Minor Thoughts

Rolling Stone on ethanol. They’re not complimentary.

The Ethanol Scam: One of America’s Biggest Political Boondoggles

The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn’t that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after ”solutions” that will make our problems even worse. …

Do you wonder why gas has been so expensive this summer? Wonder no more. Gas Prices Rise on Refineries’ Record Failures – New York Times

Oil refineries across the country have been plagued by a record number of fires, power failures, leaks, spills and breakdowns this year, causing dozens of them to shut down …

Hold on to your wallets — the Senate is in session. Senators Grassley and Baucus plan to make your gasoline even more expensive.

A proposal to hit oil companies with $29 billion in new taxes advanced in the Senate on Tuesday, targeting the money to energy conservation, wind turbines, electric hybrid cars and clean …

Recently, Congress has been going nuts over ethanol production. Government money has been thrown at every imaginable ethanol-related project.

If the current tax credits, grants and loan guarantees are extended, the package would cost taxpayers an additional $140 billion over the next 15 years. New proposals under consideration in Congress could raise the tab …

The Times is surprised to learn that the recent emphasis on biofuels is making our gas more expensive.

In hearings before Congress last year, oil executives outlined plans to increase fuel production by expanding existing refineries. Those plans would add capacity of 1.6 million to 1.8 million barrels a day over the next five …

Edmund Andrews has a nice op-ed in the New York Times. He talks about the recent rise in gasoline prices and the claims that oil companies and station owners are gouging consumers. As usual, it turns out that your federal government is the culprit, not the savior.

The Energy Information Administration is predicting that …

Instead of using our oil ourselves, we may soon be watching Cuba use them on behalf of China and India. Does something about that sound wrong? It sure does to me.

We can do something about the potential encroachment on our oil fields by lifting the bans on off-shore drilling and increasing the domestic …

Senate Democrats are, apparently, in favor of making sure gas stays expensive. How else do you explain this FoxNews story:

Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s nomination for interior secretary could run into trouble from Senate Democrats who want to use it as a bargaining chip to stop more oil and gas drilling in the Gulf …

Yesterday, the price of a gallon of gas in Madison jumped up to $2.79 a gallon. I have every expectation of seeing it go higher over the next several weeks and months. Why is it so expensive? Well, there are several factors at play.

First of all, the demand for gasoline is starting to increase. The …