Pay the piper

The outrageous recent rise in oil prices must fall on the shoulders of big oil companies. After all, they set the price, control production, and have a monopoly on the world's proven reserves.
It may surprise you to learn that nothing in the preceding sentence is true.
First of all, prices are set by speculators based on the supply and demand of the world market.
Secondly, world oil production is most heavily influenced by OPEC, whose 13 countries control 35 percent of production.
Finally, no single oil company owns more than 1.5 percent of the world's reserves.
Here at home, it's ludicrous to suggest that oil companies are purposely restricting supply to influence price. They have been literally begging our politicians for decades to allow exploration off of the east coast, Florida, and in Alaska.
While "Big Oil" gets the blame, the two biggest culprits, "Big Government" and "Big Green", continue to get off scot-free. Eco-scare tactics have seen to it that Hilary Clinton and her cohorts have voted down the last six bills to allow for new nuclear power plants to be built.  A new oil refinery hasn't been built since the 1970's, despite numerous permitting efforts. 
Fuel-blend requirements, such as ethanol, add to the cost of gasoline, and it's based on bad science. To produce one gallon of ethanol requires burning almost one gallon of gasoline and using over 1,100 gallons of water.
Corn has to planted, watered, harvested, converted to ethanol, and then blended with gasoline. It takes 400 pounds of corn to produce 25 gallons of ethanol.
Consider the environmental idiocy of burning our food supply to produce low BTU-rated ethanol instead of building nuclear power plants, which have zero CO2 (carbon) emissions.
Eco-Nazis suggest that corporations can't be left unfettered by regulation or they'll do great harm to the environment. It requires a federal permit to import, export, lease, drill, produce, refine, transport, or pump gasoline.  That's pretty damn fettered if you ask me.
There are costs associated with regulations. Realize that your love of spotted owls, beach mice and snail darters - the not-so-endangered minnow that shut down a Tennessee nuclear plant - comes with a price tag. It's fine to love nature, but put the blame of the associated costs where it belongs.
When Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid stand before congress and suggest that raising taxes on oil companies will somehow lower prices, they either have no understanding of basic economic principles, or they think we're stupid - or both.
Rather than sending out stupid boycott e-mails, you should call or write your representative. Tell them you're tired of being over-taxed and over-regulated. Tell them to allow nuclear power plants and oil refineries to be built, and to allow exploration on our entire continental shelf, and a small portion of ANWAR (Alaska). Maybe then they'll realize you're not an idiot after all. 
Otherwise, pay the piper.
Al Swiercz
Santa Rosa Beach