You’re really, really not going to like this. The gloom and doom folks are getting pretty prevalent. Pretty well positioned and fairly authoritative too.

High Gas Prices are here to Stay.

says, in part, that:

“NEW YORK, April 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - CIBC (CM: TSX; NYSE) -
Increasingly tight oil supplies will continue to push the price of oil
higher with the cost of crude hitting US$150 a barrel by 2010 and soaring
to US$225 a barrel by 2012, forecasts a new energy report from CIBC World
Markets.”

Home in Texas the Houston Chronicle reports:

< There’s more to $120 oil than speculation

in which the author bemoans the fact that the market isn’t playing pretty. It’s not acting the way it’s SUPPOSED to act.

“Our mounting economic downturn was supposed to curtail demand and drive prices down.

Our demand is falling — the International Energy Agency predicts U.S. oil consumption will slip by 2 percent this year — but the markets don’t seem to have noticed.

It’s as if our recession is meaningless.”

reading on further down we get to the heart of the matter.

“Here’s what happens: as prices rise, oil-exporting countries benefit from an influx of petrodollars. That, in turn, spurs economic expansion, which in turn increases domestic oil consumption. As demand rises, more oil is devoted to meeting that domestic demand, leaving less oil to export.”

As you can see it relatively expected. The oil exporters get rich. They can only buy SO MUCH beer and ceegars so they spend some of the money on infrastructure. Their local quality of life increases. This requires oil for fuel. (fuel for automobiles, fuel for electricity generation) This means they USE more and more of their own oil, and export less.

At the SAME TIME.

“China, of course, is often blamed for the increase in global oil demand, given its huge population and emerging economy.

Its consumption will rise almost 5 percent this year, according to the agency. So will India, which by year end will be using more oil than is produced by Venezuela annually.”

This leads to a worldwide shortage of Oil.

Believe it or not oil production is rising a a tremendous rate, the supply is INCREASING and will continue to increase. Due to roadblocks set by the liberals, however, the domestic supply isn’t increasing as fast as is the demand. The refining capacity isn’t either.

TEXAS CITY, Tex. - The forest of oil refining towers on this sprawling industrial complex on Galveston Bay sits in the heart of the greatest concentration of refining capacity in the world. Roughly half of the gasoline consumed in the U.S. is made along this stretch of Gulf coast from Corpus Christi, Texas to New Orleans.”

and it’s not enough. Particularly when it’s so hard to add to the refining capacity.

The current refinery squeeze has been building for years. For the past two decades, deregulation and low profits have combined to push the industry into consolidation. Partly because of environmental regulations, it was cheaper to expand existing refineries than to build new ones. In 1981, the US had 324 refineries with a total capacity of 18.6 million barrels per day, the Department of Energy reports. Today, there are just 132 oil refineries with a capacity of 16.8 million b.p.d., according to Oil and Gas Journal, a trade publication.”

Low profits!! Why Nancy Pelosci ,Hilliary Clinton, Barck Obama and Harry Reid said!!!!!!!!! (yeah, they SAID, and you’re point?)

Thanks to liberals we not only have less refining capacity, that capacity is more concentrated geographically and more susceptible to one BAD THING(tm) taking it out (such as Katrina or Osama) but also it’s much more difficult to build new refineries.

Soooooooo… count on diesel prices going up and up. When diesel is ten dollars a gallon, well, you know who to thank for that.

Think about it come election time.