I am guessing that isn't going to happen.
Posted on 06/06/2008 12:09:55 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants
I am guessing that isn't going to happen.
As did Poppy as did Clinton as has Junior as has the so called Adult GOP majority which is the exact same party owned by the same persons as the Democrats are. They long ago sold us out just like Poppy, Clinton, and like Junior. THEY ALL ARE GUILTY! Hate them all or not at all. Only a few GOP remain true and none are in the Executive Branch but rather likely two or three left in the senate and a few in congress. The rest are Tyrants unworthy of office.
“We all know most Americans have reduced their gas usage considerably. We alone have reduced ours by as much as 25 percent, eliminating all needless trips and combining others. Most people are already rationing their use.”
If this is happening, I’m sure not seeing it. There may be some reduction at the margins, but the traffic I sit in every morning is just as rotten as it has always been, and 8 of 10 cars have one occupant.
I think we’ll have to see gas go to about $6 a gallon or more before people start drastically changing their habits.
I don’t.
I do believe there may be a time lag bringing new sources on line.
Eternal high prices sort of depend on zero-sum supplies, do they not?
I don't believe in peak oil either...at least, I don't see that happening in the next 30 years or so. I also think that oil shale, oil sands and coal to liquids can pick up the slack for oil.
The problem isn't that there isn't enough oil in the world...because there is. But that there isn't enough oil production. Here in the USA we have chosen not to drill for oil. In places like the UK, they truly have maxed out their ability to produce. OPEC, and other oil producing entities may not choose to produce more oil, for many reasons. In the meantime demand from the third world is skyrocketting. At this point, if anyone decides to produce more oil it will take 5-10 years for those projects to begin to bear fruit. That means there would be a race between a growing oil demand and an increasing supply...after a 5-10 year lag. I can't imagine oil prices going down under that circumstance.
“Did you know that a diesel engine will run just fine on a 50/50 mixture of regular gasoline and filtered, used motor oil? And people will give used motor oil away.”
No, but that’s interesting. Diesels can be adapted to run on vegetable oil as well. A couple years ago there was a run on vegetable oil in Europe because it was cheaper than diesel. Many/most cars in Europe run on diesel because it’s cheaper and you get more kilometers per liter.
People need to understand that it is a speculative bear market. The last one started in 1965 and lasted about 17 years. This one started about 1999. Look at a chart of the DJI and see if you don’t see it. In a speculative bear market, the price of stocks goes up, then it comes down, and repeats this cycle around an average any number of times, and end up about where it started. It looks like you’ve preserved your capital but when you adjust for inflation you’ve really taken a beating in a speculative bear market. Still, where are you going to go? Bond markets also suffer during such downturns, and fixed investments usually return less than the cost of inflation, so you’re stuck no matter where you go, the markets, or under the mattress.
Come on. With the rising prices of everything cased by these crazy fuel prices, people are cutting back driving any way possible.
Tell ya what, I know a guy with a large RV rental business, and his reservations are down over 30 percent this summer as opposed to last summer.
Down 404.09
at 4:04 EDT.
hm.
How much do you want to bet that once the election is over, oil prices will drop?
Oil inventories are actually up according to the lastest report dated 4 June 2008.
Government data scheduled for release Wednesday is expected to show that crude-oil inventories rose last week after unexpected drops in the prior two periods.
The Energy Department’s forecasting arm, the Energy Information Administration, publishes petroleum inventory data for the week ended May 30 at 10:35 a.m. EDT.
Analysts expect oil stockpiles grew last week by 2.7 million barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy research arm of McGraw-Hill (nyse: MHP - news - people ) Cos. For the week ended May 23, crude-oil inventories fell by 8.8 million barrels, or 2.7 percent, to 311.6 million barrels, which were 9.7 percent below year-ago levels.
Meanwhile, gasoline inventories fell by 3.2 million barrels, or 1.5 percent, to 206.2 million barrels, which were 2.5 percent above year-ago levels. Analysts expect stockpiles of the motor fuel grew by 900,000 barrels last week.
Demand for gasoline over the four weeks ended May 23 was 0.7 percent lower than a year earlier, averaging more than 9.3 million barrels a day.
At the same time, U.S. refineries ran at 87.9 percent of total capacity on average, unchanged from the prior week. Analysts expect capacity rose by 0.6 percentage point last week.
Inventories of distillate fuel, which include diesel and heating oil, rose by 1.6 million barrels to 109.4 million barrels for the week ended May 23. Analysts expect distillate stocks rose by 1.6 million barrels last week.
At the pump, gas prices rose less than a penny overnight to a record-high national average of $3.98 a gallon Tuesday, and are well above the year-ago average of $3.16 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.
Light, sweet crude for July delivery fell $3.45 to settle at $124.31 on the New York Mercantile Exchange Tuesday.
In addition, even the local resorts are seeing a considerable down turn in visitors.
Yes, but if you use vegetable oil that hasn’t been processed into biodiesel or had some lubricating additives it can cause problems like jelled fuel in cold weather and premature injector pump failure. Also, as biodiesel becomes more popular, more restaurant owners think they are draining out liquid gold from the deep fryers and want to sell it. Used motor oil is still free at many shops.
The problem with simply changing habits is that there may be an economic consequence to that. There simply isn't very much "cruising around town" going on. If people decide to drive less it usually means that they aren't spending as much $$$. You can save gas by not going out to dinner one night a week, but that ultimately impacts the restaurant business and the waiter/waitress. You can choose not to go to a major league baseball game this season because you don't want to consume gas driving there. But unfortunately that action hurts the baseball team and the folks who work at the stadium.
Additional to gasoline, oil is the key raw material for diesel fuel and heating oil. If the price of those two continue to go up there will be negative economic consequences throughout thje economy.
Additionally
Yes, I’m suggesting that there isn’t a serious reduction happening. Sure, some folks are conserving fuel around the margins. But we’re not seeing anything even approaching what Europeans do as business as usual to minimize their fuel bills.
Color me impressed when I see even 1/4 of vehicles with more than one occupant. In general, people are just sucking up the higher fuel costs. Fuel consumption is down, but not by enough to matter.
It is partly speculation, yes. But understand that speculation is not based on whims or wild guesses. Futures market traders place puts and calls and make long- and short-term position decisions based on real-world information. The ability to "move the market" is limited to a small handful of operators - but is extremely risky. No one, even George Soros, puts half a billion dollars at stake without calculation.
The underlying, larger causes of high oil prices are increasing global demand and stagnant, insufficient supply. The other primary cause is political risk, which manifests itself in the markets as fear. There are two branches of political risk in this case: domestic (controllable) and international (relatively uncontrollable).
As long as Congress stands in the way of drilling, exploration and refinery construction (and the markets know this all too well), we are locked into higher energy prices. As for the situation in the Middle East and elsewhere, there is an undercurrent of fear regarding the Presidential intentions of one B. H. Obama, and one that in my opinion is not at all unreasonable.
Well, they did have the baseball players come testify...that has had remarkable results.
“Who knows...maybe this will give the GOP enough backbone to start pushing hard for drilling in all domestic locations and building more refineries. “
They tried it last just three weeks ago, defeated by Democrat phillibuster. Didn’t hear about it on the MSM?
Neither did I , I saw it on Cspan TV.
Nancy Pelosi announced in 2006 that upon taking the majority the Democrats would put inplace theur grand strategy for lowering gas prices. When she took control, gas was at $2.35 per barrell. Today it is $4.24.
“the usual nimrods who will try to convince us that speculators driving up the price of oil, wheat, corn, etc. is actually GOOD for the average person living from paycheck to paycheck.
For a recent, lively FR thread on the commodity speculators see:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;q=quick;s=Now%2C%20a%20Commodities%20Conundrum
A lot of interesting pro and con, good links and detailed technical information.
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