Clear Thinkers favorite Holman Jenkins‘s W$J/Business World column today provides a wonderful analysis of how domestic political demagoguery over Big Oil profits works to enhance fascist control of oil and gas supplies internationally. In so doing, Jenkins tosses the following delicious salvo at David Boies’ latest Big Oil lawsuit:

Consider the perfected idiocy of Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, who bought her Senate seat with a now-diminished dotcom fortune and has reason to worry about whether voters will find her worth re-electing. This undoubtedly explains her sudden and shrill emergence as the most unhinged of oil-industry bashers.
Last week she was quick to confuse the filing of a lawsuit with proof of guilt, denouncing BP and Exxon because they were named in an antitrust complaint by the deservedly obscure Alaska Gasline Port Authority. Ms. Cantwell was likely impressed by the name of David Boies, celebrity lawyer, as counsel for the plaintiffs. In fact, the AGPA consists of three Alaska municipalities whose plan for a gas liquefaction facility in the port of Valdez was recently rejected by the state as lacking any means of financing.

The group has decided to blame its troubles on BP and Exxon for allegedly sitting on undeveloped natural gas reserves in Alaska in order to drive up prices in the U.S. domestic market. This overlooks the fact that the two companies supply just 12% of the natural gas in the lower 48, so any such manipulation would benefit mostly their competitors.
In reality, the AGPA nakedly exists to divert Alaska’s untapped gas wealth into a local construction boondoggle, lacking any economic rationale. Indeed, the mere act of liquefying Alaskan gas and loading it aboard a ship would put the state in competition on absurdly unfavorable terms with far cheaper suppliers of liquefied natural gas in Qatar, Indonesia, Australia, Russia and elsewhere.
In contrast, a pipeline to the Midwest would deliver the gas, without the expense of liquefaction and refrigeration, directly to a large, landlocked market where supply is short and getting shorter. That’s why Exxon, BP and a third leaseholder, Conoco, prefer this approach and are prepared to finance it, joined by Alaska’s sane governor, Frank Murkowski.
This should be a no-brainer, but the little Putins of the Alaska Gasline Port Authority, cheered on by the silly Ms. Cantwell and the cynical Mr. Boies, are determined to politicize what should be a straightforward economic decision. This is not just bad economics for Alaska. It’s an example of increasingly nonsensical policymaking by energy-consuming nations, promoted in the U.S. by kneejerk oil industry critics on Capitol Hill.

Read the entire piece.