It would be a challenge to get people in the U.S. all hyped up about going to war to _increase_ oil prices. If Murdoch was saying this publicly, I don't think it's an indication of much. Decreasing the price of oil was one of the on-the-street reasons for going to war, as in "kick their ass, get their gas."
As though everyone in the U.S. from Cheney to my grandma were all in the same big S.U.V. We had this argument before the war and as I recall you took the position that oil prices would likely go down after a war jitters peak.
>How is this control going to be exercised? Will Washington tell oil
>companies not to sell to China? Will the spot and futures markets all
>run through Dick Cheney's office?
The increase in the cost of oil _is_ a transfer from Chinese industry and government to oil companies, automatically, even if the Chinese are, as you say, big on conservation. One thing we can know is that the oil companies currently have more cash than they know what to do with, so that means their income is rather exceeding their expenses, which is NOT what we would see if extraction were simply more expensive.
Jenny Brown