Word: opec
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...OPEC Expert Cites Oil as Cause of Crisis...
...Jack the price back up. After oil prices are restored to their free-market level, the U.S. could painlessly slap a punitive tax on the consumption of oil and use the revenue to pay for conservation measures, alternative energy research and mass transit systems. Even if OPEC remains sound, an additional petroleum tax is not a bad idea, so long as it is accompanied by some sort of a rebate plan for the poor to counteract the regressive nature of such a tax. Already, American consumers pay absurdly low gasoline prices by global standards. Taxing gasoline heavily makes good economic...
...Understand the real problem. The "energy crisis" confronting us is not Saddam Hussein, or OPEC, or even high gasoline prices. The problem is the natural scarcity of petroleum; we are fast running out of our primary energy source. According to Department of Energy figures, the U.S. has already extracted about 121 billion barrels of the 148 billion accessible with current technology. With improvements in extraction techniques, we can get at an additional 18 to 53 billion barrels. That's it. Even Saudi Arabia, with by far the largest proven reserves in the world, has only 165 billion barrels left...
...Waste not, want not. Back in the heydey of OPEC, when gasoline lines stretched for miles, everyone got the conservation bug. Between 1977 and 1985, while the number of registered automobiles increased by 20 percent, oil consumption declined by 15 percent. The energy savings directly attributable to the conservation measures of the Carter era amount to more than $150 billion per year. Yet the Reagan administration bowed to pressure from auto manufactures and rolled back fuel economy standards...
...Play hardball with the sheiks. Despite the popular perception that OPEC is no longer capable of enforcing price discipline on its members, a barrel of oil traded at more than twice its free-market price even before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. With two simple tools--stand-by gasoline rationing authority and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve--the U.S. could use its weight in the world petroleum market to bust OPEC once and for all. By merely threatening to curtail drastically its consumption and flood the world market with cheap oil, the U.S. could force the oil-fattened Gulf kingdoms...