Oil Crisis: Blame Failure of U.S. Leadership, Not Big Oil

With oil pushing past $130 per barrel, Congress is swinging into action with a series of boneheaded measures designed to generate crowd-pleasing sound bytes vs. actually addressing the issue.

In typical fashion, Washington's approach to the problem is to take symbolic measures like last week's vote to stop filling to SPR, or this week's House bill allowing the U.S. to sue OPEC (good luck with that) and Joe Lieberman's proposal to regulate commodity trading, as if surging crude prices are entirely a function of evil speculators.

Today brought another dog and pony show with a Senate hearing "Exploring the Skyrocketing Price of Oil." Predictably, the hearing brought a lot of heated rhetoric but few solutions, as Congress overlooks the critical point that major oil companies don't really control much of the world's oil, much less its price.

"We cannot change the world market," Robert Malone, chairman and president of BP America said at the hearing. "Today's high prices are linked to the failure both here and abroad to increase supplies, renewables and conservation."

As Malone suggests, the sad truth is that Congress has failed miserably to produce any serious energy policy, and politicians of both parties ignored the  Hirsch Report on peak oil. Bottom line: The politicians didn't like the report's conclusions and so ignored them.

Speaking of which, Congress' failure is matched, if not exceeded, by that of the Bush Administration, which may very well be the worst in history. Beyond the horrific miscalculations in Iraq, the Bush administration has actually discouraged conservation and gave people tax breaks for driving SUVs. Bush has also overseen a huge increase in the deficit, which has undermined the value of the dollar.

Given all that (and more), maybe we should be thankful oil and gas prices aren't higher.