Audi Availability?

According to Autobloggreen, available in England, this Audi A4 TDI Diesel gets 46 miles per gallon.....

Meanwhile, the gasoline based A4 which is sold in the US gets a modest 30 miles per gallon.

So Americans are stuck with cars that get lower mileage, and the US government refuses any attempt to increase domestic oil production.

From James Lileks.

It’s not that we cannot produce any more oil; you suspect that some are motivated by the belief, perverse as it sounds, that we should not. We should not drill 50 miles off shore on the chance someone in Malibu takes a hot-air balloon up 1000 feet and uses a telephoto lens to scan the horizon for oil platforms. Also, there are ecological concerns. (The ocean is a wee place, easily disturbed.) There’s something else that may well be my imagination, but I can’t quite shake the feeling: high gas prices and shortages of oil make some people feel good. This is the way it has to be. Oil is bad. Cars are bad. Cars make suburbs possible. Suburbs are the antithesis of the way we should live, which is stacked upon one another in dense blocks tied together by happy whirring trains. So some guy who drives to work alone has to spend more money for the privilege of being alone in his car listening to hate radio?
Good.
Yes, I know, projection and demonizaton and oversimplification. But this is true: there’s a side of the domestic political structure that opposes expansion of domestic energy production, be it drilling or nukes or more refineries.
The long-term upside seems indistinct, and the short-term downside seems rude and obvious.

Rio to the Rescue?

Uh Oh, more bad news about oil prices from Breitbart.com.

Oil prices to double by 2012: Canadian study

The report basically states that the rising demand for transportation fuel due to the growing number of cars in countries such as Brazil, China, India and Russia will cause prices to double in the next 4 years.

Rubin cites, for example, the recent launch of Tata's 2,500-dollar car that will allow millions of households in India to soon own automobiles.
He also notes that car sales last year were up 60 percent in Russia, up 30 percent in Brazil and up 20 percent in China.

Meanwhile Bloomberg.com has positive oil news.

Brazil Oil Finds May End Reliance on Middle East, Zeihan Says

Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude, Strategic Forecasting Inc. said.

``The finds they've got so far are just the tip of the iceberg,'' Zeihan said. ``Brazil is going to change the balance of the global oil markets, and Petrobras will become a geopolitical supermajor.''