Bill Nelson: “our people are hurting. There is something wrong with the price of oil and gas. It is not a normal function of the…”

“our people are hurting. There is something wrong with the price of oil and gas. It is not a normal function of the marketplace of supply and demand that the price of oil hit, last Friday, $139 a barrel. A few months ago, we had an ExxonMobil executive testify before Congress that the normal supply and demand of the marketplace for oil, even in a tight world market, the normal price would be about $55 a barrel. Yet, last Friday, oil sold for $139 a barrel. So what is the problem? Well, it is obviously not a supply-and-demand issue. A normal marketplace sets its price according to the supply, and when the supply is higher, the price is less; if the demand is higher than the supply, then the price is more. As you would expect, in a world where there is an increasing consumption of oil, you would think, even with the emergence of new countries that are demanding oil, the supply would keep going up and up and, in fact, it has. But if the ExxonMobil executive is accurate, and the price ought to be around $55 a barrel, what is the difference that has run the price all the way up to $139? We have to look closer to see. I think the American people are now at the point of hurting so badly we better shake ourselves out of our lethargy and do the congressional investigations that are necessary to pry open this secret box to determine what is causing oil to keep going up and up, so we can give our people some relief.”