The United States and a major portion of the remainder of the world has been held hostage to the OPEC nations for nearly 35 years. The first real problem came in 1973, but the seeds of the dependence on foreign oil were planted some years before when the environmentalists began to influence vote greedy politicians who bowed to the anti-oil crowd and began to impose draconian regulations on the domestic oil producers. Next, we heard the words “Congress needs to establish a national energy policy.” For anyone who cares to listen, the energy policy had already been formulated by the time those words were uttered. What was it you ask? The regulation of domestic oil production to appease the “greenies” and that is still the policy. (It should be noted by all who will understand that a government (politicians) which seeks to mollify certain elements of society always brings forth a national policy on whatever might be the issue at hand, though such policy is usually unconstitutional.)

As soon as the domestic oil production began to wane, OPEC began to regulate the flow of oil to do what they had never been able to do and that is control the pricing of crude oil. With the stupidity of the “greenies’ and the greedy liberal Democrat politicians (along with a few idiot Republicans) looking for votes, the door opened wide for the OPEC to play monopoly and I don’t mean the real estate board game.

The liberal contingent of the American public, always eager to blame companies in this nation for anything and everything, fell for the Democrat line that oil companies were engaging in a customer rip off scheme with their high prices. Then the peanut farmer, President Jimmy Carter and his Democrat held Congress passed the windfall oil tax, which only served to lessen any incentive to produce oil domestically. Exploration and drilling companies and their suppliers went out of business in droves.  In one section of Illinois, where many drillers and suppliers had their businesses, there are either empty yards and abandoned buildings or storage lots filled with rusting machinery. What “peanut brained” Carter couldn’t understand was that the tax killed off those whose livelihood depended on the income that domestic production created and in the process gave OPEC the opening it had been seeking.

Another false idea is that distributors and service station owners conspire to drive up prices and then they blame OPEC for it. After all the investigations by the government into price gouging are finished, the conclusion after thousands of tax dollars are spent on the investigations, the verdict is always the same: no price gouging can be found. The anti-oil crowd then runs off to find other windmills to battle.

The same ones who are eager to blame American companies are loath to challenge OPEC. They claim that OPEC doesn’t control prices at all. Then please explain why OPEC has cut production time after time to keep the prices up when they begin to fall? Doesn’t it make sense to ask that since OPEC produces the lion’s share of the world’s crude oil, and if they aren’t the ones causing high oil prices, why do they keep cutting production to shore up crude prices?” If they aren’t the ones, then it would be a total exercise in futility for them to do so. Buyers would look elsewhere for cheaper crude when OPEC raised prices. Since there isn’t an elsewhere, OPEC has a corner on the market.

In the United States such a business practice is called a monopoly and OPEC, if it was headquartered here, would be hit with an anti-trust violation of immense proportions. Do you ever hear of such from the politicians and the purveyors of liberal mantra news? Of course you don’t because that would ruin their constant refrain of blaming American oil companies and related businesses.

The strangle hold on oil by OPEC can be brought to an end if “We the people of the United States”  will hold the anti-oil politician’s feet to the fire and demand an end to their interference with domestic production. In Sorting It Out, the only energy policy we need is for the government to get out of the way and allow oil producers to do what they know how to do, which is produce oil.

© 10-15-2006 DEC