Kowabunga

With the price of crude oil hitting the $75 per barrel mark, and gasoline at the pump running near the $3 per gallon level, there is a lot of finger pointing at (you guessed it) the Bush administration and the Republican Party. Putting the finger pointing aside, let's look at a few basic facts:

The price of crude oil (as well as gasoline) is controlled by supply and demand.

The United States imports a large amount of crude oil to meet demands.

Refinery capacities are unable to keep up with the demands of a growing population. This is further acerbated when some disaster, whether natural hurricane Katrina) or due to accident and fire, shuts down some refineries, which results in limited supplies as production capacity drops. Add to this the continued blocking of construction of new refineries by the leftist-controlled environmental groups.

Developing countries, such as India, are putting forth greater demands for oil (and gasoline) on the already constrained supply line.

The geo-political instability of a number a number of oil exporting nations, such as Iran (and the Middle-East as a whole) and Venezuela, among others, has a detrimental effect on the price of crude oil.

The continued blockading of drilling for oil on a small site within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as well as preventing offshore drilling in the out-continental shelf.

The false belief that energy problems can be resolved through: conservation, "green power," transitioning to ethanol based fuels, or switching to alternative fuel vehicles, such as hybrid-electric or hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.

In case you haven't noticed, hybrid vehicles are substantially more expensive than comparable vehicles of the same class. The price differential may be recovered over the long haul with lower annual fuel costs, however they still use gasoline. Better gas mileage (which varies, depending on type of vehicle), but higher up front purchase costs. These are doable options for some folks (and I have several friends with hybrids), but the high entry cost makes it uneconomical for most Americans, even with current tax incentives. For some, however, it is a viable option, especially for someone like myself who drives 500 miles per week.

Even flex-fuel vehicles have a gasoline component. And bear in mind that ethanol does not burn as hot as gasoline, there for fuel consumption is actually higher. See FuelEconomy.gov for more details.

Hydrogen fuel cell is the wave of the future, but they are not prime time by any means. Nor are they readily available and such vehicles have a limited driving range. Currently, the Ford Focus looks to have a slight edge. One other issue: they are available on a lease only basis to a limited number of organizations that have access to hydrogen fuel.

Until the chokehold that the leftist-controlled environmentalist lobby has on the domestic drilling of oil can be broken, it is unlikely that we will see crude oil at $20 per barrel again. Especially with the growing world-wide hunger for fuel.