policies. If you notice every Democrat in a marginally competitive district has now coined a new term, “the failed Bush and so and so energy policy” depending on who they are running against.

Why are they doing this? Because energy prices, more notably gas prices are the biggest issues in this election. They know they are vulnerable on this issue, and that it has been the policy of the Democratic party to make it hard to explore, drill and refine oil in this country. It was fashionable in America for the liberals to say that our cars should get smaller (as theirs got bigger) and that we should put higher and higher taxes ... Read More...

Angry at the high price of gasoline? If it bothers you to be shelling out over 4 dollars a gallon, how would you feel if you knew the prices didn’t have to be that high? Angrier?
Well, the truth is, this price gouging – between the multiple layered government taxes placed on each gallon of gas and the high prices being charged by foreign suppliers— didn’t have to happen. We could have had energy independence, plenty of gasoline, and much lower prices at the pump.
Who’s to blame? A former president. Over a decade ago President Bill Clinton vetoed a measure, passed by the Congress that would have allowed drilling in the United States where there is plenty of high grade oil to be found. We could have fuel reserves right now had that veto not been used.
But we don’t read about that in the ... Read More...

Another rollercoaster day on oil markets… here’s an interesting observation from a Bloomberg article on the topic:

“Refiners are managing the crude supply they have on hand because they are worried about weak product demand,’’ said Tim Evans, an energy analyst for Citi Futures Perspective in New York. “Both gasoline and distillate demand over the last four weeks are down from a year ago.’’

Fuel consumption averaged 20.4 million barrels a day in the four weeks ended June 6, down 1.3 percent from a year earlier, the department said.

U.S. gasoline demand increases during the summer, when Americans take to the highways for vacations. The peak- consumption period lasts from the Memorial Day weekend in late May to Labor Day in early September.

The price of oil jumped $11 per barrel last Friday (a record daily dollar amount), after a $5 move on Thursday. For perspective; just seven short years ago, in 2001, oil was trading at about $20/barrel.
The spike in oil was due to a confluence of factors. A senior Israeli official suggested an attack on Iran – to prevent the latter country from acquiring nuclear weapons – was a possibility. The European Central Bank raised the specter of a rate hike, which hurt the dollar, especially after the unemployment rate jumped to 5.5%, possibly pushing any Fed rate hikes further off into the future.
A re-ignited oil price has re-energized the outlook for recession from some analysts. Despite avoiding one so far, these analysts are convinced that a teetering consumer will be pushed over the edge by $4 ... Read More...

Because the American people want one thing more than anything: their American lifestyle. And that lifestyle is threatened by a couple of things:

1. Oil prices

2. Environmental extremists

The winning political message is going to be:

You elect me, and I will vote yes—-to drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

You elect me, and I will vote yes—-to drilling for oil off the Atlantic Coast and the Pacific Coast.

You elect me, and I will vote yes—-to drilling in Alaska’s Anwar.

You elect me, and I will vote yes—-to oil shale extraction in Colorado.

I have been watching the news and the reports on how high the gas
prices are. All the networks followed the same pattern in their coverage. The report shows prices at $6.00 a gallon and higher, they interview people who say that they can’t handle the prices that it is now a choice of gas in their car or food on the table.

They cut to various government and Wall Street experts who opine on how high the prices might go and then attempt to explain why. It’s China and India’s economic expansion, or it’s some madman in one of a hundred countries who threatened to cut off oil to get even with
us or some slight.

Then they go to a Democratic congressperson and the finger gets pointed to the administration for not having an “Energy
Plan”! The networks all put the focus on how we ... Read More...

When no one was looking, the “world food crisis” elbowed out “global climate change” as our planet’s Numero Uno calamity.

As if that weren’t bad enough, we now discover that the two are connected; with this attempt to fix the climate by shifting away from fossil fuels to more “eco-friendly” renewable fuels, we have ended up starving people in Africa and Asia.

Seems like we can hardly settle on one cataclysm before another one demands our attention.

Food riots have broken out around the world; grain-producing countries have banned exports to feed their own people; food prices in the U.S. and around the world have gone through the roof. The UN—its usual bold self—created a task force to study the matter.

Earlier this morning, I saw Barack Obama speak on television in Indianapolis on the need to have lower gasoline prices.

Well, who could be against that? Obama, for one.

Senator John McCain has proposed a summer federal gasoline “tax holiday,” which Obama opposes. Hillary Clinton supports it.

In 2000, Illinois had a summer gas tax holiday, which then-State Senator Barack Obama voted for, as State Senator Matt Murphy (R-Mount Prospect), points out in this Illinois Republican Party press release:

The gas tax moratorium passed in 2000 with Barack Obama’s help lowered gas prices and saved Illinois drivers hundreds of millions of dollars. So I’m surprised to learn that Obama now opposes a federal moratorium this summer. Lowering gas prices would deliver immediate relief to American drivers and help grow our economy. It worked in Illinois, and it would work nationwide. John McCain understands the plight of hardworking American families, that’s ... Read More...