Trey Smith
It's the political cure-all for high gas prices: Drill here, drill now. But more U.S. drilling has not changed how deeply the gas pump drills into your wallet, math and history show.You know, this doesn't happen all that often. For the most part, the mainstream media has turned into a flock of parrots. Politicians and other so-called "important people" talk and the media repeats it!
A statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted gasoline prices and U.S. domestic oil production by The Associated Press shows no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.
If more domestic oil drilling worked as politicians say, you'd now be paying about $2 a gallon for gasoline. Instead, you're paying the highest prices ever for March.
Political rhetoric about the blame over gas prices and the power to change them — whether Republican claims now or Democrats' charges four years ago — is not supported by cold, hard figures. And that's especially true about oil drilling in the U.S. More oil production in the United States does not mean consistently lower prices at the pump.
Sometimes prices increase as American drilling ramps up. That's what has happened in the past three years. Since February 2009, U.S. oil production has increased 15 percent when seasonally adjusted. Prices in those three years went from $2.07 per gallon to $3.58. It was a case of drilling more and paying much more.
~ from More Drilling Doesn't Drop Gas Prices via the Associated Press ~
It simply is nice to see that someone in the media decided to check the veracity of these claims that domestic oil production and consumer gas prices are joined at the hip. As the snippet shows, it ain't nothing of the sort! More importantly, note the last paragraph shown above.
Maybe someone should share this study with Newt Gingrich!
I hate how American's constantly complain about "high" gas prices. When I went to Iceland, gas was like $2.23 a liter, thats almost $7 a gallon! and they don't complain. The rest of the developed world pays much higher prices for gas, even north of the boarder in Canada, and they're doing just fine. In fact, the only places in the world with lower gas prices are oil rich nations.
ReplyDeleteMaybe prices wouldn't be so high if we didn't suck up and waste all of the easy to take light sweet crude. We only brought this upon ourselves.