Why are gas pumps guzzling all of your money?

With the economy improving - Republicans have started attacking President Obama about rising gas prices. Some forecasts show gas prices hitting five dollars a gallon this summer - and the Right wants you to belive that high prices have something to do with President Obama's rejection of the Keystone pipeline - or maybe his refusal to expand drilling in Alaska - or just his downright hatred of America. They want you to belive that the United States has a shortage of oil - and that if the President were to just drill, baby, drill - then prices will plummet. But that's not true. It's not even close to true.

The United States isn't short on oil - it's awash in oil. In fact - we have so much oil that we're getting rid of much of it by shipping it overseas. As Bloomberg reported yesterday...for the first since 1949 - that's 62 years - the United States is now a net-exporter of oil products. That means we shipped more oil products out to places in South America, Europe, and Asia - than we imported in from around the world. In fact - every single day in 2011 - oil corporations ship about 460,000 MORE barrels of oil OUT of the country than were imported into the country that day. So if gas prices are rising because supplies in the US have dropped - then why are we getting rid of so much of it by exporting it? It's because the President can't legally tell multi-billion dollar transnational oil corporations where to sell their oil. And these corporations don't give a damn about gas supplies in the United States - because they're getting a way better deal taking their oil and selling it elsewhere. And that's what they're doing - and that's why they wanted the Keystone pipeline.