This Christian Science Monitor editorial from Thursday frames the natural gas question well, and I think it reaches the correct conclusion: Clearly, some very prudent short-term steps emphasizing conservation are needed. In the long term, however, the nation must have a serious debate on energy sources and supply, with all types of energy – coal, …
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More On Natural Gas Economics And Politics
A good article from Oil & Gas Journal on the natural gas supply concerns in the U.S., highlighting in particular Alan Greenspan’s remarks on the matter on Wednesday. The article does a nice job of pointing out the political dimensions of this essentially economic issue. I especially like Greenspan’s understanding of the benefits of integrated …
The Natural Gas “Crisis”
Where to start … those of us who pay attention to energy have seen dwindling natural gas supplies over the past year, but now they seem all the more pressing, so the politicians are getting all in a tizzy and wanting analyses of what, quite simply, is another example of the interaction of regulatory policy, …
More On Ethanol, California, And Petroleum Dependence
My Reason colleague Joel Schwartz is on a roll with some very timely issues that bridge energy and the environment. His commentary on the ethanol mandates in the Senate and House energy bill proposals are completely on point: Lost in all these political machinations is the decisive scientific evidence that ethanol doesn’t perform as advertised. …
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California Gasoline Prices Are High For Good Reason
According to this preliminary Energy Information Administration report on California gasoline prices. I really want to paste in an excerpt here, but they’ve set Acrobat so I can’t copy text (grrr), so here’s the punch line: after you take out last year’s crude oil price spike, these factors conspired to raise gasoline prices: -refineries producing …
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Megan McArdle has a post on government involvement in the economy, focusing on currency controls. While international finance makes my head ache, I think her concluding simile applies to more government regulation situations than just currency: In general, the more the state intervenes in an economy, the worse that economy performs. Statists argue that this …