Oil Shortages

After a brutally hard day that consisted of playing free golf at one of the nicer private clubs in Central Florida, I had roughly a one hundred mile drive home on some of the back roads and highways that meander through Central Florida swampland. Recently, I can't help but to compare the prices on every single gas station I pass in the hope of saving possibly a whole dollar on my forty dollar fillup. Gas was $2.79 in Ocala when I left, and I was amazed to see that unleaded was still in the $2.60 range in some of the more rural towns on the way. I had three quarters of a tank, but my inner jew forced me to want to stop and fill up before I got back to Ocala and save that dollar. So I pulled over to fill up and found that the first station was out of everything but premium... and so were the next three. Eventually, when I got back to Ocala, I pulled into a Racetrack gas station to grab some Tacquitos and was amazed at the panic. Cars were lined up 10-15 deep at each pump and the tanks were starting to run dry, whipping people into a frenzy- fueled (pun intended) I'm sure by rumors of gas topping $5 in Atlanta.

An off-shore oil rig being pulled off a bridge

Sensing the opportunity for political grandstanding, Senators such as Democratic nincompoop and former space cadet (I don't even know what that term means, but he did used to be an astronaut so it seems applicable) Bill Nelson have seized on the Katrina tragedy resulting in a loss of 25% of oil production as a mandate to express their staggering economic incompetence and solidify their base of environmental wackos. Sen. Nelson (who I will refer to derogatorily as Captain Planet the rest of this post) has proposed that gas prices be frozen and warned that the administration may use this opportunity to push for more drilling.

With our powers combined- we can ignore the key principle of economics!

This makes absolutely no sense because we are facing a SUPPLY problem. Captain Planet's constituents should demand that he enroll in economics 101 and learn the basics of supply and demand. Since we are facing a problem of supply, freezing the gas prices at a lower than equilibrium price will only serve to increase demand- resulting in longer lines and faster shortages, exactly like what happened in the 1970's when Nixon froze gas prices.

The other predominant brainstorm between Captain Planet and friends is to release oil from the strategic national petroleum reserve- what they plan to do when the reserve is depleted and supply is still short is beyond me.

I have two theories regarding the apparent disconnect from reality suffered by Captain Planet and friends. One- they have no idea what the law of supply and demand means, in which case they are totally unqualified to make economic decisions for the country, or Two- Captain Planet is exploiting gas price panic for political gain, in which case Pat Robertson should call for his assassination, and the rest of us for his removal from office.

By definition there are only two solutions for solving this apparent crisis. Increasing the supply of oil or reducing demand for oil. Since Captain Planet and his liberal friends believe anything to do with obtaining oil is evil and refuse to drill in either the Gulf or ANWAR (an amount of land best described as the size of a sparrow fart in the hurricane of Alaskan tundra- which is estimated to be able to produce up to a million gallons a day), I'm waiting for a realistic solution for reducing demand...

****UPDATE****

I always wanted to have a post that I could update, like I'm spreading some kind of valuable information that's hard to come by.

I've taken a few calls today in the shop from people looking to cancel tee times because of the gas situation. Apparently, a majority of gas stations in the greater central Florida area are either out of gas, running out of gas, or jammed full of paniced (wait... it's panicked... but why?!) people filling container after container. Apparently that 25% of production we lost was the 25% that ends up here- let's hear it for irrational paranoia!