Like Bro says…….blah blah blah……..more theatrics. Means nothing. Gas will continue to go up up up up.

On a day oil prices leaped to unheard-of highs, senators lined up Big Oil’s biggest executives and pummeled them with complaints that they’re pretending to be “hapless victims” while raking in record profits.

“Where is the corporate conscience?” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asked the top executives of the five largest U.S. oil companies.

It’s all about economics, came the reply. Supply and demand. The company leaders tried to shift attention from motorists’ anger over $4-a-gallon gasoline to a debate over new areas for drilling.

More at Yahoo News

Leahy is right. “Disconnect” is the word for the day.

Oil Execs tell Congress: Don’t Blame Us

It’s wonderful to be rich and be an American resident. You have politicians catering to your every whim. You decide to break the law, the law looks the other way. Man-on-man sex in a public restroom? No problem! Taxes? Who the hell pays taxes?!

And when you decide to hold Americans up at the pump and rob them of their hard-earned money, money earmarked for food or some other essential item, the strength of the mighty U.S. Congress swoops down from above and raps you with a newspaper.

Yep. Wealthy Americans have it tough.

Big Oil defends profits before irate senators

WASHINGTON (AP) — On a day oil prices leaped to unheard-of highs, senators lined up Big Oil’s biggest executives and pummeled them with complaints that they’re pretending to be “hapless victims” while raking in record profits. [...]

It’s all about economics, came the reply. Supply and demand. The company leaders tried to shift attention from motorists’ anger over $4-a-gallon gasoline to a debate over new areas for drilling.

But senators at the Judiciary Committee hearing weren’t having any of that. They wanted to press the executives about public anguish over paying $60 or more to fill up a car’s gas tank.

“People we represent are hurting, the companies you represent are profiting,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told the executives. He said there’s a “disconnect” between legitimate supply issues and the oil and gasoline prices motorists are seeing.

Greed has taken over……..

Hess Corp (HES.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Chief Executive John Hess pulled in nearly $42 million from exercising stock options and awards in 2007, adding to a pay package worth more than $14 million for the year.

Hess, 53, made about $34.5 million from exercising 750,000 previously awarded stock options plus $7.2 million from stock awards that vested during the year, the oil producer and refiner said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Those benefits came on top of a compensation package that included $1.4 million of salary, a $1.2 million bonus, $2.5 million of incentive awards and $9.1 million of stock and option awards. That package was roughly the same as his 2006 package.

More at Reuters

H/T Joewo!

by Brian Beutler
Alternet.org

Oil companies know that gasoline expands at higher temperatures and has less volume at lower ones, but they’ve refused to upgrade gas stations with a simple tool that would adjust the price of gas according to its temperature.

It’s probably intuitive to most people that the gasoline in their fuel tank expands in the heat — just like doorframes and cookware and everything else on the planet. What’s probably less intuitive is that, in the United States, this physical phenomenon pumps a nearly $2 billion annual windfall out of consumers’ pockets and into oil company coffers, according to numerous calculations, including a recent House of Representatives study.

The North Carolina-based company Gilbarco Veeder-Root manufactures a device — a temperature’sensitive chamber for fuel — that, if affixed to gasoline pumps across the country, would return that money to consumers and help relieve some of our storied gas-price pressures. The device — and others like it — is simple, functional and, in fact, already in widespread use at gas stations all across Canada. Last month, Democratic presidential hopeful and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, chair of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee, held the second in a series of hearings to investigate why the technology has never made it into the American market.

Temperature is just one of the many variables that determine how much energy one tank of gasoline contains, and therefore how many miles it will pull your car. But the effects of temperature change are easier to calculate than, say, ethanol content or petroleum grade — and are therefore also easy to correct for. Here’s how it works.

read more HERE

This law allows the Kurdish government to control its own oil resources and select its own foreign investors. This should be interesting………

Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region passed its own oil law today, despite Iraq’s parliament having failed to pass a national law after months of negotiations by the country’s main political blocs.

Kurdish officials stressed that it had been drawn up in line with the national constitution and did not contradict the federal law, which Iraq’s leaders agreed on 3 July but has not yet been sent to parliament.

The draft federal oil law is now in limbo while the national parliament is on its summer break for the month of August. No date has been set to debate it.

Iraq has the world’s third-largest oil reserves, which are mainly in the north and the south of the country.

The national hydrocarbon law is seen as pivotal by Washington to reconciling warring Iraqis, rebuilding Iraq’s shattered economy and attracting foreign investment.

After a week-long debate, Kurdish lawmakers passed the Petroleum Law of the Kurdistan Region unanimously.

“We have freedom and now we have a law that enables us to make new projects and sign new contracts for the benefit of our people,” Kurdistan’s Minister for Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami told Reuters afterwards.

“There is no problem with the previous contracts that we signed already before issuing this law, but we will review them to persuade all of them that these contracts are legal.”

The Kurdistan region has signed several agreements with foreign companies.

The Kurdish law provides for the establishment of the Kurdistan National Oil Company and says “the regional government shall share revenue derived from petroleum with all the people of Iraq.”

Kurdistan forced renegotiation of the national hydrocarbon law, fearing that it gave the federal government too much control over oil exploration, revenue sharing and negotiating contracts with foreign companies.

Source

By Michael Hawthorne

Rebuffing bipartisan pressure from members of Congress, the Bush administration’s top environmental regulator on Tuesday declined to stop the BP refinery in northwest Indiana from dumping more pollution into Lake Michigan.

Stephen Johnson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said he saw nothing wrong with the permit Indiana regulators awarded in June to BP, the first company in years allowed to increase the amount of toxic chemicals pumped into the Great Lakes.

As part of a $3 billion expansion of its Whiting, Ind., refinery, the nation’s fourth largest, BP won permission to release more ammonia and suspended solids into the lake. Indiana regulators also gave BP until 2012 to meet a stringent federal standard for mercury pollution set by the EPA in 1995.

Even though the federal government has been pushing for more than three decades to eliminate pollution in the Great Lakes, the EPA did not object to the BP permit.

“We want to work collaboratively with companies, including BP and others, to do what we can to continue to improve the condition of the Great Lakes,” Johnson told the Tribune in a brief interview following a speech at the Chicago Cultural Center. “In this case, it’s my understanding that Indiana issued a permit that is fully compliant with the Clean Water Act. As an agency we need to honor that permit.”

read more HERE

By Stephen Lendman

On June 27, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal vied for attention with feature stories on oil giants ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips “walking away from their multi-billion-dollar investments in Venezuela” as the Journal put it or standing “Defiant in Venezuela” as the Times headlined. Both papers can barely contain their displeasure over Hugo Chavez wanting Venezuela to have majority ownership of its own assets and no longer let Big (foreign) Oil investors plunder them. Those days are over. State oil company PDVSA is now majority shareholder with a 78% interest in four Orinoco joint ventures. That’s up from previous stakes of from 30 to 49.9%. That’s how it should be, but it can-t stop the Journal and Times from whining about it.

What ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips reject, oil giants Chevron, BP PLC, Total SA and Statoil ASA agreed to. They-re willing to accept less of a huge profit they-ll get by staying instead of none at all by pouting and walking away as their US counterparts did. Or did they? The Wall Street Journal reports “Conoco isn-t throwing in the towel in Venezuela yet. By not signing a deal, the Houston company kept open the option of pursuing compensation through arbitration.” Exxon, however, is mum on that option for now. Responding to Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez saying the two oil giants will lose their stakes in the Orinoco oil fields altogether, a company spokesperson expressed “disappoint(ment) that we have been unable to reach an agreement on the terms for migration to a mixed enterprise structure (but will) continue discussions with the Venezuelan government on a way forward.”

Continue reading at Thomas Paine’s Corner

The only benchmark Uncool and the Gang really care about……..

BAGHDAD - Iraqi officials said Friday that a U.S.-backed draft oil law will soon be returned to the Cabinet for approval after Kurds agreed to a compromise revenue’sharing measure. But they said many key sticking points remain unresolved - and not even addressed - in the watered-down legislation.

The United States has pressed the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to pass the oil law and several other pieces of benchmark legislation as a means of spurring reconciliation among the country’s sectarian and ethnic groups. The law is especially important to Sunni Arabs, who populate regions of Iraq that are largely without oil resources.

Kurds, who have big reserves and active fields in the north of the country, balked at previous draft legislation, believing it did not guarantee them a fair share of the revenue from fields they control or hope to control.

Shiites, who control major resources in the south and who have taken political control of the government after years of oppression under Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunni rule, have been reluctant to share revenues with their former tormentors.

Passage of even a watered-down oil law would allow the Bush administration to point to some progress before the American military leadership reports to Congress on progress in the campaign to clamp off Iraqi violence.

More at YahooNews

Who says Republicans aren’t in bed with big oil?

Senate passes energy bill, boosting mileage standards

The Senate legislation calls on automakers to improve gas mileage for consumers, including drivers like Jim Rohrer of Tucker, Georgia.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Senate passed an energy bill late Thursday that includes an increase in automobile fuel economy, new laws against energy price-gouging and a requirement for huge increases in the production of ethanol.

In an eleventh-hour compromise fashioned after two days of closed-door meetings, an agreement was reached to increase average fuel economy by 40 percent to 35 miles per gallon for cars, SUVs and pickup trucks by 2020.

But the fuel economy issue threatened to topple the legislation up to the last minute. Majority Leader Harry Reid held off the vote until late into the evening so several senators could be called back to Capitol Hill to provide the 60-vote margin needed to overcome a threatened filibuster from pro-auto industry senators.

Shortly before midnight, senators voted 62-32 to cut off debate, and followed by passing the bill 65-27. The measure now awaits action by the House, which is expected to take it up next week. But attempts to combine the two bills and send legislation to President Bush probably won’t be possible until later this year.

It would be the first increase in vehicle fuel efficiency since the current 22.7 mpg for cars was put in place in 1989 and the first time Congress has imposed a new auto efficiency mandate in 32 years.
[...]

The legislation also calls for:

• Price gouging provisions that make it unlawful to charge an “unconscionably excessive” price for oil products including gasoline and give the federal government new authority to investigate oil industry market manipulation.

• New appliance and lighting efficiency standards and a requirement that the federal government accelerate use of more efficient lighting in public buildings.

• Grants, loan guarantees and other assistance to promote research into fuel efficient vehicles, including hybrids, advanced diesel and battery technologies. percent ethanol or biodiesel fuels.

More at CNN.com

By Matthew Rothschild
from “The Progressive”

With Iraq going to hell, and the al-Maliki government failing to meet one benchmark after another, Bush is getting desperate.

On Sunday, he sent Admiral Fallon, the chief U.S. commander in the Mideast, to lean on Prime Minister al-Maliki.

On Tuesday, John Negroponte, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the UN, flew to Baghdad to lean on al-Maliki.

And what were they leaning on him for, above all?

Passage of the new oil bill, which would turn over Iraqi’s liquid treasure to foreign corporations like ExxonMobil.

This is the paramount concern of the Bush Administration.

It is being sold to the American people as a way to equalize revenues to various segments of Iraqi society.

But the true reason for it is to line the pockets of U.S. oil executives.

“The law would transform Iraq’s oil industry from a nationalized model closed to American oil companies except for limited (although highly lucrative) marketing contracts into a commercial industry, all-but-privatized, that is fully open to all international oil companies,” Antonia Juhasz, author of “The Bush Agenda,” wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times on March 13.

“The Iraq National Oil Company would have exclusive control of just 17 of Iraq’s 80 known oil fields, leaving two-thirds of known-and all of its as yet undiscovered-fields open to foreign control,” Juhasz wrote. “The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy, partner with Iraqi companies, hire Iraqi workers or share new technologies. . . The international oil companies could also be offered some of the most corporate-friendly contracts in the world.”

Not surprisingly, the Iraqi people don-t want their oil privatized. They-ve been resisting this move in parliament, and in the streets.

read more at THE PROGRESSIVE

Oh so that’s why the Poodle is there……..

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libya announced on Tuesday it will sign a 900 million dollar exploration deal with British energy giant BP, which London says plans to return the north African country after a 33 year absence.

“We are going to sign with BP an oil exploration and prospecting accord on Libyan territory worth 900 million dollars,” said the head of Libya’s National Oil Corporation Shokri Ghanem.

Later he clarified that the agreement focused solely on gas prospecting in the Sirte region 500 kilometres (310 miles) east of Tripoli and at Ghdamess 700 kilometres (435 miles) south of the capital.

The announcement came ahead of a visit to the oil-rich nation by British Prime Minister Tony Blair who is starting a tour of Africa before he leaves office next month.

“BP will be announcing that they’re going back into Libya,” a spokesman for Blair said, confirming that the outgoing premier was due to hold talks with Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.

More at YahooNews

By DINESH RAMDE, Associated Press Writer

MEQUON, Wis. - Motorists pulled in to Harvey Pollack’s gas station Thursday, honked and gave him a thumbs-up - because he wasn’t selling any fuel.

The owner of Towne Market Mobil in this suburb north of Milwaukee shut down his pumps for 24 hours, hoping to start a movement aimed at persuading oil companies to lower their prices.

“Somebody out there is making money at these prices, but not me,” said Pollack, 57. “So I just thought: What can I do to help the consumer?”

Yellow caution tape surrounded Pollack’s six idle pumps for his protest, which drew dozens of drivers. One in a green minivan rolled down her window and shouted “Thank you!”

Maria McClory, 38, drove 10 miles out of her way to buy a diet soda from Pollack’s station after seeing local television coverage of the protest.

“I just wanted to support them and thank them for making a statement,” said McClory, who drives about 100 miles a day for work in her sport utility vehicle.

Other drivers were more skeptical.

Jeff Bensman, 52, pulled in expecting to gas up his Honda sedan. He said he appreciated the protest but did not think it would make much difference.

“Most other places are going to be open in the area,” he said.

Jack Sobczak, general sales manager for Lakeside Oil Co., a contracted Mobil distributor that supplies Pollack’s station, said Bensman was probably right: “The demand will just move down the street to the next Mobil station.”

Pollack and station general manager John Schwartz agreed to experiment with a pump shutdown after an Internet-based push for a one-day gas boycott went largely unheeded last week.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

From BlackAmericaWeb.com

In recent weeks, prices at the pump have hit an all-time high. The average price for a gallon of gas in the United States is currently $3.036, just two cents short of the record high reached in September 2005 after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast.

Paradoxically, this year, rising gas prices are not being driven by increases in the cost of oil. In fact, a barrel of oil is actually $7 cheaper than it was this time last year. How is it possible for gas prices to reach record highs while the price of oil remains relatively stable?

We examined this and related questions during a House Judiciary Committee Antitrust Task Force hearing titled, “Prices at the Pump: Market Failure and the Oil Industry.” We found that America’s pain at the pump has three possible causes:

Cartels. OPEC accounts for two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves and over 40 percent of the world’s oil production. Most significantly, OPEC’s oil exports represent about 70 percent of the oil traded internationally. This affords them considerable control over the global market. Its net oil export revenues should reach nearly $395 billion this year, and its influence on the oil market is dominant, especially when it decides to reduce or increase its levels of production. For years, the OPEC Cartel has purposefully driven up the cost of imported crude oil to satisfy the greed of its members. We have long decried OPEC, but, sadly, no one in government has yet tried to take any action.

Read more »

But Stupak was forced to soften the bill so that he could get it passed by requiring a president to first declare an energy emergency before the anti-gouging law could be enforced. Oil’state Democrats had wanted such limits.

So it’s ok for Big Oil and gas stations to price gouge us until there’s an energy emergency. And what would constitute an energy emergency? I’d say $3.50 a gallon is a damn emergency.

WASHINGTON - The House, eager to do something about record high gasoline prices in advance of the Memorial Day weekend, voted narrowly Wednesday to approve stiff penalties for those found guilty of gasoline price gouging.

The bill directs the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department to go after oil companies, traders or retail operators if they take “unfair advantage” or charge “unconscionably excessive” prices for gasoline and other fuels.

The White House called the measure a form of price controls that could result in fuel shortages. It said President Bush would be urged to veto the legislation should it pass Congress.

The bill needed the approval of two-thirds of the members of the House because the leadership considered it under an expedited legislative process. Thus, the 284-141 vote was only one over the threshold for passage. A similar measure is being considered by the Senate.

The bill would for the first time create a federal law making energy price gouging illegal. It would cover not only gasoline, but also other fuels such as natural gas and heating oil.

Read more here