The "Politics" of Oil...

     Up until now I have been doing a series of blogs on "The Business of Baseball." With the baseball season winding down except for the playoffs for the American League & National League championship series still going on, I decided to shift gears a little and take on the "politics" of oil.  I don't know how many of you remember the
TV series titled "The Beverly Hillbillies that ran for a number of seasons on TV.  You're probably wondering what this has to do with oil.  Well, if you recall the series at all, it starts with Jed Clampett hunting on his property for food, shooting and hitting the ground and up from the ground came oil, or as the song sung by Lester Flatt &
Earl Scruggs' Foggy Mountain Boys says, "up through the ground came bubbling crude...oil that is, black gold,
Texas tea."  It was that "black gold" that propelled Jed Clampett and his family from poverty to instant millionaire
status.  Of course with that change in status came the move from the poverty ridden backwoods to the city of
notoriety of Beverly Hills. Although the program was created for the entertainment of the masses, oil itself still holds the political power to control nations and their economic well being.
     Some of you who might read this blog might also remember the oil embargo of 1973. The embargo itself wasn't brought about because people were getting greedy over oil output and prices.  Rather, the embargo was
brought about by the political climate of the time.  The political climate of the time involved the OPEC nations and the Arabian countries of OPEC stopping the flow of oil in retalliation against the United States for their
re-supplying the Israeli military during the Yom Kippur war.  The embargo lasted until March 1974, and its effects on the economic climate were described as devastating, regarded as the first event since the Great Depression
to have a persistent economic effect.
      Shift gears to the present time.  The latest crisis to hit the oil market was the BP disaster in the Gulf.  Until it was contained, it not only created created havoc in the oil markets, but on other Gulf economies as well. The people who live along the Gulf coast were in danger of losing their very livelihoods, whether it was from the boating along the Gulf, from fishing and shrimping along the Gulf, but on the tourist industry as well.  There are still
undoubtedly economic reverberations going on as people still try to recover from the disaster.
       Is it still a "political" situation?  It is still a political situation because it still involves who drives the price of
oil and how that price effects the overall economy, not just here in the US, but around the world as well.  I may not be an oil expert, but I am a consumer, and it never ceases to amaze me how the price of oil can fluctuate
so rapidly from one day to the next and the price of a gallon one day can be $2.599 a gallon and the very next day rise, without warning, to $2.799 a gallon, especially when there are no major hurricanes threatening the Gulf area that could damage or destroy refineries, the BP crisis appears to be behind us for the most part, and the
OPEC nations have been fairly quiet without threatening more oil cutbacks or price increases.  It was understandable, in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast area, for prices to rise, due to damage done to numerous refineries. But now?mailto:now?david.mosher3993@my.sinclair.edu

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