Thank you, high oil price!

Nobody explains it better than Jay Hancock why we should thank hiking oil and gas prices. (The link brings you to Baltimore Sun website and it might ask you for free regsitration. But the points are):

The very high oil and gas prices have led to:

1. Billions of dollars invested in petroleum production. Supply will increase.
2. Chevron, Marathon, and many others are opening millions acres for drilling.
3. Oil and gas explorations create jobs in Rusia, Angola, China, Algeria, Britain, India, Canada, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Poland, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Trinidad-Tobago.
   
4. The number of exploratory rigs around the world hit record high level since 1986.
5. Companies in South Korea, China, Singapore, and the US are building new hardaware to address drilling-rig shortage.
6. Chevron is expanding its refinery in Mississippi by 25 percent.
7. Kinder Morgan and Sempra are going to spend $3b on pipeline delivering natural gas from the Rockies to the Midwest and East.
8. Valero and ConocoPhillips are improving their ability to process sour crude that is cheaper than sweet crude.
9. Thai Oil is spending $1b on new ouput capacity.
10. Brazil in planning to increase processing capacity by 20 percent.
11. Florida is building 750MW-worth of wind-powered electricity generation.
12. China and India have doubled their refining capacity.
13. Everywhere people reduce unnecessary driving and encouraging fuel efficient cars and public transportation.
14. Sales are soaring for hybrid vehicles.

In short, incentives are all out there now for efficiency and better technology. We, too, can benefit from this situation, only as long as we free the prices.