CLARION CO., Pa. (EYT) — The following letter was submitted by Daniel Carey of Sligo.
There is understandable concern about the current increases in gas prices. There is also a great deal of misinformation circulating about the causes, which is understandable, as this is a global phenomenon with a lot of moving parts.
One factor that has gotten very little attention is that the Federal Reserve is the one organization that can make changes in monetary policy that would help to rein in inflationary trends. The Board charged with making those decisions is largely unstaffed at this point. The Senate Banking Committee is responsible for vetting (and recommending to the Senate) all candidates. That committee is currently hamstrung by the refusal of all Republican members of the committee to attend meetings. This includes our own, Pat Toomey. Perhaps everyone should contact Mr. Toomey and suggest to him that he do his job and show up for meetings. People are suffering out here. This is affecting everything, not just gas.
The Keystone XL gets a lot of press, though, and that is a complete red herring. President Biden did not “shut off” the pipeline. It was never operational as it was only in the planning stages. Even if construction moved forward, it would be 3 to 4 years before completion. And the purpose of the KXL was to move CANADIAN tar sands crude (low grade stuff) to a SAUDI-owned processing plant in Port Arthur, TX, for loading onto ships for sale to CHINA for use in paving rural roads. Shutting down that project did not – and would not – have any impact on gas prices.
The US would have incurred all the environmental risk (from a company with a terrible safety record) while netting no financial benefit. Multinational (not “American”) oil companies that operate in the US are sitting on thousands and thousands of approved oil leases and permits. It is to their financial benefit to limit production to keep prices as high as possible to yield the highest returns to their stockholders.
Keep in mind that Russia is NOT Communist – hasn’t been since the collapse of the USSR in the 80s, when they too found themselves broken by an ill-advised incursion into Afghanistan. Russia is a capitalist-corporatist economy almost identical to the US. A small handful of billionaires run the system. The only difference, for now, is that we still have free and fair elections – if we can keep them.
Daniel Carey
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