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Nationalizing the Petroleum Industry
Gasoline prices vary around the world, from 19 cents per gallon in Qatar, 30 cents in Venezuela, $1.50 in Mexico, $3.50 per gallon in the USA and up to $8.00 per gallon across Europe. Why the vast differences? Mostly it's about supply, if you produce your own oil, it's cheap if you import it you pay more.
In our country (USA) basically we have three oil companies; Exxon, Shell, and BP. Exxon has been posting record profits of 30 billion or more for each of the past five years. In doing so they have driven consumer prices up across the board. So what can we do about our wealth being sucked off, billions of dollars at a time to multi-national corporations?
What do Brazil, Ecuador, Norway, Venezuela, Mexico, Qatar, China and dozens of other countries have that the USA does not?
Nationalized oil production. In cases of national security the President can have and use extraordinary powers.
A nationalized oil company makes more sense than letting greedy capitalist corporations bleed the country dry of assets to enrich the few the powerful and the rich. It makes sense on the surface, corporations did not create crude oil, dead dinosaurs did it and it took millions of years. How can a corporation claim ownership of something that only the the earth and time can provide? It's about time for a U.S. National Oil Company!
According to the Congressional Research Service
"Among the more radical, and unlikely, policy directions is a non-market strategy based on establishing a U.S. national oil company. Such a company, depending on how its mission might be defined, could act as both an offset to other national oil companies or act in cooperation with other nations’ national oil companies when such opportunities might arise. Potential benefits to this approach might be a more direct linkage between oil issues and the interests of the U.S. government. For example, while an oil-producing nation’s government might be willing to try to coerce private oil companies, they might be less willing to do so to a company directly tied to the U.S. government. A U.S. national oil company might also respond more directly to energy policy directions established by the government. Some might believe that the profit motive prevents the international oil companies from providing U.S. consumers with low-cost petroleum products. These concerns might be allayed if a U.S. national oil company were established."There are several ways, that this could be structured, all of which would benefit the people over the corporations.
1. Most Radical would be a direct take over of the fuel supply system from top to bottom. This of course would create more bureaucracy and we know that our federal government pretty much messes everything up.2. Government take over the production side of the business and sell oil to the established companies at controlled prices, in competition with the other supplies around the world. Again bureaucracy problems...
3. Government could claim oil rights and allow production to continue and have the oil companies pay them for the crude oil.
4. Government could tax these corporations at 99%. All of these methods would help Americans, stabilize supply side pricing and likely balance the budget.
