Al's Opinions

Again, recalling the debate between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama last Tuesday evening, Mr. Obama missed a chance to nail down the half-truth or actual lie that gasoline prices are high and can be brought down by simply pumping more petroleum out of the ground.  In fact, the price of gasoline has virtually no relation to domestic petroleum extraction.  Our country has more refining capacity than we need for domestic purposes because we export gasoline to the world market.  Hence, the price of gasoline in the United States is related to and correlates with the world price of the fluid.  Our domestic production of petroleum is small in comparison to the production by Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, and other major producers.  Doubling our own rate of petroleum extraction would have very little effect on the world price of crude petroleum.

This misleading claim, that gasoline is expensive because the Obama administration doesn't encourage domestic petroleum extraction, has been fed to the uninformed public for years.  It's a Goebbels lie that becomes true if repeated often enough.  I hope that Mr. Obama takes up this issue and explains the situation clearly before Election Day.