Okay...so it's discovered that one of the largest remaining untapped resources, of the most lucrative commodities on the planet, lies beneath an area on earth which is landlocked by surrounding countries who don't like you.

But in order to get that commodity out to market - so that you can profit from harvesting it - you need a major highway or two to the nearest seaport where you can load it on big boats and ship it off to world markets.

Problem is: those aforementioned surrounding countries. Those highways will have to traverse their land and they're not going to just let you do it.

What's a Western capitalist to do!

Watch the trailer when you have time...

Michael T. Klare's "Blood and Oil"

Media Education Foundation

Made from the Book..

Source: Digital Smack

The average household spends three times more on food than on gasoline.  Farmers, pressured by the rising cost of gas and labor, have also seen the price of fertilizer double from what it was three years ago and have been forced to raise crop prices.

The key crop is corn, used to produce that notorious high-fructose corn syrup in our processed foods, and more to the point, to feed our livestock.  The same livestock that is the source of our milk, eggs, and so forth, which rise accordingly.

What's to blame for high oil prices?  Republicans blame failure to open up ANWR and other off limit areas to drilling.  Democrats blame oil company price gouging and failure of BushCo to have a comprehensive energy policy.  Both of them blame commodity market speculators.  

New York Times columnist and Princeton professor of economics Paul Krugman explores the popular view that market speculation is a major reason why oil prices increased from $25 per barrel to $125 per barrel over the past several years.

Krugman writes

Now, speculators do sometimes push commodity prices far above the level justified by [supply and demand] fundamentals. But when that happens, there are telltale signs that just aren’t there in today’s oil market.

Last month's Petraeus - Crocker, progress in Iraq, dog and pony show provided a forum which allowed them to tell us how well we are progressing in our endeavors to provide peace and stability in Iraq. The format was such that few hard questions were asked and few meaningful answers were given.

General Petraeus informs us:

"There has been significant but uneven security progress in Iraq."

The gains, however, are "fragile and reversible," he says, as he begins to outline a plan for a 45-day "period of consolidation and evaluation" to follow the end of the "surge" of extra American forces in July, before any more troops would be withdrawn.

"This process will be continuous, with recommendations for further reductions made as conditions permit," he added. "This approach does not allow establishment of a set withdrawal timetable."

NYT

There were no major surprises from Petraeus and Crocker, more wait and see, stall and delay. However there was something new and very significant from the Senators doing the questioning.

Have you felt the sting of high gas prices and as a result changed some of your normal driving routines?  

Breaking news....there's a big-ass hole in Texas. What will the Department of Republican Nomenclature do with this new challenge?

Abstract

Conflict over the oil resource in Nigeria is not an issue that can be simplified into a single driving cause. The issue is complex and cuts across the topics of violence, environmental degradation, and democratic representation in the Niger Delta. These topics within the issue of conflict over oil encompass political, economic, and social histories where effects can be seen at the local, state national, and international levels. The conflict over oil is largely fueled by the financial interest of western Multinational Oil Corporations. With over 80% of the Nigerian federal revenue being supplied by oil exports to foreign countries, the US in the lead, it is not difficult to identify one of the driving factors of Nigeria's oil conflict. The Chevron Oil Company has established itself as a formidable force within Nigeria's oil fields, particularly in the Bayelsa State. Chevron and its partners have held a presence in Nigerian oil discovery and production since the Gulf Oil Company's first off-shore mining in Okan conducted in 1963.

(disclaimer: abstract continued below followed by lengthy research paper)

After months of anticipation and mass mailings by the IRS to inform everyone that they, too, can waste paper with the best of them, my tax rebate showed up via direct deposit.  I don't qualify for the big ones, but I got a nice little sum that is sure to help out a bit.  

As the hype goes, this economic "stimulus package" is somehow supposed to help our economy out and solve all our problems.  After all, we're all going to spend it on consumer goods, which is the surefire solution to everything?

On caveat: I live in Canada now.  I'm going to spend all the money here.

Part of the irregular Countdown to $200 oil series.

Oil price breaks through $126 a barrel

Crude oil prices surged on Friday, breaching $126 a barrel for the first time and putting pressure on Opec, the oil producers’ cartel, to increase output in an effort to lower global energy costs and prevent further inflationary pressures.

The new record came a day after Abdalla El-Badri, Opec’s secretary general, suggested the cartel would not increase its output in spite of a 100 per cent jump in oil prices in the last 12 months and warnings it could hit $200 a barrel.

Since hitting $100 in early January, the oil is up 26% in 4 months. Coincidentally, another 2 increases of 26% in 4 months will bring us to mid-January 2009 and almost exactly to $200 oil.

The Texas sinkhole is not breaking news, but it is an overwhelming symptom of what's wrong with our planet and a possible sign of things to come.  The evidence is certainly not conclusive to geologists that this is a result of the massive oil drilling that has gone on here for the past century, but it's definitely a possibility.

The point of this diary is not only to educate the DKos community on this (I didn't see any other diaries on it yet), but also to offer a personal anecdote from both my junior high (middle school) civics and science classes about taking chocolate chips out of cookies.  (Mmm, cookies!  Enticed yet?)  More below the fold.

Here is the test.
 

Name the 4 largest publicly traded corporations worldwide, measured by market value (on a stock exchange).
 

Hint #1: You may be surprised by the answers.

 
Hint #2: The Chairman of one of the companies just became the President of his country.

See below for answers...but try to guess a couple first.

Congratulations to Hillary for a hard fought race.

I think it's now time to shift to the general election. Hopefully, we can all now unite behind the fact that this country cannot tolerate four more years of the past eight.

As the ad campaigns intensified before tonight's primaries, Hillary Clinton made the seriously Energy Dumb decision to promote a gas tax holiday as a way of demonstrating her supposed affinity for "the hard working American middle class."  Too bad the gas tax holiday won't help anybody's pocketbook but the oil companies. I guess Mrs. Clinton missed the memo from every single energy and economic policy expert out there! (Seriously, every one of them!)

While his opponent pandered for votes with empty promises of $30.00 in cash, Barack Obama, to his very strong credit, took the Energy Smart position and called the gas tax holiday proposal what it is: "a pander," a cheap trick to buy your vote.

Read on to watch Obama's clear, honest, Energy Smart response on the gas tax holiday (speaking on Meet the Press earlier this week)...

Most cities in this country were built around the automobile, and in many places public transportion is now almost non-existent, even in large cities.

Public transportion that existed prior to the automobile were dismantled by the emergent automobile industry in a move that came to be known as the Great American Streetcar Scandal; General Motors managed to remove over 100 streetcar systems nationwide by 1950. By the time antitrust investigators could go to work, the deed was done. American mass-transit was "dead".

Great American Streetcar Scandal

Back in March 2005, when I was still working as an international oil markets analyst at the US Energy Information Administration (and  oil prices were about $50 per barrel), Goldman Sachs came out with its first "super spike" analysis.

UPDATE: My former colleagues at EIA are out with their latest short-term forecast.  As usual, they've got prices falling back slightly in coming years ("WTI crude oil prices, which averaged $72 per barrel in 2007, are projected to average $110 per barrel in 2008 and $103 per barrel in 2009."), mainly because of a tendency to believe that high oil prices will result in slowing demand and also a supply response.  We'll see, but honestly I've got to go more with Goldman Sachs on this one, as I see the supply curve as close to vertical and demand in places like China and India responding much more to income elasticity than price elasticity.

I was just in my car, and NPR was kind of boring (plus it is pledge week, blech) so I tuned in to CPAN to find a hearing on fuel costs in the House  Transportation and Infrastructure / Highways and Transit Subcommittee.  Yes, I know exciting stuff.  However, I was quite interested to hear Rep Don Young of Alaska, who is a past chairman of that august group, in his opening statement talk some actual sense.

In an interesting piece from Reuters UK, Nigeria's rebel faction, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), is considering a cease-fire with the Nigerian government due to Sen. Barack Obama's request for a cease-fire.

More after the jump...

http://uk.reuters.com/...