We don’t want your stinking oil at $80 a barrel!!

US economy ‘in danger zone with oil price’ - New Zealand’s source for business, stock market & currency news on Stuff.co.nz: “Qatar’s Oil Minister Abdullah al-Attiyah said today that Opec – which pumps about a third of the globe’s oil – can do nothing about the high price of oil and that there is no shortage of crude in the market. “

Enough is enough. It is time to tell OPEC that we do not want your stinking oil at $80 a barrel. This is not an issue of free markets and supply and demand. The world is clearly being held hostage by a cartel of racketeers that get the stuff out of the ground for a few dollars a barrel and who purposely limit their production to rape us all. It is time for the world to get rid of cartels and for it to become a free market.

It is time to tell OPEC we have an American game they we are pretty good at. It is called Poker and you are about to learn that game.

The West and some nations of the far East need to get together and flatly tell OPEC that we will not be held hostage to artificially high oil prices anymore and that we will not pay more than a reasonable market price. Say, we set that price at $50 a barrel. We tell them effective immediately no one in the West and other nations like Japan, India, S. Korea etc. will pay above that price.

What could they do about it? Do you think all those nations would cut their own throats and stop pumping oil? If they kept pumping oil and not selling it within weeks they would have nowhere to store it and they would have to stop pumping. If they did not sell most of their oil some of those nations would have a revolution in their countries within months. We would also stop selling all exported goods and services to these nations and freeze their assets worldwide. We would stop all military and economic aid to them as well. If oil shortages damaged the economy of the West they know they would be a bigger loser.

If they would not meet our demands we could meet part of our oil needs by confiscating any tankers who came out of any OPEC countries that would not participate. We could continue to buy oil from non OPEC nations, nations who would find it in their best interest to participate and we could also use our national reserves. We could find other ways to make up the shortfall including mandatory rationing.

The big wild cards would be the reaction of China and Russia. We probably could convince China that lower oil prices were in their interests as well and see to it they got their share of the oil. Russia has been part of the problem with their recent blackmailing of Europe over energy. It is time to send a loud and clear message to Russia who is now getting delusions that she can become the leader of the world through the path of Fascism.

If we were serious about it. I think the OPEC cartel would be history within a few months and supply and demand would truly set the price of oil in the future. If it turns out that they don’t fold and somehow hold the winning hand in this high stakes poker game with their kings and jackass showing against our three aces we can always teach them another American game called Hardball.