Steve Pearce: “The thing that we do not often think about that drives this price higher is the fact that the emerging nations, China…”

“The thing that we do not often think about that drives this price higher is the fact that the emerging nations, China and India and the other emerging nations, are demanding tremendous high quantities of fossil fuels because that is the fuel of emerging economies. It is the fuel of our economy. {time} 2330 So worldwide, the demand for oil and gas is spiraling up, and yet we have limited supplies. Now, we as a Nation have made decisions that limit, first of all, the supplies of gasoline because we have not permitted new refineries in the past 30 years. It has been almost 30 years since we have built a new refinery. And only this year, earlier this year, did we even permit a new refinery, and it has not yet been built. So one of things that is escalating the price of gasoline is that we have reached our capacity in refining. Not only is the price of crude oil going up, it has gone from $25, 3 or 4 years ago now, to $67, so that you can see the dominant cost of a price of gasoline coming from crude oil about 55 percent, we would expect that that would drive the price of gasoline higher. But then we have arbitrarily as a Nation chosen to limit our productive capacities because of the unnecessarily complex regulatory procedures that affect the permitting of new refineries.…”