Gas Prices.
Have you heard about this in the US? True, we pay less than anyone in the world...but the price of gas in the Northeast want up TEN CENTS a gallon last week alone. Predictions are for record levels very soon.
IMO, this is another staged crisis by the oil companies. The last time we saw this, they jacked the price up by 70 cents a gallon and eventually lowerd it by 25. "Wow!", we said. "Gas prices are down"! I do not believe there is any real shortage of supply. I'm sorry...I just don't.
Funny, the last time prices skyrocketed I had just bought a Maxima with a big V6 in it. I love paying $1.89 a gallon! This time, I just bough an SUV (also with a six...thank God). Figures.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/busin...gasprices.html
IMO, this is another staged crisis by the oil companies. The last time we saw this, they jacked the price up by 70 cents a gallon and eventually lowerd it by 25. "Wow!", we said. "Gas prices are down"! I do not believe there is any real shortage of supply. I'm sorry...I just don't.
Funny, the last time prices skyrocketed I had just bought a Maxima with a big V6 in it. I love paying $1.89 a gallon! This time, I just bough an SUV (also with a six...thank God). Figures.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/busin...gasprices.html
Comments
Have you heard about this in the US? True, we pay less than anyone in the world...
I can't say less than the arab states that have abundant gas ( petrol )
But here in Australia we pay an average of $1.00 per litre ( that's a bit over two pints ).
Converted into US currency that means we're paying about 35 cents per pint..
In US currency, that's $2.80 per US Gallon
Originally posted by iBrowse
I was noticing this last night when I stopped for gas. Three months ago I was cheering "Yeah, gas is back down to $1.56" and last night I paid $1.78. The year before I got my first car it was $1.08, it started climbing soon after, then a couple years ago it just kept getting worse.
There was a burst in an oil pipeline near phoenix. Gas prices in Los Angeles jumped 25 cents to 2 bucks in the last week. We still should be happy that we aren't paying 3 or 4. Gas prices have not increased in price at the rate of inflation over the last 30 years.
Quote:
Originally posted by SDW2001
Have you heard about this in the US? True, we pay less than anyone in the world...
I can't say less than the arab states that have abundant gas ( petrol )
But here in Australia we pay an average of $1.00 per litre ( that's a bit over two pints ).
Converted into US currency that means we're paying about 35 cents per pint..
In US currency, that's $2.80 per US Gallon
Yeah, and the first thing he said was we pay less than everyone else.
Quote:
Originally posted by SDW2001
Have you heard about this in the US? True, we pay less than anyone in the world...
I can't say less than the arab states that have abundant gas
Aren't fuels refined from crude almost completely subsidized in some of the smaller oil-rich gulf states?
I'm now riding my bike A LOT more to cut down on driving. I drove a total of 20 miles last week. Nothing like getting into shape and saving some money doing it.
Originally posted by torifile
Why haven't the US oil reserves been opened? This is ridiculous, really.
I'm now riding my bike A LOT more to cut down on driving. I drove a total of 20 miles last week. Nothing like getting into shape and saving some money doing it.
Why should they be opened? Are we really in the midst of some kind of a crisis just because gas prices have gone from ridiculously cheap to slightly less ridiculously cheap over the past half decade?
Originally posted by torifile
Why haven't the US oil reserves been opened? This is ridiculous, really.
I'm now riding my bike A LOT more to cut down on driving. I drove a total of 20 miles last week. Nothing like getting into shape and saving some money doing it.
Opening the reserves is useless. Clinton did it, and it was nothing but politics. The fact is that opening the Strategic Petrol. Reserve would have NO effect on gas prices.
Eugene:
Why should they be opened? Are we really in the midst of some kind of a crisis just because gas prices have gone from ridiculously cheap to slightly less ridiculously cheap over the past half decade?
BTW, I didn't make the Gulf States comment you credited me for. There are only two reasons gas isn't $.19 a gallon righ now:
1) Taxes (to the tune of 50-60% of the price)
2) The Oil Cartel's artificial inflation of prices.
Despite what many believe, we are in no anger in running out of oil any time in the next 200 years. The whole "crisis" is bullshit. The only supply problem we have is actually a refinery problem.
BR:
'm sure it's somehow the Democrats' fault.
I know you're joking, but in a manner of speaking it is. The Demcorats didn't allow offshore drilling in the Gulf, which houses perhaps hundreds of billions of barrels of oil. They didn't support development of new refineries during the 80's and 90's despite soaring demand. The Democrats have supported an extreme environmental agenda, which has hurt the energy supply and capacity in the country. It's also hurt the timber industry VERY badly, as federal forest regualtions (until just recently) have prevented logging in places where it is needed badly.
The last time I was doing a cross country trek, there was a severe shortage of gas in Ohio. People would ask why gas couldn't be brough in via the other localities, it is because that gas is mixed different and is not allowed to be sold in Ohio.
If you look up the Phoenix story there are occasional sidenotes about them finally suspending this requirement so they could bring some gas into the place.
I know California is currently fighting, (and folks we are as liberal as they come out here) a gas requirement that requires us to use a certain amount of Ethanol in our gas.
Here is a link about MTBE raising prices, this isn't the gas companies, but the producers of "oxygenites" (pardon the likely wrong spelling) which are government mandated to make fuel cleaner burning.
Forbes
Also someone mentioned that there was no East Coast event that could have raised prices? I do remember this large BLACKOUT that occured. Last time I checked refineries and things of that nature needed electricity. Could be wrong though...
Nick
Originally posted by SDW2001
Opening the reserves is useless. Clinton did it, and it was nothing but politics. The fact is that opening the Strategic Petrol. Reserve would have NO effect on gas prices.
Eugene:
BTW, I didn't make the Gulf States comment you credited me for. There are only two reasons gas isn't $.19 a gallon righ now:
1) Taxes (to the tune of 50-60% of the price)
2) The Oil Cartel's artificial inflation of prices.
Despite what many believe, we are in no anger in running out of oil any time in the next 200 years. The whole "crisis" is bullshit. The only supply problem we have is actually a refinery problem.
BR:
I know you're joking, but in a manner of speaking it is. The Demcorats didn't allow offshore drilling in the Gulf, which houses perhaps hundreds of billions of barrels of oil. They didn't support development of new refineries during the 80's and 90's despite soaring demand. The Democrats have supported an extreme environmental agenda, which has hurt the energy supply and capacity in the country. It's also hurt the timber industry VERY badly, as federal forest regualtions (until just recently) have prevented logging in places where it is needed badly.
Hmmmm? Imagine that. I seem to remember proponents of the war in Iraq saying that fuel prices would be down after the war. So it was a good thing. Hmmmmm?
PS. By the way most experts are predicting around 150 years bfore we run out of fossil fuels. I for one do happen to care about our children in the next few generations! And just because 150 years seems like a long time ( about the year 1850 looking backwards to put it in perspective ) things will get bad long before that. Food for thought. Perhaps you should have a word with dubbya's oil company executive friends?
Originally posted by SDW2001
The Democrats have supported an extreme environmental agenda, which has hurt the energy supply and capacity in the country. It's also hurt the timber industry VERY badly, as federal forest regualtions (until just recently) have prevented logging in places where it is needed badly.
i still say require any retail facility that covers more than a few acres of land (i am looking in YOUR direction, wal-mart, and your airfield-sized asphault n' gravel roof) to allow for installation of solar fields or windwill farms on top (use tax incentives to get those chains to buy in, though i would hope they would do it just because it makes friggin' sense and is a good thing to do), to put some of that bulldozed land back to good use. considering the fact that there's like half a million wal-marts, targets, sam's clubs, and other warehouse style stores cropping up everywhere, as well as huge malls that have been around forever, you've got a lot of unused resources on top of those buildings that could be helping us out.
the problem with the current "drill more" philosophy, i think, is that it allows the government to get lazy and not devote any resources (or thought, even) to finding any alternatives. sure, there's a law of diminishing returns -- after a certain point, you have to drill more to keep things functioning properly -- but does anyone think we've gotten that desperate yet?
'course, maybe if i owned an suv, i might be getting desperate right about now.
What I'm trying to say is that maybe there is a reason everybody hasn't jumped on the solar cell bandwagon. They aren't as practical and troublefree as you think. If you were an energy developer you might conclude that your money would be better utilized into a nuclear plant or top-notch oil refinery. Solar cells are still just a "curiosity", as of yet.
Originally posted by Randycat99
I hope people here who think solar panels are the cure have done a bit of research before concluding it as the instant solution. You don't just put a panel up, and viola, instant, free power for tracks and tracks of neighborhood. It takes a considerable amount of surface area to generate anything reasonably useful (making a Walmart roof look pretty pointless). Then you have to account for additional support to keep them clean and maintained because they certainly aren't going to stay that way by themself on a Walmart roof after city rain, dust, and fall-out. Then you will likely have to address cooling issues, because solar cells drop efficiency when they get hot. Unfortunately, that is exactly what things do when sitting out in the sun. Then you have to account for the loss in efficiency over time due to aging. Considering how much will be spent on them in the first place (industrial solar cells are not exactly cheap devices), you won't be looking forward to paying for them all over again once the efficiency has dropped to below useable levels. After accounting for all those factors, you may find that solar cells are hardly worth the trouble for the return you get out of them. They are neat devices and all, but far, far away from the premise of "put'em up and free, free power for all". "Free" doesn't come into the scene until after a severe financial reaming to pay for the devices themselves.
What I'm trying to say is that maybe there is a reason everybody hasn't jumped on the solar cell bandwagon. They aren't as practical and troublefree as you think. If you were an energy developer you might conclude that your money would be better utilized into a nuclear plant or top-notch oil refinery. Solar cells are still just a "curiosity", as of yet.
So you know what you do? You launch a group of satellites that will beam the energy from orbit. This would produce a much greater yield than any earth based panels. By the way not my idea. This was proposed years ago. Even if this didn't handle everything fossil fuel does today we still need to look for alternatives because the muck left over from the dinosaurs isn't going to last forever! What will happen is that oil will become so expensive these other methods will seem cheap by comparison.
THERE IS NO SUPPLY CRISIS.
It's very simple: for the last few months, prices have fluctuated between roughly $1.45 and $1.85 for midgrade depending on where you live. Everyone buys by the tank-full when it's low, and buys as many gallons as they need to get to the next "dip" when it's high. That is, they buy half a tank or less generally when prices are high.
The oil companies then jack up the prices by $.20 or $.30 for a few weeks, leave them there, then move them back down to the $1.75 mid-grade they were hoping everyone would buy originally. After getting shafted for a month, we see $1.75 mid-grade and go "WOW, look how low it is, I'm going to fill 'er up before prices go back to $1.95". We're puppets unless we decide to boycott on whatever basis we practically can by riding bikes more, picking a two or three day span when none of us buy any gas, etc.
The oil companies are manipulative fuking whores. End of story. Beyond Pretroleum my ass.
Originally posted by jimmac
So you know what you do? You launch a group of satellites that will beam the energy from orbit. This would produce a much greater yield than any earth based panels.
No argument here as far as it potentially offering greater capacity. However, not only would you be committed to a considerable cost penalty for the panels alone (as in the Earth-bound scenario), now you have an entire space program added in to make that happen. I'm not saying it couldn't work, but the stakes just grew many-fold with such a notion as that- FAR, FAR more than just proposing solar panels on the roof of every Walmart (which my post was specifically addressing, btw). Then theres the issue of space dust accumulation and incidental damage by speeding micro-particles upon a bulls-eye target the size of Kansas...hmmmm.
BTW, I'm not against the deployment of alternative energy. I'm just weighing in counterpoint to anyone who suggests that there are actually viable, drop-in alternatives to what we are using already all the while poo-pooing what the oil-driven energy industry makes possible in present day.
For the record, I do agree with the earlier point made that the oil industry is being a manipulative crisis-whore.
Originally posted by The General
Yeah, and the first thing he said was we pay less than everyone else.
And like I said, I suspect even the USA doesn't get it a cheep cheep as the oil producing countries..
But hell, who gives a flying toss..as far as I am concerned, petrol ( gas ) should be much much higher priced.
We need to encourage more public transport infrastructure. Too much damage to the enviroment & to society in general has been caused by the damm stupid car..
I am not against cars per se, but its idiotic to see thousands of drivers all rushing to work each morning, in their individual cars, when a bus could carry up to 80 of them for a fraction of what it costs to feed their individual gas guzzlers..as well as park them...
As for me..I ride a bike...so I am laughing....