Ron Amundson’s Political Blog

A most interesting discussion by senators as concerns energy speculation. Al Franken brought this to light when he brought up Norm Coleman’s vote against it.

GovTrack: Senate Record: STOP EXCESSIVE ENERGY SPECULATION ACT OF… (110-s20080722-17).

Its pretty clear no one wants to look at the one or more elephants in the room….

1. The idea is to game the speculation markets, such that oil prices will drop…. The differences are on how to do so. and….

2. Oil companies see this as the potential for a huge land grab, which they know is unlikely to be available after this session.

3. Likely all senators agree a coordinated plan with multiple attack paths are needed… but Republicans want to protect the speculator markets from going offshore and apart from the fact their campaign contributors would be severly hurt by such, they also would likely loose any and all future control, and once the genie is out, he is not likely to come back in. Democrats want to protect the environment and the associated economies, and see through the land grab issue, the speculator issue, and likely feel that increased capacity through leases is unlikely to have much of an impact either short or long term as to oil prices, albeit many likely do see the issue of some big businesses making a windfall at the expense of others.

Again, the goal is to up-end the speculator market, such that oil prices will drop, all the while ensuring that not too many investment banks and speculators dont loose their shirt.

Why not be brutally honest and put all the cards on the table, illuminate those elephants… other solutions might just well appear.

If the elephants I presented are true, and even partly true which is a huge guess….

1. Look into a world solution… work with China, Russia, the EU, India, and other countries. It does affect us all… easy in a blog, not so much in practice. Yet, putting speculator limits on US soil, will accomplish nothing, if the speculation market just goes off shore.

2. Put huge fear in the speculation markets, by investing in infrastructure to make oil shale recovery economically and ecologically viable. If that happens, the US reserve is huge… and it will make speculators run for cover. Its also a slow process, and likely many incremental steps will occur along the way, thus allowing only but the highest risk speculators time to jump out with safety. (it is banking on unknown technology, with a multitude of pitfalls though…. it could well end up failing)

3. Follow the Franken plan part 2 as concerns the strategic petroleum reserve. It will create a huge ripple in the markets…. and it may be possible to capture data to offer some predictability as concerns the speculator markets in the future. It may end up accomplishing very littel too… but at least knowledge would be gained to assist in future strategy.

4. Follow the Franken plan part 3 as concern conservation… its simple, and proven effective.

At that time… we can likely get through the elections, and by then be working on a longer term energy strategy which includes multiple attacks on energy which likely will include drilling in some capacity. What must happen, is something short term, or way too many folks are going to be in a world of hurt come winter, and the high costs of home heating.