Can Congress really do anything about gas prices?

Question

Or are we doomed to adding $1 per gallon a year forever?

Answer 1

Congress have block the drilling, refining and exploration for 40 years.  So they totally screwed us.

Conservation and preserving nature is fine when the economy is strong.

People first, animals second.

Nuclear power is a good option.    Japan and France is on nuclear power.

Answer 2

Short answer is yes they can.  Longer answer is no they won't, other than spend months or years arguing about how to legislate the leveraging of technology to increase efficiency, which a 5th grader in 1978 would have have figured out.  I know I've seen this coming for as long as I can remember.

Answer 3

About the only thing Congress can do about gas prices is make them higher either by adding more taxes or trying to add more regulation to the oil industry.

Answer 4

Congress could set price controls related to the price per barrel. But that's only going to have a limited effect. The main thing driving the price of oil is global demand. Realistically, things are not going to improve by any significant amount until we actually dedicate ourselves to switching to alternative fuels - and I don't mean bio-fuels.

The reality of the situation is the wealth of Chinese and Indian citizens is improving. With the improved standard of living comes increased demand for things that use oil. Whether it's in the form of gas for automobiles or plastic for consumer electronics. Plus there is a growing demand for fertilizers which are petroleum based. The US is no longer the main player in the global market for crude oil.

Even if we tap oil fields in Alaska, it will hardly make a dent in our current demand and the oil fields wouldn't even be on-line for at least 4-5 years. And it's already been shown that shifting corn and other crops to the production of bio-fuels rather than food is inefficient - and possibly contributing to rising food costs.

Yes, Congress needs to reign in the oil companies and the record profits they are reporting at the expense of consumers. But what we really need is a national resolve to finally start using more alternative energy sources. We need to ramp up production of hybrid cars and encourage the development of even better alternatives like hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. And we need this to happen in the window of a year or two, rather than decades.

Answer 5

No, we are in the centre of an hurricane and the oil price is the centre of it, so nothing will be done.

The price of oil is the way to make the normal people paying for the crisis of today, due to the greed and the stupidity of the banks and of the sharks of wall street.

They dont' want to pay for their mistakes, thay have found the way to make somebody pay for them and tha way is the rising of the oil, the grain etc etc and they have a lot of friends at the congress written from italy

Answer 6

No, if they could they already would have.