With Oil at Plus $90 Highs Where is the Outrage of the Press!?

It is quite incredible to me, with the price of oil at $90 a barrel plus, how benign the media has been in determining the cause these vertiginous levels. Banalities abound. Its China and India (this even though China’s oil imports have been the lowest in 20 months), it’s the dollar, its production constraints, its peak oil, its lack of refining capacity (the interlocutor never being asked to explain why if refining capacity is constrained, thereby limiting the consumption of its feedstock-crude oil- the price of crude should go up-Ecomomics 101?). And on.

I would like to share with you a comment message I received to my post “A Short Tutorial on the High Price of Oil and the Falling Dollar”, 10.19.07. not for self congratulation but simply to highlight this incredible dilemma of comatose engagement:

Dear Raymond,

Thank you for your enlightened posts on the oil industry. As a former energy editor of Business Week, I understand only too well why you are nearly alone in pointing to the immense culpability of the oil industry when it comes to the skyrocketing price of oil. The industry has deftly avoided any responsibility for $90-a-barrel oil prices, thanks partly to our corporate-run media, and thanks partly to our oil-run executive branch of government. Please keep up the good work!

Log in | posted 11:33 am on 10/19/2007

I have not watched every discussion on the price of oil choking the airwaves these past days and weeks, but enough to get a sense of the game. Let me give you but one example.

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