Home
Monday, August 18, 2008
AUDIO OF CONFERENCE CALL: Former Secretary of Energy Federico Pena on John McCain's Oil-Company-First Energy Plan
Comtex
WASHINGTON, Aug 18, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ ----Ahead of John McCain's visit to New Orleans tomorrow, former Secretary of Energy Federico Pena held a conference call today to highlight Exxon John McCain's more-of-the-same energy agenda. Pena noted that John McCain's plan is to continue the Bush-Cheney approach of putting oil company interests ahead of the best interests of the American people. McCain's plan includes giving oil companies $4 billion in tax giveaways even while they report record profits. McCain also opposes Senator Barack Obama's plan for an energy rebate that would put a $1,000 check in the hands of the American people from a portion of the oil companies' windfall profits.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080519/DNCLOGO )
To listen to the audio of the call, click on the following link:
http://www.democrats.org/page/-/audio/calls/20080818 PenaCall.mp3
The following are excerpts:
[1:07]
"I want to emphasize that this is all part of a campaign to distract the attention of the American people from the real energy crisis which is facing us by talking endlessly about drilling for oil in tiny protected areas of our country when Senator McCain knows that we will not see a drop of oil from offshore drilling for eight to ten years."
[2:38]
"Senator McCain by his trip tomorrow will hope that we forget that he opposes immediate relief for consumers like Senator Barack Obama's one thousand dollar energy credit, which is going to be paid for by a windfall profits tax on oil companies. And Senator McCain hopes that we won't notice that it was the Bush-Cheney-McCain energy policy of the last several years that has increased gas prices from $1.89 when Bill Clinton left office to over four dollars today."
[3:28]
"And instead of looking ahead to real and to new solutions, Senator McCain is looking back once again to fellow Washington insiders like the 33 former oil and gas lobbyists who are advising him and fundraising for his campaign. And he simply wants to continue the policies of President Bush over the last seven and a half years which have failed miserably to help us begin to become energy independent and to begin to reduce the price of oil and the price of gasoline for consumers."
[8:37]
"So the American people I hope will begin to understand this as just a gimmick, as they understood that the federal gas tax holiday was a gimmick. Senator McCain is not going to solve our energy crisis, because, frankly, he helped create it."
Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org.
This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
SOURCE Democratic National Committee
http://www.democrats.org
Copyright (C) 2008 PR Newswire. All rights reserved
FOX Translator
No data currently available.
No data currently available.
No, it's not a dance craze. Contago is a condition of supply and demand, essentially a fancy word to say that prices for items, typically commodities, are cheaper now than they would be at some point down the line.
Anything that¿s sold in the futures market can be in a case of contango. Futures are exactly that: a contract to buy an item or asset at a price in the future. This is the case with oil, with traders buying and selling contracts to acquire a barrel of oil in months down the line. When a market is in contango, spot prices, or the price of a commodity if you were to buy it right now, are lower than forward prices.
Why is that important? Well, it usually tells you the supply of a given commodity is plentiful (since, according to Economics 101, a large supply usually leads to cheap prices).
Incidentally, if you think contango is a mouthful, its opposite condition is known by the equally tongue-tying term backwardation.
