Oil Glut

Folks endorsing more drilling off California’s coast need to learn where Big Oil’s headed faster’n you can say “oil glut.” Our oil cup already runneth over to the tune of millions of gallons a day in surplus oil, and according to Big Oil’s predictions, the market ain’t coming back. (A March 11 Los Angeles Times article titled “Oil companies look at permanent refinery cutbacks” quoted Fadel Gheit, a senior energy analyst with Oppenheimer & Co., as saying, “Unless this excess capacity is permanently shuttered, recovery in refining margins is unsustainable.”) So they’re shutting down oil operations worldwide. Stemming the flow of what are fast becoming useless over-supplies of oil.

If that news doesn’t change any drill-baby-drill minds, then millions of acres of already leased “unused” oil land, undersea and on top, has gotta make anyone wonder, “Why drill new for what we don’t need now, and, according to oil’s big boys, never will again?” How you say “hoarding,” artificially driving prices up?

Wall Street’s manipulation of oil prices is key to higher and higher pump prices, even with millions of gallons of surplus. Citizens who think more drilling off S.B., or anywhere along our coast, will somehow ease prices, are either naïve or invested in SoCal’s oily shenanigans. — Jerry Collamer, San Clemente