“Today there is a very thin layer of insulation in the oil market amounting to approximately one million barrels a day, meaning that every small disruption, be it a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico or riots in Nigeria or instability in the Middle East, immediately creates a rise in prices. This situation will be with us for a long time because there is no new spare capacity. Building spare capacity requires an investment of billions of dollars to create infrastructure that may sit idle most of the time. Nobody will invest on those terms,”
“We see attacks on a regular basis. Since the end of major military operations in April of 2003, there have been close to 250 attacks against oil pipelines, refineries and oil facilities and that has been pretty significant in reducing... up to a million barrels a day of potential production,”
“They realize that when they blow up a pipeline in Iraq or in Sudan or anywhere in the world, this translates immediately into a price rise in all the markets. It is much easier for terrorists to blow up an oil facility or take out a tanker somewhere in the world than to infiltrate into the United States and blow up the World Trade Center,”
“We see attacks on a regular basis. Since the end of major military operations in April of 2003, there have been close to 250 attacks against oil pipelines, refineries and oil facilities and that has been pretty significant in reducing... up to a million barrels a day of potential production.”
“The president's initiative ties an oil savings target to a basket of energy solutions for homes and businesses, which have nothing to do with our oil problem.”