Cheney wanted $3/gallon gas and said so in a speech.

[patcox2]

This was reported back in 2000. Cheney, when he was head of Haliburton, gave a speech at an OPEC conference, in which he said that the price of gas was too low and that he wanted to see $3/gallon gasoline in the US.

I remember this clearly. But I can't find documentation. Googling has gotten difficult because the words now bring up thousands of more recent hits that have nothing to do with the old stories.

Does anyone else remember this, does anyone else have a source? This should be emailed to every newsperson, to every member of congress. Gas costs $3 a gallon now because thats exactly what the president of the US, Dick Cheney, wants it to cost, the man who got millions from Haliburton this year wants $3 a gallon gas because its good for Haliburton, which is, first and foremost, an oil drilling company.

[NewJeffCT]

1. I'm still trying to find his quote

"High gas prices are the sign of a failed presidency" from around 1998.

[eyesroll]

2. Here's some Cheney stuff from 1986:

In October 1986, when Dick Cheney was the lone congressman from energy-rich Wyoming, he introduced legislation to create a new import tax that would have caused the price of oil, and ultimately the price of gasoline paid by drivers, to soar by billions of dollars per year.

"Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States," Mr. Cheney, who is now vice president, said shortly after introducing the legislation.

...

Under Mr. Cheney's proposal, any foreign oil bought for less than $24 per barrel would have been taxed with a fee equal to the difference between the cost of imported oil and the $24 base price. According to the federal Energy Information Administration, the cost of imported oil in the late 1980's and most of the 1990's stayed well below $24, except for a brief period following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. In fact, oil imports cost less than $18 per barrel over much of that time, so when that was the case the Cheney plan could have led to oil taxes of $6 or more per barrel, driving up demand for domestic oil.

But the plan also included a complicated formula tying the taxes to gains in inflation and the gross national product. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who criticized the plan in a speech last week, said if it had been enacted when Mr. Cheney introduced it, in the years that followed it would have cost consumers $1.2 trillion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/06/politics/06CHEN.html?ex=1396584000&en=7edcc32708d09716&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

[tabasco]

6. Very interesting! Cheney is an oilman.

His loyalty is to oil companies, not the American People. Of course he wants high gas prices. The Nation is being run by a gang of traitors seeking only to enrich themselves and their friends.

[rkc3]

11. No shit. And so is bush and rice and several others.

The problem is that 50% of the population thought it would be a good idea to put oil men in power because they knew what to do to keep oil prices down - That kind of logic got us where we are today.

Next time we should put a crack dealer in the WH to reduce illegal drug consumption.

[DUHandle]

10. Very nice - thank you

[90-percent]

3. Type of company again?

I thought Halliburton was a "Dick Cheny gave them a licence to print money" company?


-85% Jimmy

[NewJeffCT]

5. I believe Cheney meant it

In regards to Clinton being the president at the time & a temporary spike in gas prices from around $1.20/gallon to $1.40/gallon.

[tabasco]

9. Halliburton supports the oil companies.

They do stuff like deliver drilling mud to oil wells in huge barges.

Halliburton is pretty much like an oil company themselves. I think they do everything but actually drill the well.

Of course, now Cheney got them a huge contract to bilk the military, which they are doing on a massive scale.

[gatorboy]

4. Probably because in 2000 oil sold at $30 a barrel. $30!!!

and that was considered high!

AP Business Writer   \    Friday , January 21, 2000

As crude oil prices roared toward $30 a barrel this week, reaching levels last
seen on the brink of the Persian Gulf War, airlines were adding surcharges to
ticket prices and consumers were worrying about heating bills.

[Toucano]

7. Dems blame Cheney for gasoline price surge (Campaign 2000)

Speech referenced here: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/07/28/cheney.oilprices/index.html

Text wasn't available in 2000 and may not be available now.

[spindrifter]

8. When was the last time DeadEye

bought a gallon of gas? Probably in the days when it was 19 cents a gallon.

[midnight]

12. O great. An oil lobbyist becomes.....

Vice President.

[12345]

13. how about this? not exactly what you were looking for, but interesting...

Dick Cheney, speech to the London Institute of Petroleum, August 1999:

“From the standpoint of the oil industry obviously - and I'll talk a little later on about gas - for over a hundred years we as an industry have had to deal with the pesky problem that once you find oil and pump it out of the ground you've got to turn around and find more or go out of business. Producing oil is obviously a self-depleting activity. Every year you've got to find and develop reserves equal to your output just to stand still, just to stay even. This is as true for companies as well in the broader economic sense it is for the world. A new merged company like Exxon-Mobil will have to secure over a billion and a half barrels of new oil equivalent reserves every year just to replace existing production. It's like making one hundred per cent interest; discovering another major field of some five hundred million barrels equivalent every four months or finding two Hibernias a year. For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.

[patcox2]

15. I think its in that same speech.

The petroleum institute used to have the full text posted, but no more.

[magellan]

14. Didn't find it either, but look at this!!

Before the war, the US and Britain were frozen out of the Iraqi Oil Fields

Americans were never told before the war, and have still never been told, that before we invaded Iraq Hussein had frozen the US and Britain out of the Iraqi oil fields. Other nations held the leases or agreements on Iraq’s rich oil reserves:

· Russia had the West Qurnah oil field,

· China had the Rumalyah Reserve

· France had two of Iraq’s largest fields - the Majnoon and Nahr Bin Omar, etc.


Nikolai P. Tokarev, General Director of a Russian-owned oil company, testified before the war, and will testify at this hearing:

“Everybody knows why the US is invading Iraq. The only reason is for the US to establish full control over the oil-gas complex of Iraq, and thereby control the Middle East.”

Found it here: End the Iraq War.com (cached)

I didn't know this. Did anyone else here??