Monster oil prices

When the big storm menaced us last week, it was time for me to go into the road warrior mode. I parked my Mustang and fired up the Monster Truck, my classic 3/4 ton four wheel drive Ford that eats Toyotas for lunch, glides with ease through flooded roads, and spits in the very eye of typhoons.

Big trucks need big gas, so I drove the beast to Mobil…yikes!–in California I remember filling the thing up for a cool twenty–and getting change back–but this time around I had to part with a fifty and all I got was a coupon for Chicken Nuggets in return.

After the big storm hit, the big story hit in economic circles: The guys at OPEC might increase oil production, which would hold the promise of driving down oil prices. I would like that. My truck would like that. And–more to the point, and I do have one–is that the Commonwealth would like that.

High oil prices are like some kind of surly, cranked-up motorcycle gang beating up our fragile little economy: they come at us from all directions. Oh, how may I count the ways.

We’ll start at the consumer level. That’s you and I, sport. Pain at the gas pump. And if we want to run away from those, we can’t go far: our airlines have to buy fuel too, and higher fuel prices will put upwards pressure on air fares.

And we’re not the only ones buying airline tickets, of course. Moving from our consumer sector to our customer sector, the airlines that service our tourists are also confronting high prices at the pump. And, what’s worse, the Mobil fuel truck at the airport doesn’t even give you a coupon for Chicken Nuggets when you fuel your airplane. The least they go to is maybe give you a half a bologna sandwich or something.

And, for its part, Japan’s industrial sector is sandwiched between dual troubles. They’re up against a rotten economy on one hand. And, on the other hand, they’re up against higher oil prices, since Japan imports all of its oil. Oil is one very big deal for the Japanese. Part of the animosity that led to WWII was the Japanese need to protect its oil shipping lanes, and some kind of related geopolitical nastiness between them and Uncle Sam.

And back to the nastiness of oil prices. These high prices are good news for some economies, even some regions in the United States, but they are nothing but bad news for us at all levels. Bad for us as consumers. A lousy deal for our tourism industry. A stick in the eye to our airlines. A poke in the nose to tourists and their native economy. A stretching of my inventory of really stupid metaphors. A true bummer all the way around.

And, speaking of bummers, the oil guys at OPEC (that’s Oil Producing and Exporting Countries, in case you didn’t know) only agreed to increase production by a scant three percent. Since OPEC only accounts for about a third of global production these days, this equates to a one percent increase in overall global output. Oh, big deal–one whole percent. That small increase in supply won’t drive the price down much.

Result: high oil prices are here to stay, at least in the immediate future.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of Chicken Nuggets to eat…and my monster truck is looking for a juicy Land Cruiser to ingest for brunch.