More Oil And Slick Characters

So, according to this Swampland post (in the update), John W. McBush “has criticized oil company profits as excessive, and called for investigations of possible price manipulation, (but) he is coming out strongly against an oil company profits tax.”

Yeah, that will accomplish a lot (and of course, he then used this as an excuse to attack Barack Obama and compare him to Jimmy Carter again, which I find to be an odd strategy since only older voters would remember him anyway; does this mean, then, that McCain has written off anyone who is about half his age or younger?).

What I’ve always wondered about is why the oil companies haven’t expanded their domestic refineries for years (since the time of Carter’s windfall profits tax I believe, but that is hardly an excuse for these robber barons).

With that in mind, I happened to come across this item about Conoco-Phillips and its attempt to expand one of its refineries in Illinois (right in Obama’s backyard, as it turns out), but the expansion was blocked by the EPA because the agency ruled that Conoco-Phillips “did not plan to use the best technology for cutting emissions.”

While I am utterly shocked that some long-dormant enforcement reflex on the part of a government agency under this regime somehow sprung to life, I would also like to point out (as shown in this story) that the reason Big Oil hasn’t expanded its refineries really doesn’t have anything to do with what either political party does, truth be told; it is pure supply and demand, and they really don’t feel much like obeying the law either.

Another consideration is feeding their U.S. and overseas markets (notably China and India); they don’t want to take any of their operations offline for expansion or maintenance because it would mean slowing down the output, and this was true after Katrina also (a time when price due to supply impact promised to remain high for some time).

I don’t know if it will be possible for Barack Obama to tax the profits of these corporate criminals in order to assist poorer Americans with their energy costs. But at least he’s willing to try, which is a lot more than can be said for his opponent, as big a lackey for Big Oil as anyone could ever imagine (here).