No easy cure for gas pains

There are some good proposals on oil prices and some terrible ones, but there’s no short-term answer to this long-term problem

Motorists are mad as hell and don’t want to take it any more. The price of gasoline has rocketed so high, so fast that they want relief, and they want it now.

Too bad there are no easy fixes.

Gas prices may dip a bit in the months to come if domestic demand continues to sag due to punishing prices. Or if the dollar regains value relative to foreign currencies. But the nation’s dependence on oil is a long-term problem that requires long-term answers. For consumers, that means thinking beyond the next fill-up. For Washington, it means thinking beyond the next election.

The inescapable force underlying gasoline sticker shock is supply and demand. Demand is exploding, particularly in behemoth developing nations such as China and India. Supply isn’t. The world is consuming pretty much every last barrel of oil pumped out of the ground. Significantly increasing supply takes massive investment and long lead times of a decade or more.

Newsday