(Oba)Más Gas

Why are gas prices so high? With the price of crude oil hovering around $100 a barrel, it is no wonder that concern is growing about the gas prices being so high. After all, modern economies are kept active by this lifeblood.

One of the main catalysts for the monotonous increase in gas prices has been one of the most fundamental economic reasons – the juggling that takes place between supply and demand. One of the main reasons for this is the continuing rapid economic growth of China and India, the two largest economies of the developing world. With a population of over a billion in each of these countries, both consumers and manufactures are devouring up energy at incessantly increasing rates. According to some projections, by the next 25 years, the demand for oil is set to go up to as much as 140 million barrels per day. As a result, the conventional pattern of the countries of the Middle East being the suppliers of oil and the countries in the West being the consumers has altered. Thereby adding another element to the equation of supply and demand, which determines the prices of gas and oil.

Along with the demand for oil rising, many disruptions to the supply have created obstacles. For example, the war in Iraq has resulted in reducing oil production there. The continuing nuclear weapons wrangle with Iran and the government increasing its control over industry in Russia has given rise to misgivings about future supplies. In addition, the production of crude oil in America has also become costlier since the places that have been easiest to drill have largely gone dry. This means that oil companies have to go increasingly into offshore oil producing areas such as the Gulf of Mexico, which cost much more to drill in. With oil companies having to access harder to reach locations, the demand for oil has skyrocketed.

Although issues on gas prices has risen and questions are constantly building up, Obama made some promises of his own on how he would cut the cost of fuel. "Gas prices are killing folks," Obama said. "I got an email from a friend of mine; it says ' just in case you're not living in the real world, being driven around by Secret Service, it just cost me $85 to fill up my tank.'"
Obama, a proponent of ethanol, said the country needed to do more to increase production and incorporate ethanol that used sugarcane not just corn. "We should also be investing in new technologies,” he said, “so we can replace the internal combustible engine, which has served us well, but it’s time for us to move on, because we want to get rid of fossil fuels.”

"When John F. Kennedy said we were going to the moon, the engineers and all those guys with the pocket protectors and the glasses at NASA, they all pulled out their slide rulers and said, 'How are we going to do that?’" Obama said. "They didn't know how it was going to get done. But once we set a clear goal and Americans buy into that goal, then nothing can stop us. The same is true on energy."
Can Obama fix this agonizing issue? We sure hope so.