Whos to blame for $4 gasoline....
 

Interesting perspectives.... one I tend to agree with, that there is plenty of blame
and reasons to go around

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/20/news...htm?cnn=yesand

Guess we could..

*drill in northern Alaska (however, the million hikers that go up there might see a drill :rolleyes:)
*drill miles of the Florida and California coast (not seeing the oil rigs won't be a problem, but knowing they are out there is)
*build a ton more nuclear power plants (unfortunately, we will all have deformed babies)
*build tons of wind powered fans in the desert and produce hydrogen for fuel-cell cars(unfortunately more birds will die :()

Dang every idea I think of has a huge negative that will affect the majority of us in a bad way, guess its just better for all of us to pay more at the pump. :rolleyes:

There hasn't been a refinery constructed in the US since 1976. The enviros have created such a web that construction is all but impossible. So, the oil companies build refineries elsewhere.

Speculators are estimated to have driven the price up 30% by some sources. On $4/gal that translates to gas being at $2.80/gal.

The costs are being manipulated by many but the brunt of criticism is focused on the oil companies and those that the enviros (new socialists) want to corral.

And if you think the price of oil is bad now, wait until Hillary or Barack pass their 'windfall profit' taxes. It seems that almost any intelligent person knows companies don't pay taxes.. they merely pass taxes along to customers and 2) no one has said how they will be able to collect taxes from international companies who have the option to move resources elsewhere.

You are spot on if you think the oil refineries and producers will pay taxes out of profits..... if they did ... think of the negative effect on the fundamentals of their business..... they will just pass it on to consumers.... way to go HILBAMA.

States such as FL or CA that dont allow drilling should be subject to a federal tax for not using their natural resources for the good of the country.

while no NEW refineries have been built capacity has increased, just not enough to keep pace with demand.

Bingo.

Corporations are taxed this way: Income - expenses = amount that is taxed.

People are taxed this way: Income - taxes = amount left over for expenses.

If corporations are going to be taxed then they are simply going to roll that cost into the prices that they pass onto the consumer. So here is what the new formulas will look like with higher income tax implementations:

Corporations: Price + adjustment for higher taxes = Increased cost for the consumer. This equates to higher revenue for the corporations, but the profits remain relatively unchanged because: Income - expenses = amount that is taxed.

People: Income - taxes = amount left over for expenses. Increased prices due to higher taxes equates to less purchasing power for the consumer. In addition, if the corporations are taxed at a higher rate then personal income taxes will probably increase as well. The outcome? The only people who are negatively affected the most are consumers. All of this equates to less and less money going into the economy.

I think this is a great idea. Maybe then the state legislatures would think twice about allowing environs to strong arm its elected officials. God forbit you make a 2000 acre footprint on 19,000 acres in order to ease foreign oil dependency. Our priorities in this country are completely out of whack.

Am I the only one who is bothered by the fact that the oil market is controlled by a "CARTEL" which by definition is ILLEGAL in the US?? Also the oil producing nations such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia are paying $0.12 and $0.78 a gallon. But on the other hand other countries such as the Netherlands and Norway have it much worse than us.... This is the very definition of "price gouging"....:mad::mad::mad:

Here is where I got those numbers:

http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lis...bal_gasprices/

It bothers me that oil is controlled by a CARTEL but you can't do anything about it but get your oil somewhere else. We can get it from our own sources...it is the only way. The Saudi and Venezuelan governments heavily subsidize the cost of oil because their fields are controlled by the state. As for Europe "having it worse than us" that is bull crap it's their own fault. I have a bunch of guys from Europe I work with that tell me how lucky America is blah blah blah. The fact is half of the price they are paying is government tax. Gas is 5 pounds/gallon in the UK which translates to $10/gal here but $5 of that $10 is government tax!! OPEC isn't doing that.

A question - have you actually voiced your concern to a senator in FL? I did, he had a good reason for not supporting the drilling. I can't remember who it was, he was a public spokesman for not drilling off the coast. Anyway, it might be something to consider.

Also, even if we were to drill here in the US, guess how much oil would cost? The SAME. It's sold on the market as a commodity. The US actually is an EXPORTER of oil even today.

doesnt matter if a "cartel" is illegal in the united states... the cartel doesnt include the united states, nor is it based here...... we choose to buy oil from them.....and for what its worth, even OPEC doesnt control the world price of oil... they control their production of crude and its distribution which of course does effect it but oil prices are set on the commodity market.....

Sure I have heard the reasons... from fear of oil spills to the fear that tourists wont come if they drill off the coast. The fact is much of the oil to be had in the northern and eastern GOM off Florida is over the horizon and the platforms would never be seen. I guess if they have GOOD reasons not to drill off florida using your train of thinking then we shouldnt drill off of Texas or Louisiana or Mississippi or Alabama, or hell anywhere for that matter because if we think long enough and hard enough I am sure we can come up with reasons NOT to drill ANYWHERE. :eek: The fact is it the same old BS... we want oil... we want nuclear... we want coal... hell even the Kennedys put a stop to wind power in MA, ..etc etc etc.. but NOT if its in MY backyard.... well if you dont want it in YOUR backyard... thats fine...just be prepared to pay MORE to have it brought to you.

Problem is most if not all of the impact studies are brought forth by environmental groups. Gee, I wonder what the findings will be. We have ZERO opposition to the very powerful environmentalists in this country because the minute you do you are branded. Nobody wants to be known as the anti-environment lobbyist. Couple that with futures traders having the commodities market by the stones and you have 2 major reasons why the ppb is $127.

Stop buying crap from China, we are building their economy, and now they are thirsty for oil. It's hard to do, but you can try. Even your pilot shirts are from China.

i grabbed my ankles, and i spent my whole paycheck at the pump last week.:(

The high price of oil is partly because our dollar value is becoming a peso.

Also the oil companies have an obligation to make a profit for its shareholders. The only way they can continue to do that is charge the rate they are charging or find more supply and lower the price.
They chose to charge more.

The price of oil will never go down.
The upside is that it forces us to look for alternative fuels faster. I see hydrogen cars becoming more and more popular in the next couple of years.

We all complain about Gas Prices and I am a complainer too but the fault is partly ours as consumers simple supply and demand, for all the people out there with their 18 mpg SUV and such we have been spoiled for so long its not funny, I can remember when I was stationed in Germany we use to get coupons for Gas and it was rationed aswell the europeans are paying a hell of alot more than we are, but they dont drive as much as we do, we really need to ween ourself off of fossil fuel, I dream of the day we have a public transportation system that rival Europe.

And for the people who think HillBama will make it any worse tell me how much money we have spent in IRAQ so far wait a min I dont even want to know cause its to the tune of $400 BILLION

ok Rant over

This is correct...the fundamental underlying weakness in the US energy economy is environmentalists and NIMBYs.

Energy is an infrastructure-intense business...you need large power plants, processing, and refining facilities plus transportation or power-lines to get the stuff where it needs to go.

There have been VERY few new refineries, nuclear, or conventional power plants built in the last 30 years. In fact NO nukes at all, and I believe no refineries either.

During the big California blackouts in 2000, the commie/liberal governor and his assembly cronies decided to fix the skyrocketing electricity costs by siezing control of the state's power utilities...unfortunately it turned out that these same folks had not allowed anyone to actually BUILD a power plant in the state of Cali for 30 years. So where WERE all the power plants which had supported the Cali population surge? About 15 feet across the Nevada State Line! :eek: Turns out that the Cali state government does NOT have the authority to seize control of things in NV. Oooops! :eek:

The good news is that reason is starting to prevail in some quarters, and new plants are in the works. But the federal government probably needs to develop an aggressive post-petroleum energy master plan, and take steps as needed to steer the industry in the right direction.

..........

That is a pretty bold prediction. If you are so sure put your money where you mouth is - I mean if it will never go down put all your money into oil commodities and you won't even need a job as a pilot.

Hydrogen cars are far far away. The infrastructure and the energy required to make hydrogen cars is in no way feasible in the near future (at least 10 years). Barring any exceptional breakthrough a hydrogen society is still science fiction. Take the time to watch this video all the way through please. While you will see hydrogen cars are possible, the technology still has a long way to go before a hydrogen society becomes a reality.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3210/01.html

Do some research on EV and you will see that not only are electric cars an option right now - they were years ago. Yes, the technology exists right now for you and me to drive around 100 miles on one charge at speeds fast enough to drive on freeways and not use one drop of gas/oil (assuming your electricity comes from a non oil burning electric plant). I'd put my hopes into an EV way before a hydrogen based car. Go to your local library and rent the documentary 'Who Killed the Electric Car?'.

Speculation

On the electric side, I heard producing the NIMH batteries creates a ton of pollution. I doubt LiION or NICAD batteries are much better especially when you account for disposal. I've never heard what battery type is most viable for a 4 door sedan application. Does anyone know?

Not that we shouldn't do something to get off fossil fuels but I don't think we have any near term alternatives. Isn't the automobile still a small part (10%) of the overall US fossil fuel consumption?

Agreed.
EV are a great idea, however the production and disposal of the batteries cause their fair share of problems as well. We are just now reaching a point where EV/Hybrid savings will offset the cost of battery replacement during the life time of the vehicle. The answer.... domestically controlled small scale nuclear fission! Or anything else that would pull the rug out from under the Arabs.

Private automobiles are a very large part of US fossil fuel consumption. The electric grid uses more energy than cars, but some of the grid is hydro, nuclear, or more-abundant coal or NG. Without looking it up, I'm pretty sure that cars/SUVs consume the largest or second-largest chunk of the oil we use in the US.

Li batteries are probably the most effecient thing we have for cars now, and they do pose a waste problem. However...if we go to large numbers of electric vehicles, a battery disposal/recycling infrastructure will develop shortly.

From a cost perspective, plain old lead-acid batteries are probably cheapest EV power source even if you do have to replace them every three years. Deep-cycle boat/RV batteries work fine in electric cars, and you can buy them anywhere.

Li batteries are more effecient and lighter, but they cost serious bank when they wear out.

THAT is probably the biggest reason; institutional investors using commodities such as oil as a hedge against a weak dollar.

Speculation would likely be the second biggest reason.

The price of oil is not even remotely tied to supply-and-demand fundamentals; it hasn't for many months now. Blame Bush, blame China and India, blame the oil companies, blame their shareholders, blame your 401k manager, blame yourself...blame doesn't matter.

Yes, it will. Tech did, housing did, and oil will too..anything not tied to fundamentals always does. That said, I doubt it'll ever again dip below $75-80/bbl. The $64,000 question is when will the oil bubble burst and the substantial drop begin?

The United States consumes roughly 20 million barrels per day (MMbpd) of crude oil. This is a phenomenal amount, and constitutes about 25% of the world's oil production. So where does it all go? The stats show that personal transport accounts for 45% of U.S. consumption -- about twice the consumption of trucking, aviation and shipping combined.

The breakdown for 2006 is:
Total oil consumption: 19.7 MMbpd
Transportation: 13.1 MMbpd
Autos/light trucks: 9 MMbpd
Medium/heavy trucks: 3.8 MMbpd
Jet fuel: 1.6 MMbpd
Feedstock: 3.5 MMbpd

If people are not cutting back, then maybe $4/gallon is the right price? If people want to drive their SUV's for every day use they will have to pay more for it. Unless you are one of the oil rich countries $4/gallon is still cheap in the "global" market. Our country knew about this coming problem for over 40 years and neither Republicans nor Democrats did jack **** about it. So lets have a "gas-tax holiday" so people can keep consuming at excessive rates- brilliant!
Scoop

wise crack alert !
 

Ok so we can blame the enviro,s and who are they ? they are part of our generation and we have no one to blame but ourselves since we did nothing and i repeat nothing to stand up to them ,myself included so we have what we have .
Deal with it !
BTW wait until the next generation comes into power ,going to be some payback i reckon for all the screw ups our generation has been involved in .
Flame away if you want :eek:




God how I hate the 21st century !

My ALPA 5 year pin was from China!
Scoop

Reading some of the responses in this thread have been.......well.........interesting.

Let me address a few key misconceptions about the price of oil.


It is all because of the weak dollar.

True, the price of oil rose because the value of the dollar has gone down. However, the value of the dollar is the same today (with oil at $130/barrel) as it was in the beginning on March 2008 (with oil at $103/barrel). So why has the price of oil increased $27/barrel (about 27% in 3 months) when the value of the dollar has been stable?

Drilling in ANWR is the solution

ANWR has oil predicted oil reserves of approximately 4 billion barrels. To put that number in perspective, the US consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day. The world consumes 83 million barrels of oil per day. If we drilled in ANWR, they estimate we could produce 1 million barrels per day. That is only 5% of what we consume every day. Barely 1% of the world oil supply. Oh yeah, and it would be all gone in 11 years. Do you really think that will solve our problems? Today the Saudi's announced they were increasing production by 300,000 barrels to day. Despite this news, the price of oil went up $2.30/barrel to an all-time record high. 1 million barrels a day is nothing on the global scale. It is just a short term solution to a long term problem. It is like putting a band-aid on a gushing wound, and quite frankly, I don't think that small amount of production will make a difference. Plus, you would have to be an idiot to drill in some of the most sacred environment on the face of the planet. Drilling in ANWR is not the solution to our energy crisis.

The law of supply and demand will cause the oil bubble to burst

That entire statement is so wrong. The rising price of oil defies the law of supply and demand. In May 2003, the price of oil was $30/barrel (hard to believe, huh?). In May 2008, the price of oil is currently $130/barrel. The price has increased 433% over 5 years. Demand in the world has slightly increased from 78 million barrels to day in 2003 to 83 million barrels per day in 2008. Barely a 6% increase.

Oil prices can continue to rise because there is demand for oil. The price has increased 433% in the past 5 years, yet we are consuming more oil than 5 years ago. Is oil worth $130/barrel? Of course it is! If you bought gasoline recently, you are certainly willing to pay $130/barrel. Anything is worth what you are willing to pay for it. If you continue to pay for oil when the price hits $150, $180, $200/barrel, you must believe it is worth the price.


Up until very recently, OPEC had a strategy of not letting oil prices get out of control because they thought if they drove the price too high, the world economy would crumble, and someone would develop an alternative to oil, leaving Saudi Arabia as a piece of desert atop 200 billion barrels of worthless black crap. Oil kept going up and no one has done anything about it (including the US, the worlds richest, most powerful, most technologically advanced country who is the world's largest oil consumer). So recently it seems like they have changed their strategy, and are just going to let oil prices rise, and see how much oil is really worth. My opinion is oil is worth about $200/barrel. That is gas at $6-$7 a gallon. Above that, you will start to see a significant reduction in oil consumption.


In short, the people most responsible for $4/gallon gas are ourselves, because we continue to buy gasoline and not do anything about the rising price of oil. The price of oil is only going to go up and up and up. The only thing we can do to stop it is to stop consuming a big portion of it (by developing an alternative energy) and leaving Saudi Arabia with 200 billion barrels of worthless black crap. Until we switch to an alternative energy, there is really not much we can do. Crude oil was a one time gift to mankind. It was nice while it lasted...now lets get over it.

opinions are like........not that your wrong flawed in a few ASSumptions perhaps .... but anyways.

I disagree with your notion that 1 million barrels per day is insignificatant. Using that line of logic EVERY well is insignificant. Thousands of wells make up our daily production, EVERYONE is important. So it only lasts 11 years.... so what. Many wells and discoveries have lasted less time. Its not like we have one oilfield out there producing all of our domestic crude. Let me put this another way. In the few years before I came back into the the airline biz I owned and ran a small corporation. When I purchased that company I asked the current owner who is Five biggest customers where and how much they brought in each month. I tallied it up and it was only about 40% of the revenue each month in the biz, when I asked he said well I have another 100 customers who make up the rest. EVERY customer counts. EVERY oil field counts..if for no other reason than to slightly lessen our needs while we do develop an alternative source......whew.

ANWR seems like a nice place for the ol family vacation lol:rolleyes:
miles and miles of nothing !google earth it and you will see exactly that .:p

...and so did tech stocks, and so did housing....

And they all came down...hard.

You can think of a thousand reasons why oil shouldn't be as high as it is. Speculators, evil oil companies, tree hugging hippies, opec, bush, gore, dems, repubs...global warming. In the end though, if you don’t have a plan in place to deal personally with $200-$300 oil, and $5-$10 gas, you're only screwing yourselves. How many of you said when oil was $30 that you'd never see $40, or $50, or $100. The market is what it is. Maybe everyone that advocates the virtues of the free market capitalism should listen to what it’s telling you. If the price of oil goes down after you've enacted whatever your new budget is, well great look at all that extra money you have. If the opposite happens...well…

You should all look up peak oil. Not sayings its here, but sometimes things make you go hmmmmmmm.:confused:

You are wrong here - what are you comparing the dollar against? You make the statement, "the value of the dollar is the same today," how are you measuring the value of the dollar? On March 1, 2008 one Dollar was worth about .66 Euros. Recently it has hit close to .63, so if you are comparing to the Euro the Dollar is worth less and thus one reason to sell dollars and buy oil. Take the Chinese Yuan in March it was around 7.1 Yuan now it is under 7. You cannot just make blanket unproven statements that are wrong to back up your case.

As to the critics of electric cars claiming they will harm the environment - when was the last time you just threw away your battery? Especially with the high price of some of the more sophisticated lithium ion batteries - there is an economic incentive to recycling them, they are worth money.

There is nobody to blame except for those stupid dinosaurs. If more of them would have died, we would have more oil. Then the price would be lower due to more oil underground.

Priceless ! rofl:D

Jayray2,
I was using the graph from this website.
http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/co...submit=Convert
For the past 3 months, the dollar has been relatively constant with respect to the euro (at 1.55 dollars to 1 euro). I am just trying to convince some people that the falling value of the dollar has little of anything to do with the recent price jump from $100/barrel to $130/barrel. I don't like people who say "It's all because of the falling dollar, and when the value goes up, the price of oil will be back at $50/barrel."

BS. The price of oil probably will never be below $100/barrel again.

As for the environmental impact of batteries, I think people seem to forget that our gas powered cars use a lead-acid battery. Lithium or lithium-ion batteries would probably have the same environmental impact as our current lead-acid batteries. Plus you would get quite a bit of money for recycling lithium/lithium-ion batteries. I don't buy the argument that electric cars are worse for the environment. They are certainly better for our nation and our economy.