OT Gas Prices and the Blame Game

That would make maybe $0.50 a gallon difference. A lot of the cheap oil has been burned. We are now going after the more expensive stuff. If you look at the price of oil in terms of onces of gold, you will see that it hasn't gone up in price so much as the US dollar has gone down. The remaining increase is just what you would expect giving the increasingly expensive oil that is going into the stream.

We can whine about it, or we can start to do something about it. Solar power has reached the point where there is a payback. The hydro- electric resources aren't fully developed and cars that get twice the MPG can be bought.

While you've still got them. Burn even more oil in even less efficient cars, and the atmospheric CO2 levels will go up even faster than they are going up at the moment, the ice caps will slide off Greenland and Antarctica, and you won't have a Florida at all, and the Californian and Alaskan coasts coast will be a long way inland from where they are now.

So you'd better extract the oil while you still can ... and not leave it around for your grandchildren (who will face an increasing risk of having to learn to breath water, if your children don't relocate further inland quickly enough).

It's familiar right-wing thinking - they grab everything they can now, because they are going to screw up the future so comprehenisvely that none of their descendants are going to be around to take advanatge of anything they might leave unexploited.

The creep quoted obviously doesn't believe in global warming, so feels free to ignore it. By the time global warming gets bad enough that even inland idiots like Jim Thompson can't ignore it, it's going to be much more difficult - probably impossible, with a significant proportion of global resources suddenly vanishing under the rising seas - to do anything about it.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

"With fill-ups routinely costing $60 or more"

Sure, if you drive a light truck instead of a sensibly sized car...

You have it backwards...

... filling up my Frontier "light truck"... $40.68

... filling up my Q45... $66.42

...Jim Thompson

Or live in the UK where $60 would not quite half fill a 60L gas tank. Mine costs around £65 = $130 to fill, but does very nearly 60mpg.

Regards, Martin Brown

Really? Numbers please!

James Arthur

Some rough estimates here:

Tim

-- Deep Fryer: A very philos>

For your purposes, you may have a sensibly sized vehicle. But there are a lot of individuals commuting way too many miles in largely stop-and-go driving as the only occupant of a monster SUV or truck that gets worse mileage than my even bigger old 1966 Econoline van, with a simple 6 cylinder engine, that I drove in the mid-70s.

Now I have a 4WD Toyota Pickup that I drive when I need that capability (and it still averages 22-24 MPG), and I also have a 1997 Saturn wagon that averages about 32 MPG. And I am looking for another even more efficient car, but the newer models are actually less efficient.

It does not cost that much more to have more than one vehicle to meet your needs. And it is also reasonable to rent or purchase a trailer to provide extra capacity when needed.

I will be happy if gas prices reach $5 or $6 a gallon, especially if it helps to get off the road some of the huge gas guzzlers piloted by distracted cell phone addicts full of road rage.

Paul

If we'd quit spending trillions of dollars tryng to steal mideast oil, we could afford to just _BUY_ it!

Thanks, Rich

Try google:

You will find as many sites as you care to read.

How does the price of diesel compare to petrol over there?

Better solution: restrict the sales of oil futures to those who can actually take delivery of the product.

There is too much money chasing resources. That drives prices up. Record profits for oil companies run counter to the theory of supply and demand. At best, if a refiner's cost for crude goes up, they can pass that cost through to the customer. In reality, they consume some energy internally, which would reduce their profit margin. But, if their profits are being made on hedging in the futures market, they can pass crude futures back and forth, tacking on a little for each transaction. Much like Enron did in California a few years back.

If I sell stocks short, my broker is obliged to ensure that I can cover my position. If speculators buy crude futures, they should be required to show proof that, when the tanker shows up, they have someplace to put it.

It takes a few years (2-10) from drilling to production. And if you had all of that presumed oil, tell me please, where the hell would it be refined? I presume that you know that refineries have been basically outlawed here in the US for many many years, and that it takes around 15 or so years to get one going from scratch due to all of the environmental regs, etc ad nauseum. Blams some of that shit on Clinton.

Perhaps this second flood will fix the major problem by reducing the world population.

Infuriatingly diesel in the UK is about 10% more expensive than petrol. In Belgium where I lived before it was the other way around.

Regards, Martin Brown

martin

There's a general term for it, leftist weenies: the result of combining ignorance, superstition, guilt and fear of one's own shadow with the promise of a supernatural being (big government) that will make you feel good irrespective of your inadequacy.

I understand that they are also known to accept carbon credits in lieu of tithing ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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The other bottom line is: consume less. I'll bet (guess?) we (United States) could easily drop 25%+ of our dependence on foreign oil if everyone would make a few simple changes:

- Plan their daily commutes to be more fuel-efficient

- Carpool when it makes sense (shopping?), walk or ride a bike for very short trips.

- Keep their cars tuned up, with proper air pressure.

- Downsize their next car purchase, even if its not a hybrid.

Also, I think we can go without street lighting (or maybe half- lighting). There is no compelling reason to light the side streets when cars already have headlights. How much oil (energy) could be saved if we extinguished half the street lights in America. (I'm not talking major inner-city corridores, just the roads and parking lots, etc... where reducing the lights would not adversely impact safety or security..)?

Also, I'm amazed that the Candidates (with the possible exception of Barack Obama), are not STRESSING conservation. They're all still about subsidized consumption, in one form or another. Bush is overseas begging the Saudi's for more oil. He should be begging Congress to immunize General Motors if they bring back the electric car! Idiots. All of them.

-mpm

The US has increased its domestic refining capacity by about 10% since the 1980's. This follows the amount of total domestic demand for refined products. There was a peak in world refining capacity in the late 1970s or early 1980s. After that there was a decrease because there was actually a decrease in world demand. Since then the refining capacity has recovered. The far east is where the biggest proportional growth in demand has been happening and as a result a lot of refining capacity is being built there.

Refineries are expensive and complex things. People don't want to make any more of them than is absolutely needed to meet the demand but there is a small amount of surplus capacity in the americas that can be put to use refining it. The lack of refining space is not why oil is now $125 a barrel.