Here & There Column 2-15-11

Economy Can't Sustain Rising Oil Prices

Folks are struggling to get by, food prices are going up, the overall economy is not good, government is stuck between a rock and a hard place, unemployment appears to be not improving and oil prices continue their steady climb upward.
It's getting to the point where you can't believe anyone.
On any given day the media is fed information that the U.S. crude supplies are falling and oil prices are going up.
The next day we are told that the crisis in Egypt is sending chills up the spine of the oil industry industry so guess what folks this gives those oil distributors the right to raise the prices immediately at the pumps.
Have we been told that the crisis in Egypt has stopped or hindered the flow of mid-east oil?
And now the latest blurb is that indications are that Saudi Arabia could be running out of oil
and might be over promising on its capacity to supply oil.
Should we here in the United States have to worry if the Saudis under deliver on output when we sit on billions of barrels of American oil near ANWR (the flat, desolate uninhabited land in Alaska)?
The message here is that someone in Washington should start immediately showing responsibility to the folks in this great country of ours that we will not longer depend on the mid-east for our heating oil and gasoline supplies (but don't hold your breath on this one).
And yet more interesting news is telling us that new drilling methods can get us into what is being referred to as previously out-of-reach oil in our western part of the U.S. and of course the big question here is could this reverse a long-time decline in domestic production of crude?.....and could this effect the present rising oil prices?
We are all being affected by the gas prices which have risen from costly to just plain aggravating. Oil prices among other commodities, rises and falls in value as the economy moves but it just appears that oil companies don't look at it this way.
The rise in fuel prices is not a sign that a healthy economy is back on track.
We would hope that it is not greed.....we need objective logical reasoning here or return as we did several years ago back to alternative heating methods and more fuel efficient vehicles.