Necessary Roughness

A Reuters article (link dead) on Yahoo! reveals that Senator Mike DeWine (Republicrat-OH) and Herb Kohl (D-WI) sponsored an amendment to energy legislation that allows the U.S. government to sue OPEC for antitrust violations.

Even the Senator’s fellow Republicans are scratching their head on this one:

Republican Sen. Pete Domenici , the Senate’s top energy bill negotiator, called the measure “nothing short of incredible,” but did not act to block it.

“These are sovereign nations,” Domenici said. “For us to decide here on the Senate floor that we’re going to establish some new forum and litigation against the OPEC cartel is nothing short of incredible.”

Suppose France wants to sue the United States for a de facto boycott on their goods. They sue in their court, and they get a judgment. Which two words do you think most Americans would tell them once they notify us of their judgment? I don’t know the appropriate phrase in Arabic, but I’m sure we would find out the translation quickly.

OPEC is a supplier. They don’t control all the oil in the world. If we want OPEC to behave, we buy more from competitors, or we make our own. In my travels this year it seems the oil services as an industry can’t field people fast enough to meet the demand fostered in the States from high prices. Oil services competition consistently offers higher paychecks in order to lure trained people away.

If Senator DeWine and others want to do something legislatively to lower gas prices, we can start by removing barriers to entry to new oil fields and to the creation of new refineries. If this is what it takes to get a new refinery going, the price of oil is just a part of the solution to getting prices down.