Senator Jones Statements on Energy

In the Thursday, July 28, 2011 edition of the Marion County Observer was an article by Leigh Williams entitled "Gas prices inch back toward record highs."  Much of the article was filled by statements by State Senator John O. Jones, a friend of the "energy interests."  Several of his comments call for response, so he is mine (I have taken the liberty of correcting two obvious word-choice errors in the original article):

"We have different blends of gasoline in this country.  Chicago has a different blend than we do because of pollution and government regulations.  If [the federal government] would life (lift?) those regulations all of our refineries could produce the same gas.  Gas produced in Wood River could be sold in California."  If that happened, which blend would go to California?  Would our "simple" and, presumably cheaper, blend be forced upon the good people of Los Angeles?  The picture above was taken in 1988!  This was after the worst of the smog years.  Maybe we could vote on it, LA's 8,000,000 people vs Salem's 8,000 people.  OOPS! [Tad]

I was born in New York City in 1939 and lived for a number of years there and just across the Hudson River in New Jersey.  When we went to visit "in the country" we would always remark, as we returned home again, about the grey cover over New York City from their terrible smog.

Senator Jones goes on the say, "We could help everyone if the federal government could go to a single standard." I hate to point it out, but smog KILLS people.  In the days of heavy smog, hundreds of deaths each year would be attributed to smog.  How Sen. Jones can think that doing away with modern flexible standards would help anyone but the oil companies is beyond imagination. [Tad]

Senator Jones then goes off into some sort of imaginary world: "We have somebody filling up a few weeks ago for $50 and not (now?) that costs $80 which is an additional $30 that can't be spent on other things."  I suppose it all depends upon the meaning of "a few weeks."  Earlier in the article author Williams notes that, 'on average, [gas costs] 8.4 cents per gallon higher than one month ago.  Let's take that almost five weeks to mean "a few weeks ago."  So if one bought $50 worth of gasoline a month ago, at $3.709 per gallon, they got 13.48 gallons of gas.  At the higher price of 3.799 their 13.48 gallons would cost $51.21, HARDLY the $30 increase that Jones mentions.  But, of course, using outlandish figures is what politicians do - facts be DAMNED! [Tad]

We might consider looking at two other culprits - Big Oil and Oil Speculators (businessmen).  Everyone in the industry with current knowledge recognizes that Oil Speculators (these are business people who "play" the commodities markets, running prices up to the point where they can sell their holding at as large a profit as possible) were largely responsible for the Spring prices increases.  But as the chart above shows, the Oil Companies are taking advantage of that price run-up to achieve record profits (the blue bar represents oil costs, the red bar, corporate profits - all for the second quarter of the year, 2009, 2010, and 2011).  Senator Jones might consider looking at his sponsors for some answers rather than continuing to try to "baffle us with bullshit."

If we, American citizens, let ourselves be persuaded by the BS factories and don't take the trouble to learn the truth, then, of course, we will achieve the future we deserve.  Or, to use an old Indian saying, "If we continue to go the way we are headed, we will get there." [Tad]