The reasons behind our high gas prices

Greedy oil companies, as to many Democratic Senators think? Not at all, according to John Hinderaker's analysis over at Powerline.

I recommend reading the whole thing if you think the oil companies are behind gas prices. Among many other reasons:

Another theme of the day's testimony was that, if anyone is "gouging" consumers through the high price of gasoline, it is federal and state governments, not American oil companies. On the average, 15% percent of the cost of gasoline at the pump goes for taxes, while only 4% represents oil company profits. These figures were repeated several times, but, strangely, not a single Democratic Senator proposed relieving consumers' anxieties about gas prices by reducing taxes.

Not that anyone who follows politics closely would be surprised that liberal Democrats are most concerned with having lots of money coming into the government through taxes.

Another big point was raised by John Hofmeister of Shell:

Meanwhile, in the United States, access to our own oil and gas resources has been limited for the last 30 years, prohibiting companies such as Shell from exploring and developing resources for the benefit of the American people.

Senator Sessions, I agree, it is not a free market.

According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. We have an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Atlantic Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Pacific Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, congressional bans on on-shore oil and gas activities in specific areas of the Rockies and Alaska, and even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Finally, it's important to keep in mind that most Democrats, because they are beholden to the environmentalist left, want high gas prices as means of both punishing our economy (and those people especially who use lots of petroleum personally, like SUV drivers) and weaning the world off of petroleum-based fuel sources. That's an understandable enough position (not that I agree with it), but the Washington Democrats who agree with it don't have the courage to actually come out and say it. Instead, they do the one thing that accomplishes nothing toward reducing gas prices (berating oil executives on the Hill) and push for something that would make prices even HIGHER (a windfall profits tax) by discouraging investment in new technologies and exploration.

Again, I encourage anyone with the interest in this topic to read the whole thing.

Of course, it wouldn't be something I disagree with if John McCain didn't get involved (scroll down to see his part):

“Um, I don’t like obscene profits being made anywhere–and I’d be glad to look not just at the windfall profits tax–that’s not what bothers me–but we should look at any incentives that we are giving to people, that or industries or corporations that are distorting the market.”