Oil, Gasoline, and Alternative-Energy Automobiles

The automobile industry has been around for 100+ years.  Car makers enjoy profits in the Billions while oil companies enjoy profits in the tens of Billions.


Any time gasoline prices rise more than gradually, there's an interest in alternative fuel sometimes starting with diesel.  Since the first Earth Day in 1970, if not before, renewable energy or at least more environmentally friendly energy sources have been contemplated.


The car industry would be largely unaffected by building cars to run on a different source of energy.  Mass-production would lead to their costing about the same as cars cost now and the business would be more-or-less unscathed. 


This is in sharp contrast to the change in the oil, refining, and gasoline industries.  Consider if ALL cars eventually use energy other than gasoline.  Even if diesel cars still exist, and planes, trains and even semi trucks still use gasoline, the profit margins for oil companies would be drastically cut.


So why would oil companies put a good faith effort into development of alternative energy fueled automobiles?  You must come to the conclusion that they would not.  In fact they have bought out countless patents from small companies for millions of dollars to keep that from happening.


Yet the oil companies still take tax cuts they will admit they do not need and do research into something they want to make sure never happens.


The current US president claimed while campaigning and reiterated every State of the Union address that he would stop the oil company tax cuts (or subsidies, subsidizing research into the abyss).  It never even came up as actionable until there was a Congressional Hearing (i.e. puppet show) about the tax cuts and questioning the oil moguls.  Moguls admit they do not need them and one said they would gladly give them up if the government would open up more land/ocean for oil drilling.  


The government is by no means held to an ultimatum, yet the tax cuts remain and more drilling still is not expanding (see my previous post for thoughts on how that would lower "cost" of gasoline).


The oil companies would pass on higher taxes to the consumer to pay for their "research" while keeping their profits the same.


CLEARLY, research into alternative fuel for cars needs to be done by someone outside of the oil industry.


Additionally I know for a fact that gasoline engines run on the gas fume mini explosions and waste a lot of the gasoline in doing so.  There could already be much more fuel efficient engines that use less gasoline, and there have been in years past.  It is not in everyone's interest to do so.

Speculation on the price of Oil (pardon the pun)

For 20-40 years politicos have been barking about drilling more and excuses not to drill more. Independence from foreign oil is actually a National Security issue and should be of utmost importance when considering the prospects.  (Unless the top secret is that we cannot reduce our dependence on foreign oil by secret treaty, treatise, or just fear of what will happen if we don't pay the [terrorist] bullies the [protection] money.)


I think it is well established that the price of oil is not free market and not dependent upon supply and demand.  Like most everything else, it's a gamble on perceived future supply and demand. So the arguments that opening more domestic drilling would not help in a shorter term are absurd. The perceived futures of supply and demand change in favor of supply and would drive the price down in the near term, how much is anybody's guess.


Besides the fact that having started more drilling 20 years ago, we might be free from dependence on foreign oil, God forbid.


They try to say that Education is a National Security issue.  Well, look at the state of education in the Federal hands.  But keep looking at what that hand is doing so you don't see what the other hand is NOT doing.


True National Security issues go so far beyond the scope of this single post.  Suffice it to say, what are they really doing (vs. what they lie about doing) if it is really true that they have closed 2 of the largest northeast refineries.  Soon coal plants will be "necessarily" bankrupted.


What are they doing to our nation.