In a post on The American Thinker blog, Todd Keister shares some quite enlightening insights about Big Oil, which liberals and the media are inducing us to hate.

He writes:

Without the hard work and ingenuity of the men and women who work for the energy companies, we would be living in the 17th century – no electricity, running water, cars, trucks, airplanes, ships, factories, waterproof clothing, soda bottles, safety glass, sterile food and medical containers, air conditioners, televisions, microwave ovens, X-Boxes, I-Pods, or any of the millions of other products made using power generated from the burning of fossil fuels.

You would have to grow your own food, or ride your donkey to a nearby market, where there would be no refrigerators or electric lights. You’d have to kill and clean your own meat and cook it over an open fire. You’d have to chop down the trees for your home, and provide your own light by making candles from the fat of animals. Every single thing in your modern life is utterly and completely dependent upon a steady supply of oil. Without it, the entire Western world would collapse completely in a matter of weeks; tens of millions would perish from starvation, exposure, and disease.

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Perhaps you agree with Hillary Clinton, who said that there is “…no basis for the huge profits…” of the oil companies because they are “…not inventing anything.” While you’re nodding your head in agreement, sitting in your comfortable house, warmed, cooled, clothed, entertained, and fed by the burning and remanufacturing of petroleum, take a moment to think what it takes to invent a method to extract crude oil from five thousand feet below the floor of the North Sea, which itself is more than two miles under stormy, frigid water, bring it to the US, turn it into gasoline, and deliver it to your corner convenience store. How much does it cost? How can it even be done?

And what of the high price of oil?

Oil prices are determined the same way stock prices are; by supply and demand, and the information available about future market conditions. Exxon-Mobil, British Petroleum, Chevron, and the rest only produce and sometimes refine the oil, the price is set on the open commodities market where traders, ranging from individual investors to brokerage firms, buy and sell contracts on barrels of oil at particular prices. When the supply decreases or demand increases, the prices rise and the oil companies consequently make more money. They do not control the supply or the demand – they simply produce the product.

But aren’t they making “obscene” profits?

Having your government steal the profits of the oil companies is not going to make the price of gasoline fall. What do you think Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain are going to do with their plunder? Give it back to you to offset your gasoline costs? Reduce your taxes by the amount they steal from the energy companies? Use it to find new sources of oil? Of course not. The money will go to the general fund that congress will squander as they always have and always will. In the meantime, the government will continue to rake in billions of dollars in taxes from you for every gallon of gas you buy. If the federal and state governments would stop taking their unfair profits from oil, the price of gasoline would drop forty cents per gallon today. Ms. Clinton has said that the profits of the oil companies should have a “baseline” over which the government would take the rest. Before you endorse the idea of government confiscation of what John McCain calls “obscene profits”, remember that if they can set a ceiling on how much money a corporation is allowed to make, then they can one day set a limit on how much you are permitted to make.

So who’s to blame?

Blame for the high cost of gasoline and diesel lies squarely with the United States Congress and the legislatures of the several states. Congress has denied the energy companies access to the hundreds of billions of barrels of oil available right here in America – off the coast of California, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and elsewhere. Their environmental regulations have prevented the construction of even a single new refinery in this nation for three decades, and have made the construction of nuclear power plants virtually impossible. Thus they have vastly reduced oil supplies, choked off the supply of refined gasoline, and prevented nuclear power from alleviating the demand for fuel oil.

State government regulations require refineries to produce more than a dozen different types of gasoline for various regions of the country – raising costs and meaning that a shortage in one area cannot be compensated for by shipping gas from another state. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 require refineries to produce “Reformulated Gasoline” that contains either Ethanol or the highly carcinogenic MTBE. These regulations forced the refining industry to spend more than $44 billion between 1989 and 1998 to comply with congress. Thousands of other crushing regulations on the production, refining, transportation, and storage of oil and gas impose tremendous burdens and increase the cost of fuel.

He concludes:

So the next time you feel like blaming the oil companies for the price of gas, why don’t you call your congressman instead; or go out and try to produce some oil yourself – if you can’t, I suggest that you get down on your knees and thank God for the brilliant minds of oil company engineers, geologists, chemists, and executives who – in spite of the US Congress – have the creativity and courage to provide the energy that keeps all of us alive and enjoying our modern way of life.