Say Anything Blog

From an editorial published in the USA Today by Senator Byron Dorgan:

Let’s start with the obvious — there is no free market when it comes to oil.

The OPEC oil cartel dictates production levels and prices. The petroleum futures market is an orgy of speculation that adds substantially to the price of every barrel of oil. The big oil companies themselves are bigger, stronger — and fewer — because of mergers. Real market competition among the oil giants disappeared years ago.

Let’s start with the obvious - there is a free market it when it comes to oil, and energy in general, but it is becoming less and less free not because of the actions of greedy oil industry CEO’s but rather meddling, economically illiterate bureaucrats like Byron Leslie Dorgan.

OPEC has gained much of its strength due to the fact that people like Byron Dorgan have repeatedly passed laws that make it difficult for American companies to exploit American oil reserves.  Environmental restrictions have become so stringent, and liberal politicians like Dorgan have become so adamant that our oil companies not be allowed access to domestic oil reserves like those in ANWR or off our coasts, that we’re forced to purchase most of our oil from OPEC nations.  Our economy needs it, and where else are we going to get it?

And if Dorgan wants to talk about the disappearance of smaller oil companies, maybe he should ask himself why those companies have disappeared?  Could it maybe be because the overwhelming number of taxes and regulations the oil industry is saddled with (most of which Dorgan himself has supported) have made it all but impossible for smaller companies to compete?  After all, when the government is asking oil companies to pay more in taxes than they take in profits, the only way to stay in business is to be a huge operation that can absorb that kind of overhead.

To sum it up, Dorgan is basically complaining about problems that he himself, and people like him, have caused.  Oil companies aren’t the problem with gas prices and energy issues.  Politicians are. At least, politicians like Dorgan are.

Dorgan’s end point is that we need anti-price gouging laws.  Because government price-fixing is going to end our energy problems, I guess.  But as Grand Forks Herald opinion editor Tom Dennis explained, that isn’t really going to help at all.  It’s just going to make things worse.

But Dorgan is no fool.  As a big-government liberal he loves the idea of increasing government power, and he’s not ashamed to play on the emotions of Americans upset over high gas prices to get it.  He claims that his legislation will give us some price relief at the pump, but ultimately it’s just another way for Dorgan and his cronies to control us.