Cramer: An Infra Opportunity for Obama

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Memo to Barack Obama: Start building oil facilities right now -- tankers, tanks, whatever. Fill up every preserve you can. This is the time to buy oil for America even if you don't like carbon footprints.

The new president is being given a once-in-a-lifetime infrastructure opportunity to build enough tankers and tanks to sop up the supply. That's what is needed more than anything. We can't drill for these prices economically anymore, and oil is obviously overflowing everywhere. Right now, we are out of storage in this country. That's one reason the price has fallen so precipitously -- there is nowhere to put it. I don't think there is a soul who believes that oil will be down here two years from now. We should be filling and creating a strategic petroleum reserve that is big enough that this will never happen again. NEVER.

That ridiculous run-up that everyone says was caused by speculators must not occur again, as we see the disastrous results. We need to be able to bring oil down ourselves by buying reserves at these prices and making them available to beat the speculators next time this occurs. I think the low price is because of the big pension and endowments funds puking up their commodity exposure because they can't sell a lot of other investments they are locked into, including private equity.

We have tons of infrastructure companies that could put people to work right now building storage facilities: Chicago Bridge & Iron (CBI Quote), Jacobs Engineering (JEC Quote), Foster Wheeler (FWLT Quote), Shaw (SGR Quote). They should all get work. We don't have enough ships to store oil in -- and that's not as economical as tanks -- but we have plenty of old, capped wells that could take a ton of product.

It makes so much sense.

It's the best plan of action for these low prices. And it will put thousands upon thousands of people to work.

Why not?

Someone has to take advantage of these low prices. Might as well be the taxpayer. I know that today's plunge might not last; it is the last day of this contract.

But the prices aren't going to jump right back up, and the decline is breathtaking enough to bet that it is temporary. There just isn't that much new oil to be found. It's a buyer's market for certain. I hope Obama's not so intellectually and dogmatically driven to hate carbon enough to miss this chance.

Random musings: Cancellations soon for contracts for Transocean (RIG Quote) have to be a certainty no matter how long it takes to drill. ... Coal should be under severe pressure today. ... The utilities are getting crushed in part because everyone has too much Texas Utilities debt from that fiasco in going private. Why did they have to do that deal! ... Exxon (XOM Quote) and Chevron (CVX Quote) are at perilous levels given the propensity of both to trade to the strikes, and they are well below where the stocks might go.

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Foster Wheeler and Chevron.