Its a GAS GAS GASsssssssss

 
  I just don't  get this one.
 
   Here in America gas/petrol has gone up to around 4.00 us which is considered to be low in a lot of the rest of the world. I can remember just a few years ago paying less than 2.00.
  The sudden increase in gas prices has really helped to put a choke on our economy. Just about everything shipped or driven uses it . I heat my house with fuel oil ,however will probably be installing a heat pump because of the higher prices. I commute 60 miles a day and have a smaller car  because of this.
 
  I am still seeing many large SUVs and  trucks...granted, I own a van I use for cargo occasionally but its not my daily driver. So I guess I'm hearing and seeing two different things. On one hand I see one segment of people here stuggling from paycheck to paycheck,and a much larger segment that seem to go on with life as usual and spend big bucks to fill their tanks and keep on buying the cars that get about  15 to 20 mpg.
 
  The press paints a bleak picture here but I don't see a lot of major lifestyle adjustment here where I live for the most part. Is this the ostrich syndrome? I'll put my head in the sand and pretend there isn't a problem? The optimist who thinks it will all eventually go away?
 
 The whole thing reminds me of the "herd" mentality. People seem to be doing whatever the rest of the herd is doing,only the herd might be heading for the cliffs. Or maybe it's  taking a long time for the US to go off of the teat.
 
   What is your take on this?

 
The pump price of regular unleaded petrol around here is currently the equivalent of $10.11 a gallon (£1.36 per litre) 
 
I would absolutely love to be paying $4 (£2.45) a gallon
 
 

What is this herd of which you speak, and how do I join in?

I quit driving a few years back.

well, I had to fill up yesterday..... the gas light came on... $100 later the pump stopped automatically at that magic number, but the pump never kicked off, and the tank wasn't quite full.

I remember the very first time it took me $20 to fill my tank.... I thought the price was outrageous then.

Like someone said before me..... Son, you ain't seen nothing yet!

The comment has been famously made that energy prices would "necessarily skyrocket" and I believe that is what the end game goal is.

Why can Brazil do deep water drilling in the gulf but we can't? Why are our tax dollars being given to Brazil to do this yet our domestic oil companies can't get their permits approved? Why isn't land that has been tied up by the feds, which contain oil, gas, and coal being released for mining and drilling?  So many questions......

Simply, I believe, because they want to limit our access to them, so the price will rise to the point where solar and wind are cheap in comparison.....


so much to say on this but so little time..... other things to do so I can actually afford to run my air conditioners and heater and pay the bills.

All you Brits - I can remember when petrol hit the £1 a gallon mark and everyone was outraged!

Cheapest I've seen recently is Morrisons @ £1.32 a litre

That's $9.82 a gallon

1) Oil companies make huge winfall profits and then get billions in tax breaks and credits.  (Blame lobbying and the cost of getting elected)

2) Gas prices ratchet up very, very fast based on speculation and never really ever go back down. (Blame #3)
 
3) We Americans would rather drive short distances than walk or ride.  My son and I ride bikes to little league all the time.  Other kids ask my kid if our car is broken or we are too poor to own a car.  (Blame the fact that from a very young age we are taught that our self worth is wrapped up in how much we wastefully consume....kind of a life long Potlatch)

In short we are addicted and the pusher man knows it.

JR

auto_da_fe


 
3) We Americans would rather drive short distances than walk or ride.  My son and I ride bikes to little league all the time.  Other kids ask my kid if our car is broken or we are too poor to own a car.  (Blame the fact that from a very young age we are taught that our self worth is wrapped up in how much we wastefully consume....kind of a life long Potlatch)

JR

I'm an American and none of that applies to me.
 
Star- I don't know what to say really....I don't base my decisions on what others are doing ( or driving)
and there has been and probably always will be those that can and those that can't.
 
As for the price of gas....it is what it is.  I simply gas up and go my way.
Now if I were to look at others....
I may ask, why would anybody that has to get a loan for 5+ years to buy something that's going to cost them
over 50 thousand dollars complain about the fuel it takes to operate it? If they did it for the reasons that
you suggest....they have more issues than the price of gas....IMHO.

Tap


Why can Brazil do deep water drilling in the gulf but we can't?

???? BP ????

I know little of Canadian affairs but my guess would be "environmental" groups.
 
Of course happenings like in the Gulf with a company that doesn't operate "by the rules"
is most dangerous to any good at all.
 
I'm reminded of a recent meeting in Wyoming. The ranchers, National Forest and Sierra Club met to discuss
the coyote problem. That ranchers had been dealing with them for years but others decided there was a more
humane way of dealing with them rather than the tried and true bullet.
So they ( both the Sierra Club and Nation Forest Service) suggested trapping and castrating the coyotes and then set free. Well the meeting went silent as the ranchers were giving this thought and finally an old rancher stood and said, "young fellow I don't think you quite understand the problem. You see, these coyotes ain't  ***** our sheep, they're eating them!" - well the meeting never gained order.....
 
 
 
 
 
 

bitflipper


Hmm, here I thought you were talking about Gear Acquisition Syndrome, something I could relate to.

But gasoline/petrol? No big deal. I just never leave the house. The money I save goes into more important things, like musical gadgets.

    I like the idea, lets change topics!
 
    I like the idea of never leaving the house !! Fortunately we save big on lower taxes by living where we do and there are two of us commuting so the math works out very well for us compared to some who end up commuting. There are a lot more places I would rather put my change than in a gas tank.

  It gets really expensive when you have the other GAS because its a hike to the local Guitar center and I have to take the van to haul all the stuff I buy ( yeah right).......

  I always wondered why the people in the UK preferred small cars.  Some of them with three wheels and motorcycle engines.  If I payed those kind of prices you would probably see me moving. The cost of the fuel would outweigh the lower cost of living where I do. I hope that your commutes are not near as far.How do you deal with those expensive prices?

 
   I guess if I were prone to go buy a $50,000 dollar car the gas would be a secondary consideration like you say. My reasoning behind that would be, I can afford it. I'm buying it and to heck with the gas.........but I'll never be prone to buying an expensive car with expensive upkeep and will never even think about borrowing for something like that. Not when I could do so many other things with the dough............. there are a few other things I'll probably never understand.
 
 Like why do the people who engineer motorcycles make them so loud on purpose? Car engineers figured out how to make 8 cylinders quiet years ago but for some reason we have to make two cylinders sound like firecrackers so that the people they pass go temporarily deaf. And other people buy these bikes to go on a QUIET Sunday ride. HMMMmmmmm lets see here, oh here's one!!!Sounds like it will shake the teeth right out of my head and blow windows out of houses.!! The herd must like loud.... the herd is not smart. OK OK I'll need to start another topic.............

 

 

 

 

Tap


Why can Brazil do deep water drilling in the gulf but we can't?

???? BP ????

BP was simply the unfortunate and convenient whipping boy. The rig had been "inspected" (term is used loosely) by government inspectors who overlooked the problems they found.

Does anyone really think that a Brazilian drilling company is going to be any safer in the deep water drilling than BP or any other company under US jurisdiction.... are the Brazilian companies under the US inspectors jurisdiction when they are drilling outside of the US limits? Could we tell them to cease and desist from drilling if we found them in violation of safety standards, and would they comply? I'm guessing here.... but I'm thinking not.

The media here hyped that spill up for all it was worth, but there were a number of other spills that made the BP spill small by comparison. Not excusing the actions or the spill in any way... as far as I am concerned, one barrel spilled is one barrel too much. If we could drill on land and in shallow water that would never have gotten as bad as it became.  There was another well head hit by a barge that spilled oil too, when the Deepwater Horizon was happening. Since it was in shallow water, even though it was unmanned at the time, that spill was capped in a matter of a day.

There is also suspicion about the govt's slow response and then refusing to allow other countries to offer assistance in shutting off the oil as well as the cleanup. Something about union rules on foreign ships and crews operating in our territories. Totally inexcusable.

bitflipper

But gasoline/petrol? No big deal. I just never leave the house. The money I save goes into more important things, like musical gadgets.

I had a real eye opening experience regarding this.

I drove for a living. Around 40K per year. Since I've been out of work we've actually saved over $11k. We're not doing anything different, the only thing that is different is, I'm not putting my paycheck in to my gas tank, vehicle repairs, and lunch on the go anymore.


I've been out of work for a long time now, not for lack of trying either. I officially hit a year and I have until August then I run out of unemployment benefits. Which by the way, the 9% that we are currently at right now is more like 20%. Reason being, if you're not eligible for unemployment, you're not counted in the unemployed statistics so those who have already hit their limit and still haven't found a job are not counted. It's a lot worse than what is being reported.


Right when the gas started to go up a few years ago, I changed my ways of driving. I started driving by the tachometer and not the speedometer. I never went over 2000RPM's and took off from dead stops even slower. I coasted to stop signs rather than maintain speed to it then hit the brakes. I was getting 47MPG in my Honda Fit by driving conservatively. It's rated at 32 ~ 35.

Starise


How do you deal with those expensive prices?

I pay them. I have to drive to my jobs, I have to fuel my machines to do the work when I get there, so there really isn't a choice. I work longer hours and increase my prices where I can.

Its a GAS GAS GASsssssssss

bitflipper


Hmm, here I thought you were talking about Gear Acquisition Syndrome, something I could relate to.

I though it was about J.J.F.

I work in petroleum economics quite a bit in my career.  There are four very big issues driving up the price of gasoline.
1)  Oil prices are up because of China.  
http://omrpublic.iea.org/omrarchive/12may11full.pdf
Chinese demand in this report was up 10.4% year on year.  China is now the second largest importer of oil in the world.  Lets put this in perspective.  China's oil consumption from 2007 to 2011 is up 2MM Bpd to about 10MM Bpd.  It is virtually all the growth in world oil consumption.  

2) Oil prices are up because supply is not.  Historically the oil market was comfortably balanced when excess capacity was about 8% above where demand was.  Right now, it is about 4.5MM Bpd on consumption of basically 90MM Bpd.  That is less than 5%.  (look at page 21 of same report) The reason this is crucial is that the excess can cover things when something goes wrong.  Right now, Libya is not producing with the revolution going on.  Sometimes Venezuela doesn't produce, Nigeria is a constant problem...  Excess capacity can cover for problems when they arise.   5% is not enough to cover for problems in unstable areas.  Parenthetically, virtually every other country produces at capacity, except for those in OPEC.

3) Oil prices are up because the dollar is declining.  Oil is priced globally in US $.  However, we only consume part of the global supply of oil.  Much of the rest of the world pays for crude in their local currencies.  When the dollar devalues, oil prices go up for us, but not for everyone else.  




4) Gasoline is up because supplies are low.   Total gasoline inventories are low




But finished gasoline (ready to consume) is way way way low.  In 20+ years of working in this business, I have never seen them this low.  




Regulations are killing the refinery business.  


We can all point to things like SUVs, but the data doesn't support that.  This chart shows a huge increase in gasoline consumption (how the EIA defines it is product supplied).  It has been flat to down since the mid 2000s.  






I would be happy to answer things that I can get facts on.  I am afraid that rumors and innuendo are frequently false.  


However, there is no doubt that the current administration's policies are killing the US dollar.  
US Debt as % of GDP has passed 100% now - this chart is a year old.  The increase in debt since 08 is staggering. 



And that is killing the US Dollar




And remember, the dollar is being indexed against the Euro - which has its share of problems - and Japan - which has not seen economic growth in ages and now has a massive catastrophe on its hands.  


Look at Dollar vs Swiss Franc.


Want something more depressing?  
Unemployment is still horrible.  Housing prices are still falling.  There are few new jobs.  
Yet we have pumped trillions into the economy.  And it has not helped.  And we cannot afford to keep doing it.  


But what do I know?

End of thread?