JOE PITTS TOOK $26,000 FROM BIG OIL AND NOW WANTS TO PUMP OUT MORE MONEY BY DRILLING IN A COUNTY THAT PASSED ‘PEAK OIL’ 30 YEARS AGO

CHESTER COUNTY, PA – It was announced last week that the GOP is pressing the Democrats about energy policy with 16th District Rep. Joe Pitts introducing legislation letting Big Oil despoil more of the land of the free. “If you believe that there are any serious differences of opinion between the Democrats and Republicans on our energy/oil policy then I have a great deal on some Enron stock for you” said 16th district independent congressional candidate John Murphy.

“The drill happy Republicans, awash in Big Oil campaign contributions, would have us believe that rising oil prices are a function of supply and demand” (Joe Pitts took $26,000 from the oil and gas industry and has a voting record of 91% supporting legislature favoring those leeches on the American public) said Murphy. Yet demand has actually decreased and supplies are so vast that Iran is actually stockpiling 25 million barrels of heavy, sour crude oil because in the words of Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, Iran’s oil governor, “there are simply no buyers because the market has more than enough oil.”

“No” insisted John Murphy. “The single greatest reason for the increase in oil prices is Wall Street speculation and that’s a fact Jack! Oil was at $50 a barrel in January 2007, then $75 a barrel in August 2007. Now at $145 or so a barrel, it is clear that oil pricing is a speculative activity, having very little to do with physical supply and demand. That’s right; the price of an essential product—petroleum—is set by speculators operating on rumor, greed, and fear of wild predictions” added Murphy.

Harry C. Johnson, former banker who worked for many years inside Big Oil and ran his own small oil company in Oklahoma says “some industry experts, who profit greatly from the high price of crude, and have stated openly that the worldwide economic price of crude, absent speculators, would be around $50 to $60 per barrel.

“Imagine” said John Murphy furiously, “our government is letting your price for gasoline and home heating oil be determined by a gambling casino on Wall Street called NYMEX, (the New York Mercantile Exchange). The people need regulatory protection from speculators and an excess profits tax on Big Oil.

“We should not be drilling for oil in a country which has passed ‘peak oil’ back in the mid-1970s. That the United States has passed ‘peak oil’ is a little fact that the Republicans and their Democrat colleagues conveniently forget in their effort to help pump up the profits of the oil companies which contribute so generously to their political campaigns. What we should do” continued the Independent John Murphy, “is push Congress to legislate higher margin requirements for the speculators at the NYMEX.

“Suffice it to say that ExxonMobile testified earlier this month in Congress that absent the speculators, the price of a barrel of crude oil would be half what it is today. That would mean about $65 a barrel instead of $145 a barrel” concluded John Murphy.

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