‘Necessarily Skyrocketing’: Obama Gives Americans Highest Gas Prices IN HISTORY In 2011 – With 2012 Shaping Up To Be Much Worse

You remember that quip Obama gave us that under his policies, energy prices “would necessarily skyrocket“?

Remember that Obama appointed an energy secretary named Steven Chu who said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe”???  With gasoline prices in Europe consistently hovering between $7 and $10 a gallon???  Steven Chu said that in explaining the Obama policy of “progressively” making gasoline more and more expensive in order to force Americans to turn to alternative energy sources.  And one of the ways Obama wants to accomplish that dream (which amounts to a nightmare for working Americans) is to tax Americans for driving by the mile.

Barry Hussein can file 2011’s gasoline prices under the category “mission accomplished.”  But, of course, he’s really only just getting started.

Gasoline prices were higher last year in America than they had EVER been:

U.S. drivers spend record amount on gasoline in 2011
Despite lower demand, more than $448 billion has been paid so far for fuel — $100 billion more than in 2010. Consistently high oil prices are blamed.
December 09, 2011|By Ronald D. White, Los Angeles Times

American drivers this week broke a record that will bring them no joy.

They collectively spent more than $448 billion on gasoline since the beginning of the year, according to the Oil Price Information Service, putting the previous record for gas expenditures — set in 2008 — in the rearview mirror with weeks of driving still to go.

It’s also a huge jump over last year, when U.S. drivers spent more than $100 billion less on gas.

The major reason for the record-setting gas spending in 2011 was that oil prices were consistently high all year. And that probably brought joy at the other end of the pipeline. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is on pace to top $1 trillion in net oil exports for the first time, or 29% more than last year.

Next week, OPEC convenes to discuss production levels. Analysts held out little hope that the group, which pumps 40% of the world’s oil, would raise output to lower prices and boost the economic recovery in the U.S. and Europe.

“They won’t do anything,” said Fadel Gheit, senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer and Co. “They can lay the blame on the banking sectors and debt and they are happy to keep providing oil at what are record prices for this time of the year.”

On Friday, crude oil for January delivery gained $1.07 to close at $99.41 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Nymex oil prices are up 8.8% so far for the year.

At the pump, gasoline prices hit a record for this time of year. On Friday, the average price of a gallon in California was $3.613, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report. That’s 27 cents a gallon higher than the record for a Dec. 9, set in 2007. It was 36.9 cents higher than last year.

Nationally, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.293, also breaking the 2007 record by 28.5 cents. Compared with last year, it was 31.8 cents higher.

Burbank resident Dan Bell, 38, said he recently turned down a job that would have paid him more because he would have had to spend too much on gasoline to get there.

“I just hate the fact that OPEC is making that much money,” Bell said. “There’s not much we can do. We still have to go to work.”

According to the Energy Department, the demand for vehicle fuel has been about 4% lower this year than in 2010. And domestic production of oil is on the rise.

But increasing amounts of oil produced in the U.S. are going to other countries. For the last three weeks, U.S. refineries have had a record high level of fuel exports, averaging about 2,984,000 barrels a day to markets overseas, the Energy Department said.

That was more than 600,000 barrels a day higher than last year and more than twice as much as was exported in 2008.

In 2008 when gasoline prices went up, Democrats in Congress (and one candidate for president named Barack Hussein Obama) demonized George Bush:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Thursday blamed the “two oil men in the White House,” President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and their Republican allies in Congress for gas prices exceeding $4 a gallon.

Pelosi, a California Democrat, said multiple initiatives intended to lower high energy costs have passed the Democratically controlled House only to “run into a brick wall” in the Senate because they did not receive the 60 votes needed to overcome Republican filibusters.

“The price of oil is… is attributed to two oil men in the White House and their protectors in the United States Senate,” Pelosi said in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Democrats think that preventing America from being able to drill for its own oil so we can bow down before OPEC is the key to low oil prices, apparently.

But my point in citing this is to ask, “Who is to blame for gasoline being more expensive than it has ever been in history of America now that Democrats are running things?”

How is this disaster NOT Obama’s fault, oh party that made everything Bush’s fault?

You know, Obama, the guy who said, “Under my plan energy prices will necessarily skyrocket“?  Why was Bush to blame for everything and Obama isn’t to blame for anything?

Other than the fact that the Democrat Party is the party of abject hypocrisy and if you get your “news” from the mainstream media you fill what little brain you have with propaganda.

This abject failure of Obama to control energy prices is nothing new; I was writing about this in 2010, too – at a time that under Obama’s watch gas prices had increased 55 percent.

Oh, btw, Obama isn’t starting 2012 so great when it comes to oil and gas prices, either:

Gasoline prices start the year at a high — and rising
Gas prices are the highest ever for this time of year, and analysts predict that motorists will be digging deep in 2012 to fuel their vehicles.
January 06, 2012|By Ronald D. White, Los Angeles Times

Not only are we worrying about the end of the world in 2012 — thanks, Maya calendar makers — but this also may be the year of the gas-pocalypse, analysts warn. That’s because gasoline prices are the highest ever for the start of the year, and they’re on the rise, supercharged by expensive oil and changes in refinery operations.

In California, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.666 on Thursday, up 8.1 cents from a week earlier and up 33.1 cents from a year earlier, which had been a record price for this time of year, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report. Nationally, a gallon of regular was averaging $3.319, up 6.5 cents from a week earlier. That topped 2011’s record-setting start by 24.2 cents a gallon.

It’s the wrong way to kick off the new year, said Susan Sutter of Anaheim, who has seen the price of a gallon of gasoline at her local Arco station rise 18 cents, to $3.49, in the last week.

“I’m just appalled,” said Sutter, 54, who drives a Honda Civic sedan. Sutter’s ire wasn’t cooled by the fact that she was paying quite a bit less than the state average.

“I just hate these prices,” she said. “Someone is lining their pockets, and it sure isn’t me.”

Of course, current prices don’t guarantee future prices, but analysts are predicting that motorists will be digging deep this year to fuel their vehicles.

“Average gasoline prices are moving up as we enter the new year, a trend that has held since 2008,” said Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.com, a website that tracks fuel prices. “We’re starting 2012 about 20 cents per gallon higher than 2011, setting up an ugly year for motorists.”

Energy Department statistics suggest that U.S. drivers won’t be getting any good news on prices soon.

In 2010, the year of the smallest recent gap between start-of-year prices and that year’s peak, the rise was 14.5% nationally and 10% in California. That translated into a jump of 38.7 cents a gallon in the U.S.’ average gasoline price and 30 cents in California’s.

The biggest recent start-to-peak increase came in 2009. Nationally, the average gasoline price started the year at $1.684 a gallon and climbed 60% to $2.694, a jump of slightly more than a dollar. In California, the average price per gallon soared 75%, to $3.287 from $1.874.

And 2011 showed that when prices start out high, it doesn’t take a huge percentage increase to add to consumer woes. Average prices rose 29% nationally in 2011, a jump of 89.5 cents a gallon to the year’s peak of $3.965. California prices also rose 29% last year, for a 95-cent rise to the high of $4.257.

The AAA Fuel Gauge Report mirrors the trend shown by the Energy Department’s weekly telephone survey of service stations. The averages reported by AAA are gathered daily by the Oil Price Information Service using credit card receipts from more than 100,000 outlets.

This year’s gasoline prices could be significantly higher than in previous years, said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service.

“Somewhere between the Grammys and the Oscars, the gasoline market and perhaps the crude market will trend considerably higher,” Kloza wrote in his blog, Speaking of Oil.

Kloza cited three potential causes: “International worries about a second Arab Spring will combine with domestic concerns about U.S. refinery maintenance and the closure of at least two critical East Coast refineries” to push prices higher.

In addition, U.S. refiners have been exporting record amounts of diesel fuel as they pursue profits from foreign buyers, causing an increase in diesel production at the expense of gasoline production. Tighter gasoline supplies mean higher prices.

History isn’t on the side of U.S. consumers. Kloza said that U.S. average gasoline prices have jumped in 11 of the last 12 years, to the record-high average of $3.514 a gallon for all of 2011. Oil prices are also starting the year on the move, another discouraging signal for gasoline prices, Kloza said.

The U.S. benchmark grade of oil, West Texas Intermediate, has remained above $100 a barrel in the three trading days so far this year on concerns about Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, a key passage for oil transport.

The price eased a bit Thursday, falling $1.41, or 1.4%, to $101.81 on the New York Mercantile Exchange after the Energy Department said U.S. oil stockpiles increased by 2.1 million barrels from a week earlier instead of declining 1 million barrels as analysts had expected. In London, the European benchmark, Brent North Sea crude, slipped 96 cents, or 0.8%, to $112.74.

Notice how the media – if they bother to talk about it at ALL (from my own searching the LA Times is about the only ones) – make sure to blame everyone and everything BUT the Fool-in-Chief.

When the media talks about the high gas prices of 2008, the somehow fail to mention the way DEMOCRATS created that mess.  Their steadfast refusal to allow offshore (or damn near ANY) drilling (see also here) is profoundly responsible for our high energy prices.

There are two competing policies.  First, let’s look at President Bush’s:

Gas prices have been on a roller-coaster ride over the past decade, dropping to near $1 after President George W. Bush’s first year in office, crossing the $2 mark in 2005 and reaching $4 in June 2008 before Congress and Mr. Bush took action, lifting presidential and congressionally imposed moratoriums on expanding offshore drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Mr. Bush lifted the presidential moratorium in July that year. The congressional moratorium expired Sept. 30, and prices fell precipitously, dropping more than $1 in October.

“The reason that it dropped is because the U.S. sent a signal to the markets, by dropping the moratoria, that we’re going to drill on our lands. Obviously, we never followed up, and thus you see the crisis gradually rising,” said Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, the ranking Republican on the Natural Resources Committee.

He said the solution is the same for both the short-term and long-term prices: Assure the markets that the U.S. will pursue domestic exploration.

You can see the impact that America drilling for its own oil has on prices – and how despicable the mainstream media can be in covering up the truth – in the following CBS piece entitled “The Immediate Benefit Of Offshore Drilling” from July 17, 2008:

After trading at a record high of $147 a barrel Friday, the price of oil saw its largest one-day drop since the 2003 beginning of the Iraq war on Tuesday, falling $6.44 a barrel. Wednesday, it fell another $3.71, to $135.03, and at one point was trading as low as $132.

So what happened? As is usually the case with markets, a variety of factors caused this dramatic drop. According to the Associated Press, the Energy Information Administration announced that U.S. crude-oil supplies rose by 3 million barrels; beleaguered banks have been selling off valuable energy contracts to pay for other debts; and there’s even some speculation that computer programs used by Wall Street may create a “cascading effect” once prices start to drop.

But bizarrely, the AP didn’t mention that on Monday – again, the day of the single biggest one-day drop in oil prices in five years – President Bush removed the executive order imposing a moratorium on offshore drilling in the United States.

To think that this dramatic and unexpected move by the Bush administration didn’t have a significant effect on oil prices is folly. Even Democrats admit that relatively small margins in oil production could have a huge impact on prices.

The price per barrel of crude oil – which was at an all-time high the day Bush signed the moratorium that ended the ban on offshore drilling after going up and up and up to that point – continued to drop and drop. By September, it was below $109 a barrel. By October it had dropped even more. And it kept dropping.

But now in the age of Obama, it’s going up and up and up again. We have had a 55% increase in the price of our gasoline during a terrible recession. Obama’s energy policies have hurt this nation badly at an incredibly vulnerable period, without so much as a peep from most of the media.

Prices were at an all time high in 2008, thanks to Democrat policies.  Bush lifted the ban on offshore drilling, and all of a sudden those sky-high oil prices that Democrats demagogued plunged dramatically.  And continued to plunge for the rest of 2008 until we elected a fool.

Now let’s consider Obama’s policies:

Barack Obama threatened to bankrupt the coal industry – which produces 49% of our nation’s electricity – and said that:

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

He told just enough lies and half-truths to get coal-state Democrats such as West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller to get them to believe he wouldn’t destroy their economies. But now that he’s elected he’s free to break those promises and pursue ruinous policies. Rockefeller is now saying of Obama that:

“he’s beginning to not be believable to me.”

But it’s like, “Sorry Sucker.” When you vote like a fool, you receive a fool’s fate.

Anyway, maybe you thought, “Well, I’m not in a coal producing state,” or “I’m not in a coal-fired electric grid,” so you thought Obama’s shockingly bad energy policies didn’t matter.

But you’re still going to have to put gas in your car, and Obama’s going to see to it that it costs you a pretty penny to do it.

In fact, gas will have to rise to the European level prices of at least $7/gallon in order for Obama’s policies to impact CO2 levels as per his energy policy. So you can bet that fuel prices will continue to rise, and rise, and rise.

Consider:

It wasn’t long ago that Barack Obama was saying that high fuel prices would be good for the country as long as they rose slowly enough that your stupid brain wouldn’t notice:

John Harwood asked then-Senator Obama, “Could the high prices help us?” And Obama responded:

OBAMA: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that, ehh, this is such a shock t’American pocketbooks is not a good thing. Uh, but if we take some steps right now t’, uh, help people make the adjustment – first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US automakers.

And Obama’s appointments – particularly his appointment of the Secretary of Energy – affirm that he doesn’t mind you paying up the wazoo at every fill-up:

Obama’s appointments reflect his determination to drive up oil prices and therefore force the American people against their will to embrace his radical leftist energy agenda. Take Obama’s Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who has stated on the record that he wanted to“figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” And at the time he said those words, gasoline prices were close to $8 a gallon.

Gas prices have DOUBLED since Obama assumed the presidency.

Hold him responsible. Get him out of the Oval Office before he poisons America even more.

The United States is the number ONE country in in the world in having the largest fossil reserves.

And the United States is currently the third largest oil producer in the entire world.

But as long as Obama – and probably as long as any Democrat – occupies the White House, you will not see America bothering to harness it’s own abundant natural resources no matter who gets hurt.

Who’s fault is it that oil and gas and energy prices are so shockingly high?  The mainstream media will never honestly or accurately report it, but you have Barack Obama and the Democrat Party to thank when you can’t fill your gas tank or pay your energy bill.

Right now the Keystone oil pipeline is in front of Obama – and he is just as determined to kill domestic oil and the domestic jobs that come with it as he’s ever been.

Tags: gasoline, gasoline prices, highest gas prices, Keystone, offshore drilling