As Theocracy Watch notes, we can only hope that amending the Constitution to match certain evangelicals worldview means we can still eat bacon.
Speculators in the market have, rightly, been targeted for thier use of the Enron-loophole to basically compete (unfairly) in a market that is mixed between highly-regulated (see integrated oil companies) and unregulated players (see commodity brokers). This imbalance of power has led to the free flow of capital to a market from sources that a decade ago largely abandoned investment in oil companies -- in favor of the speculative bubble of the dotcom boom. That lack of capital infusion -- and the capital-intensive nature of the oil & gas business -- led to the mega-mergers of 1999 - 2001. Bear in mind that even with all that merger activity among the multi-nationals, their true competition is with national oil companies -- basically branches of their nation-state governments: Pemex (Mexico), Petrobras (Brazil), Pedevesas (Venezuala), Saudi Aramco (Saudi Arabia), Cinoco (China) ... you get the picture. On the one end, you have national oil companies -- either in OPEC or non-aligned ...
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