There is no short-term fix for the high price of oil, concluded panelists at the Air Service Energy Summit, held on July 10 in Washington, D.C. “The key here is that we don’t have a lot of answers,” said Jim Elwood, chairman of the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE), which assembled 200 executives from all facets of aviation–chiefly the legacy carriers and their airports–along with senior members of Congress, the Department of Transportation, analysts, academics and the alphabets to discuss the issue.
Although they acknowledged there are few answers, attendees were nearly unanimous in their opinion that financial speculators are to blame for the ever higher price per barrel of oil. Some say that half of the price of every barrel is from speculation, while others contend that it’s only 10 percent. Despite acknowledging this uncertainty and a litany of other factors such as a Third World economy ravenous for oil, the airline industry stood ready to pump 100 percent of its blame to speculators.
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