Storm's impact on oil prices may force president to forget RNC woes

The emergence of Tropical Storm Isaac is not good news for either Democrats or Republicans.

In Tampa, Fla., top officials of the Republican National Convention have canceled the first scheduled day of activities on Monday, reorganizing the event to occur on three days, beginning on Tuesday and ending on Thursday evening, with presidential and vice presidential acceptance speeches anticipated from former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.

For the Obama administration, the storm could well cause a further increase in energy prices, adding possible political repercussions over already high gasoline prices in a national market in which gasoline prices once again have spiked since June.

RNC cancels first day

In 2008, the Republican National Convention also canceled a day of events in St. Paul, Minn., as Hurricane Gustav headed for landfall in the Gulf.

In a media-only teleconference conducted earlier today, RNC officials announced an updated schedule that reassigns most of the speakers originally scheduled for tomorrow to later days.

The 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern line-up of primetime speakers on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday did not change, while virtually all the headline speakers from Monday have been retained and repositioned on the reorganized schedule.

The Monday message “We Can Do Better” has been retained, woven into presentations rescheduled for later in the week.

“President Obama’s failed leadership and the need for a change remains the RNC’s overall message,” Republican spokesmen explained to media on the teleconference.

RNC officials acknowledged concern for the safety of the people in the path of the storm,  that issues arising from the storm will be addressed as needed during the course of the convention.

The RNC plan for Monday is to gavel the convention open but to limit the program, with the expectation that the delegate roll call will be conducted on Tuesday.

RNC officials conceded during the teleconference that extending the convention to Friday was a possibility, although at present the plan remains to conclude the convention Thursday evening.

Disruption in the Gulf

With gasoline prices again spiking and oil closing last week above $96 per barrel, Tropical Storm Issac is forcing a shutdown of an estimated 43 percent of U.S. offshore oil production and 38 percent of the Gulf’s natural gas production, as major oil producers including BP, Shell and Chevron announced they were evacuating workers from Gulf of Mexico platforms.

According to the Energy Information Agency, the Gulf of Mexico produces 23 percent of total U.S. daily oil production and 7 percent of U.S. daily natural gas production, as well as accounting for approximately 44 percent of U.S. refining capacity.

The concern, as reported by Fox News, is that as Isaac takes a more westerly direction, missing the site of the RNC and heading toward New Orleans, the tropical storm could build to a Category 2 hurricane over the heart of U.S. oil and natural gas production in the Gulf.

Fox News reported Isaac could be the biggest test to U.S. energy infrastructure since 2008, when Hurricane Gustav disrupted U.S. oil output for months, damaging not only production facilities in the Gulf, but onshore oil and natural gas processing plants, refineries and pipelines.

Reuters reported a rise in oil and natural gas prices resulting from Isaac is likely to put increased pressure on the International Energy Agency to agree with an Obama administration-driven plan to tap strategic oil reserves. The administration is concerned that rises in oil prices since June could diminish the impact of sanctions on Iran.

The great oil conspiracy

The WND Superstore now has available copies of Jerome R. Corsi’s forthcoming book, “The Great Oil Conspiracy: How the U.S. Government Hid the Nazi Discovery of Abiotic Oil from the American People,” in both hardcover and e-book versions.

The book contends that at the end of World War II, U.S. intelligence agents confiscated thousands of Nazi documents on what was known as the “Fischer-Tropsch Process” – a series of equations developed by German chemists unlocking the secrets of how oil is formed. When the Nazis took power, Germany had resolved to develop enough synthetic oil to wage war successfully, even without abundant national oil reserves.

For decades, the book claims, these confiscated German documents remained largely ignored in a United States where petro-geologists and petro-chemists were convinced that oil was a “fossil fuel” created by ancient decaying biological debris.

Clearly, the book posits, big U.S. oil companies had no financial interest in explaining to the American people that oil was a natural product made on a continual basis deep within the earth. If there were only so many fossils in geological time, there could only be so much oil. Big oil could then charge more for a finite, rapidly disappearing resource than for a natural, renewable and probably inexhaustible one.

“The Great Oil Conspiracy” claims Stalin, at the end of World War II, demanded his petro-geologists “dig deeper” when petro-scientists in the United States had determined that the Soviet Union, like Germany, lacked national oil reserves. Russia today has challenged Saudi Arabia for the lead in oil production and exportation.

Once oil is understood as an abundantly available resource, the book asserts, there is no reason hydro-carbon fuels cannot indefinitely propel the development and production of cheap energy reserves the United States needs to maintain its dominant position in the emerging global economy.

The book is scheduled to be available in bookstores throughout the nation on Sept. 1.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/08/isaac-bad-news-for-gop-and-obama/print/