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For the last two years, the White House and its Commodity Futures Trading Commission have patted us all on the head and said "it's only supply and demand" as the price of gasoline popped $4.00 a gallon and crude oil hit $145 a barrel. Well, oopsie--now there's a new tune. The Wall Street Journal tells us today  that the commission, under heavy Congressional pressure, is investigating reported schemes by oil producers and buyers to manipulate the supply of oil and drive up the price.

In her first speech Wednesday as a VP candidate, Sarah Palin got whooping cheers for her accomplishments as governor of Alaska, including a big state budget surplus. But Palin didn't say straight out how she did it: with a big windfall profits tax on oil production. I wonder how Palin will respond when the evil news media ask her where most of Alaska's surplus came from, and whether she's still proud of her hard-fought tax.

The first concern as Hurricane Gustav sweeps across Cuba and toward the Gulf Coast is life and limb. Afterward, though, already painful gasoline prices could hit $5.00 a gallon quickly. Unlike the hurricane, such price spikes are preventable--but oil companies would rather rake in record profits than ease consumers' pain.. The storm may well cut refining capacity, but if the U.S. had a decent supply of gasoline on hand, price spikes would be muted. But refineries have cut production to keep prices up, so U.S. gasoline supplies now are lower than before Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

There's no question that tough, enforceable reductions of carbon emissions are the only way to reduce the threat of global warming. Or that the world is heading into a market-based "cap and trade" emission credit system. It's also no surprise that Fortune Magazine is doing good journalism on cap and trade. What surprises is the clarity and accessibility wrought by Fortune's "green business" specialist, Marc Gunther. Read on...

It's interesting that Andrew Cuomo, one of the few political rock stars, is all but sitting out the Democratic Convention. Instead, he's productively suing the pants off of government and energy companies on behalf of the planet and the "future of our children" so much mentioned at the convention podium.

A friend asked me today about all the investment hype and other excitement surrounding the so-called Bakken Formation oil reserves in the U.S. high plains. Here's the gist of what I told him, which might make him keep the retirement fund under the mattress. I'm also suspicious of the government's timing in generating the hype with only a 2-page "fact sheet" as backup. 

ExxonMobil is spending plenty to get its message heard during the Democratic Convention, but not by spending on the convention itself. Exxon is buying a heap of time on CNN and CBS and probably other outlets, just as it did with NBC during the Olympics. Inside the hall, both Conoco Phillips and Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum (one of the world's biggest drilling companies) are listed as convention sponsors. Inside the hall, oilman T. Boone Pickens is all over the place.

I was reading up today on research about turning pond scum into biodiesel. One promising thread is that algae can be fed the carbon dioxide emitted by power plants, multiplying their oil production on a waste greenhouse gas. Then I came across a paragraph in a Science Daily article from a few days ago that stopped me cold:

Las Vegas, NV -- There was plenty of room for disagreement at the National Clean Energy Summit. Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin made a pitch for the "clean coal" fantasy (possibly because his employer, Citigoup, is a heavy investor in traditional coal). Others defended nuclear, in some cases to boos. But almost every one of the nearly two dozen speakers and panelists, including four governors, agreed on the stupidity of energy politics in Washington today. There is no dearth of energy solutions, but there is also little will to act.

It seems the extent of Governor Schwarzenegger's solution for Californians to help combat sky-high gas prices is... promoting more efficient use of gasoline. Gee thanks for the big idea, Arnold. It's not the first time Arnold has tried to appear "green", while staying the gasoline-powered course, not to mention the gov's attempts at "greenwashing" his image.