Drill, Ivan, Drill

Oil prices jumped to nearly $58 a barrel Thursday in Singapore in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Benchmark crude for June delivery was up $1.31 at $57.68 on expectations for a global economic recovery by year's end and rising demand for the fossil fuel. As oil prices rise again, the Guardian reports that Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear reactors to provide power for drilling and exploration for oil and natural gas in Arctic areas that Moscow claims as its own. There is a triple irony here. The first is that it would be the Russians obeying the law of supply and demand. Then there's their "all of the above" approach to domestic energy needs, building nuclear reactors to power oil and gas rigs, neither of which we seem willing to do. Environmentalists, of course, are not in love with either source of power and warn of the dangers of nuclear radiation and oil leaks. Not only might polar bears be killed, but they might glow in the dark afterward. No one considers that the nukes might be considered a "carbon offset" for the oil rigs...IBD