The president continued to discuss his plans for energy independence today in Tennessee. Bush said the current state of affairs regarding the price of oil is just the open market at work. This explains why the price of oil and in turn the price of gasoline and the price of heating oil and diesel fuel have doubled since he got into office.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) released their weekly numbers this morning. Distillate levels, which include diesel, heating oil and jet fuel, were down slightly. Actual oil and gas levels were up, unexpectedly so. While oil prices did eventually settle at $66.56 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, these prices are ridiculous.

What has me scared will be the summer. The summer driving season starts on Memorial Day weekend at the end of May. Gas prices traditionally go up then after dropping during the winter. They've not dropped that much. Prices continue to climb and will. I would say$70 or $75 a barrel is not unexpected at all. Gas will easily stay abotu $3 a gallon at the pump. The working men and women in this country won't be able to afford to get to work.

Some argue that we need to get away from oil consumption and they're right. Bush was right when he said we were addicted to oil. Here's the deal though. Mass transit doesn't work in Kentucky or Kansas or lot of other states. Sure, the biggers cities have buses but most people live too far away to make this a practical alternative. If folks want to have the high paying jobs the president mentioned, the commute is the only way to go too. They don't put $80,000 a year jobs in podunk.

As a number of European papers pointed out, Bush isn't really serious about this alternative energy problem because he's not funding the research. Of course after Exxon Mobil turned in record profits of $36.1 billion for 2005 (the most of any American company in the history of our nation I might add), they should be paying for the damn stuff.

But there is hope. He said we're working on ethanol technology and that's great. We'll use weeds and corn. I wonder if they'll pay $70 a bag for my trimmed lawn grass. I might be more anxious to do the mowing then.

Technorati Tags: Bush, Exxon Mobil, Oil Prices, State Of the Union, Ethanol

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