Pump Pimps

As oil prices peaked in 2008, billionaire oil baron T. Boone Pickens hit the airwaves with the "Pickens Plan," a simultaneously altruistic and self-enriching (think "Chinatown") proposal to switch America's energy consumption to a combination of domestic natural gas for vehicles and wind power for electricity...



In January 2010 prices are high again and Boone is back.



Even though there’s a glut of oil on the market, seeming to defy the law of supply and demand, overnight machine trading on behalf of speculators who never intend to take delivery pushes prices up even while their commodity is not being consumed. Driving mileage is down. Tankers sit offshore without room to unload.

Lisa Margonelli, author of “Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipelines,” takes a crack at explaining.

Audio: BBC, PRI & WBUR's Here & Now. Host: Robin Young.