Today during my appearance on KHND 1470 today we talked a bit about the pipeline explosion in Minnesota that’s undoubtedly going to have energy prices high as temperatures plummet here on the frozen tundra of the upper midwest.  I know a lot of people out there are quick to roll their eyes at this, blaming some “big oil” conspiracy for coming up with yet another excuse to raise gas prices.  Which is exactly the sort of attitude that leads to politicians (like North Dakota’s own Byron Dorgan, for instance) to propose legislation to punish the oil industry with more taxes and regulations.

But the reality of the situation is that because the oil industry is already to heavily taxed and regulated our oil infrastructure is fragile, usually running at near maxed-out capacity, which means that any small interruption of supply has a major impact on prices.

If the oil industry were taxed less, and regulated less, it’d be easier for them to invest capital into the expansion of production and infrastructure.  It’s a simple reality.  We don’t need more Byron Dorgans hammering “big oil” with taxes.  We need reasonable leaders who recognize that the best way to facilitate industry meeting the demands of the public is to burden that industry with taxes and regulations as little as possible.

There really is no big conspiracy in all this.  We want gasoline.  The oil industry wants to sell us gasoline.  These interruptions in supply and sky-high prices aren’t actually good for business despite ill-informed populist rhetoric to the contrary.