Blaming the price of oil on Iraq war?

Independence on Sunday:

The invasion of Iraq by Britain and the US has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone.

The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war.

He spoke after oil prices set a new record on 13 consecutive days over the past two weeks. They have now multiplied sixfold since 2002, compared with the fourfold increase of the 1973 and 1974 "oil shock" that ended the world's long postwar boom.

Goldman Sachs predicted last week that the price could rise to an unprecedented $200 a barrel over the next year, and the world is coming to terms with the idea that the age of cheap oil has ended, with far-reaching repercussions on their activities.

Dr Salameh, director of the UK-based Oil Market Consultancy Service, and an authority on Iraq's oil, said it is the only one of the world's biggest producing countries with enough reserves substantially to increase its flow.

Production in eight of the others – the US, Canada, Iran, Indonesia, Russia, Britain, Norway and Mexico – has peaked, he says, while China and Saudia Arabia, the remaining two, are nearing the point at of decline. Before the war, Saddam Hussein's regime pumped some 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, but this had now fallen to just two million barrels.

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This report makes no sense. Iraq is already exceeding prewar production. It does have significant potential that has been hampered by enemy activity. But the US is no where near peak production. Democrats are mainly responsible for strangling production in the US.

In other countries like Mexico and Venezuela the leftist have limited exploration by outside companies that could substantially increase their out put. I suspect the same is true in Russia. These state monopolies with leftist leadership are using their power to drive up the price while leftist yo-yos in the UK blame the US and UK. This is typical irrational economics pushed by socialist.

One reason the leftist want to strangle supply is to drive up the price and try to force people into conservation and alternative energy. But they are also strangling the supply of alternative energy by prohibiting new nuclear plants and wind generation.