Bachmann: I’ll Bring Back $2 Gas

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gas1President Michele Bachmann has a promise: $2 gas.

“Under President Bachmann you will see gasoline come down below $2 a gallon again,” Bachmann told a crowd Tuesday in South Carolina. “That will happen.”

Sure, politicians promise all kinds of things on the campaign trail. But Bachmann, a leading contender for the 2012 Republican nomination, is wading into truly tricky territory.

The price Americans pay at the pump is tied to the crude oil market — a global system largely beyond the reach of Washington.

It’s certainly true that prices — now about $3.50 a gallon on average — have risen since President Obama took office.

“The day that the president became president gasoline was $1.79 a gallon,” Bachmann said. “Look what it is today.”

Of course, that’s not the full story.

When Obama took office, the country was mired in a terrible economic contraction.

“That was in the 4th inning of the greatest recession of our lifetime,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service.

During recessions, demand for gasoline plummets as trucks pull off the road, companies cut back on travel and laid off workers drive fewer miles.

“You have to be careful what you wish for because the recipe for cheap prices these days is economic disaster,” Kloza said.

Since early 2009, the economy has recovered somewhat and demand for crude has risen. It has even spiked in the developing world — especially in China, India and South America.

Kloza said that increased crude demand is the principal driver behind higher gas prices.

“We’re going to have to recognize the rest of the world has this increasing appetite for oil,” he said. “If we go below $2 a gallon, it probably means there has been a lot of wealth loss and we are in a deflationary period.”

There are some measures that could be taken to lower gas prices, according to Phil Flynn, a senior market analyst at PFG Best.

A stronger dollar would take pressure off prices, and reducing the number of miles Americans drive in gasoline-powered cars would also weaken demand.

“I never say never,” Flynn said. “But whether or not Bachmann can do that in four years is a tall order.”

Bachmann did not lay out a specific plan to drop prices on Tuesday. But her campaign website says that as president, she would ease restrictions on drilling and roll back federal regulations on the shale gas industry.

While increased oil and gas drilling in the United States may create good-paying jobs, reduce reliance on foreign oil and lower the trade deficit, it would have little impact on gas and oil prices.

That’s because the amount of extra oil that could be produced from more drilling in this country is tiny compared to what the country — and the world — consumes.

Plus, any extra oil the United States did produce would likely be quickly offset by a cut in OPEC production.

According to a 2009 study from the government’s Energy Information Administration, opening up to drilling areas off the East Coast, West Coast and the west coast of Florida would yield an extra 500,000 barrels a day by 2030.

The world currently consumes 89 million barrels a day, and by then would likely be using over 100 million barrels.

After OPEC got done adjusting its production to reflect the increased American output, gas prices might drop a whopping three cents a gallon, the study said.

{CNN Money/Matzav.com Newscenter}


14 COMMENTS

  1. That’s impossible, because Obama will leave office with the Dollar in such shambles that if you can still get a can of Coke for under $2, then consider yourself luck. And I don’t mean in the airport or Six Flags.

  2. And I’m the Wizard of Oz. We’ll mever see $2 gas again, even if the Tea Party takes over the world. I was inclined to take her seriously before, but now it’s obvious she’s either living in Dreamland or deliberately telling bubbe maises.

  3. If you believe that Bachmann can knock down the price of gasoline to $2 a gallon, then I have a bridge that I want to sell you.
    She’s off the wall, folks.

  4. If there is never another penny of inflation (which wouldn’t happen) and she would play hardball with opec and drill baby drill, then it could happen. That’s what she means. So currently an ounce of silver gets you 10 gallons gas. She’s promising 20 gallons per silver ounce. That’s indeed very doable if she drills everywhere by executive order, and shuts down the EPA, which everyone other then the hard left would support, especially when they see prices tumbling.

  5. beethoven’s friend: You support the clown Obama which ran his whole campaign on hope. And now he says, though he hoped he can get a great economy going, but “bad luck” made the economy flop. Because there was a earthquake across the world and instability in the middle east (thank you Obama and Obama Supporter Zuckerberg), as if no other presidents dealt with instability from middle east and earthquakes in Asia. What a superstitious clown to think that luck dictates good or bad economies.

    Bachmann on the other hand is an intelligent woman which knows that policies can make or break economies and all the pathetic drilling moratoriums embolden opec to charge whatever they want. There is a reason why they get away with charging us north of $80 per barrel.

  6. There’s this thing called the law of supply and demand. The more people want something, the more the suppliers can charge for it. With China and India becoming major manufacturing countries, and their citizens buying cars as fast as they can make them, the demand is going up, up and up. So, friends, the price is going to go up, up and up.

    There’s another problem – there’s only so much gas and oil in the world. It’s going to run out, not tomorrow but within your (and maybe my) lifetimes. The people who own that gas and oil know that, and they charge according, because they know once it’s gone there’ll be no substitute.

    Somebody better tell Ms. Bachmann she’s back in Kansas.

  7. to 10:

    That’s like saying that food is finite. G-d created the world in a way that the resources don’t run dry. Other wise I would by out all the tuna fish cans on the market to save for my offspring. There have been people projecting for decades perhaps centuries, that the end of the oil (petroleum) deposits are years away. They were wrong, weren’t they!?

  8. No, Brian, they were not wrong. You will not find any people who have projected the end of oil deposits. They have been predicting the end of reasonably priced oil which is a very different thing.

    We have oil priced, not by a rational marketplace, but by speculators, monopolies, and nationalized oil companies whose interests are based only their own profit and repression of Israel (and their own people. At a mini,um we need the US to tax them to reclaim some of the obscene wealth they are accumulating and the cost of the repair of the damage they are doing (BP and Enbridge for example).

    G-d created a world in which we need to use our intelligence to manage its resources with wisdom. Famine has been with us since the time of Joseph (and still exists today) but using his intelligence and insight from G-D he managed to save a nation, Egypt, and his own people.

  9. to lkinbc,

    You have no understanding of economics. If they are taking obscene profits, then you can start your own company and take modest profits and become a multi millionaire or even billionaire. By the way, these companies are public, so if the profits were obscene, by stock in these companies and by your own logic, you will become obscenely rich.

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