Chit Chat Thread for the week of June 16th 2008

Depends on what "reasonable" means. Prices have not peaked yet. Oil producers have trouble producing more. The big(gest) consumers of oil are just "starting" (China, India soon,). Speculators are still having a field day betting on oil. At this stage, prices are beyond the control of oil producers, much as it was beyond them when oil prices stood at less than $10 per barrel in the mid-80s.

$3.699 - Can't believe I feel good about THAT. Grrrr....

Trouble producing?

I remember in the mid 1970's waiting in line for gas, and only allowed 8 Gallons of gas if the station had any at all.
Turns out there was plenty, but the gas producers wanted something, The Alaska Pipeline. Once the Pipeline was allowed the gas shortage stopped and then there was plenty and the lines diminished.

Now it's the environmentalists taking on the gasoline distillers and until the distillers get what they want. fuel will stay at a premium even though they will be getting oil from Iraq.

Bob

Here I am, your friendly environmentalist. Let me say first that I'm all for drilling oil---in Iraq. For the 13 billion dollars we are spending there each month, we should be getting their oil for no additional cost.

As for drilling offshore the U.S.: do you really think the oil companies want to increase supply and lower the price? Would it surprise you to know that they like the price just fine? Higher prices would please them even more. They already have 17,000 leases offshore of Texas and Louisiana and they are drilling on only 20% of those. So why do they want more? They want to tie up ocean reserves for supply in 20 years or more when their other supply is dwindling and they can get $300 or $400 per barrel.

It has nothing to do with increasing supply and lowering the price now. The only reason oil companies and their political buddies bring it up now is because the public is mad and it may be possible to get other politicians to go along with it. Opportunity is the lifeblood of opportunists.

The only things that will lower the price of oil is conservation and alternative sources like biofuels and fuel cells. In other words, competition and reduced use of petroleum.

is Not driven by supply or demand...

It's commodity traders.

Anyone who thinks oil companies like the high price of crude right now is naive. It's artificially high - and they don't like it a bit. The oil market is in a bubble, and it will pop one of these days, and then there will be calls to have the government, or some other company - bail these speculative traders out of the fix they put themselves in. An Oil version of the Bear-Stearns collapse...

That said, there really is no reason we can't develop domestic oil supplies while developing true replacements for oil and transitioning the economy to that...the only thing stopping us from using our own resources is Politicians under the influence ($$$) of environmentalists and dare I say it - big government socialist-types who want to use energy, and energy policy as a means of control.

Sorry I got political...I don't come here to read rants like this let alone write them....

We need more time.

That is why I'm voting for the Barr, he seems the only one that knows what is going on.

True, but the falling value of U.S. dollar isn't helping any.

My kids are demanding their allowances in Canadian dollars, eh?

We don't need more oil, there is plenty. Countries like KUWAIT forgetting what the military coalition did for them, yet they continue to bend us over he Barrel literally. Just seems ungrateful to me.
Maybe we should have let Saddam have his way with the Kuwaitis, then we would control that oil as well, and have more oil then the Saudi's.

Again I say, trade a barrel of wheat for a barrel of oil, since you can't eat oil, and they can't grow anything in sand.

For those interested, read this:
http://tinyurl.com/4k2nfc

Nice to see the Big Green back on top. 

Has anyone noticed that MM changed her picture since she got back. Nice picture MM hope you enjoyed your time away from uw. Good to have you back. Should have said something sooner about the picture just wasn't thinking.

I sure hope everyone is sending emails or letters to our congressman and senators about lifting the ban for drilling off shore.Since we are the leaders in food production we need to charge 50 dollars for a can of corn to the foreign countries that supply oil to us at such high prices.

If I was CEO of a major oil company and I was making, oh say, $200 million a year (Exxon-Mobil) and my income was directly tied to sales, I'd be pretty happy right about now.

What gets me is that this great nation can be energy independent if it wanted to be but it's driven by $$$ instead of common sense. If Brazil and Argentina can do it, why can't we? We're wealthier and technically superior.

Tonight and Sunday at 8 and 9 PM, CNN will air, "YOU'VE BEEN WARNED: Out of Gas". A lot can be learned by these countries that chose to be energy dependent instead of choosing what is more profitable. We have an abundance of natural gas, hydrogen (H2O), solar, wind energy and coal. But why should give up my $200 million a year paycheck to pursue that. Again, just a thought.

If I was CEO of a major oil company and I was making, oh say, $200 million a year (Exxon-Mobil) and my income was directly tied to sales, I'd be pretty happy right about now.

What gets me is that this great nation can be energy independent if it wanted to be but it's driven by $$$ instead of common sense. If Brazil and Argentina can do it, why can't we? We're wealthier and technologically superior.

Tonight and Sunday at 8 and 9 PM, CNN will air, "YOU'VE BEEN WARNED: Out of Gas". A lot can be learned by these countries that chose to be energy independent instead of choosing what is more profitable. We have an abundance of natural gas, hydrogen (H2O), solar, wind energy and coal. But why should I give up my $200 million a year paycheck to pursue that. Again, just a thought.

I agree that there is speculation. But everytime the oil industry executives are on Capitol Hill to explain the high prices, they always claim supply-demand pressures, never speculation. Why do you think that is? Maybe because they want us to believe that the free market justifies the price that they like.

These dog and pony shows happen about twice a year whenever the public is angry about oil prices. They are politicians' way of showing us that they are on the job doing something about it. Of course, nothing ever comes from it. The oil lobby is big, rich, and contributes generously to political campaigns. The environmental lobby is a mere flea compared to the powerful bull of the oil lobby.

If we get away from oil as THE major source of energy, then we wouldn't care about the oil speculators and their oil futures affecting the price of crude. That's all I'm saying.

If I'm making a ton of money off crude (thanks to the speculators and the fact that I haven't built a new refinery in 30 years) what's my incentive to switch to an alternative?

Yes, write to your Congressmen to put the government on the side of alternate energy development, not offshore drilling. Big oil has no competition now. We don't want more of it and more dependence on it.

We should make the most of what we have while we transition to something other than oil. Politicians and enviro-wackos are keeping that from happening.

Using words like wacko doesn't contribute to a useful discussion. It just shows a closed mind. A closed mind doesn't recognize that politicians have been in the pocket of big oil for over 50 years. Greed and bought politicians are the reasons we are in this fix.

also don't recognize that enviro-extremists have crippled the oil industry, keeping it from developing and refining domestic sources of crude. And that the bought & paid for politicians most responsible for voting against each and every attempt to develop domestic energy production are the ones bought by enviro-extremists, not evil big oil.

Yes, we need to get off oil...but we have to have something to use until we can.

I remind you that big oil is only drilling on 20% of the leases they have offshore Louisiana and Texas. When they testify on Capitol Hill, they never claim that they can lower their prices with some new anti-environmental legislation. They like things just the way they are. Your "crippled" oil industry has accumulated the biggest profits in corporate history and we are paying for it because we have no choices.

Oil and the automobile lobbies opposed slowly increasing the fuel efficiency standards for decades, giving us the era of the SUV. If the environmental lobby was as powerful as you claim, that wouldn't have happened. The source of environmental protections is not a powerful lobby. For once it is the voters, particularly those in California, Florida, and along the east coast. The populations there are overwhelming opposed to offshore drilling. Even Jeb Bush, when he was Florida's governor, was opposed to it. And Governor Crist was opposed to it until it occurred to him that he might become McCain's vice-president, so now he is neutral on the question. The oil industry's numerous oil spills and pollution is the basis for voters opposing drilling, not an environmental lobby passing money out to politicians.

And why is that?

Regulation passed by politicians in the pocket of the enviro lobby...

Lawsuits from whom?

Why have no refineries been built in the past 30+ years?

Big oil ain't the only villain in the play...

I wanted to take a minute to say thanks to all of the folks who spend their time compiling these lists for the rest of us.

The answer to your first question is because they are happy with things the way they are, as I have been saying. They don't want to produce more oil and lower the price. High price=good for them, low price=bad for them. Simple. There are no regulations preventing them from drilling on all their leases in the Gulf. Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi are the only states in the country where the majority of people don't mind oil rigs offshore and refineries next door. Refineries cost about a billion dollars and the oil companies have concluded that more of them would hurt their bottom line. They can control supply best in the U.S. by limiting refinery capacity. Enron played a similar game with power generation.

Oil companies want more offshore leases so they'll have something to sell in 30 years at $400 per barrel. There is no chance that it would lower oil prices now as almost everyone agrees.

The villains are the oil companies and us, the oil addicts, who need it at any price. Oil companies are satisfying a need and they are taking as much profit from it as they can get. There are strong similarities to the cigarette companies, including the rise of new markets in China and India.

Did you ever consider that the big oil is not going away, even if the oil needs were to dry up tomorrow!
The distribution network is already in place, We call them gas stations and they could be easily converted to sell hydrogen, peanuts or electricity or whatever energy source technology comes up with. You can bet Big Oil or Big Nuts will still bend us over the barrel even if their selling peanuts.

But we can always hope for more alternate sources and more players. Competition is what works best. Maybe McDonalds or Pep Boys will have a drive-thru for hydrogen. As Yogi Bera said, "it's hard to predict, especially anything that happens in the future".

Check out the back classified pages in some of the trashier magazines.

You will be able to double your mileage and help the environment...

I wish....

Jqua,
since you wished, read this!

http://www.runyourcarwithwater.com/?hop=beer1981

Bob

I have an uncle, whose 3rd cousin on his wife's side knows a mechanic who installed a system almost identical to that and he said it worked like a charm. He'd have never believed it if he hadn't sent in his $200 dollars and got it and tried it....

lol

By any chance does he work for the company and wants you to also buy it and give it a try?

What happens if we don't find any alternatives to oil for 20 years? We would use more than we produce. What would happen then.

Then we would have $20 per gallon gas. But we'd also have a lot of people making biofuels, some in their backyards. Brazil would like to sell us cheap biofuel from sugar cane, but the U.S. puts a 54 cent/gallon tariff on it to protect U.S. farmers and ethanol producers. Now even that tariff may not be enough to keep it from being imported.

EXCELLENT! Thanks!

my first post - nice to meet U'ALL

I recently purchased my NUVI 760 and made a trip to visit relatives in the Vancouver Canada area. I had heard about Geocaching and was telling my relatives about it when they said they would like to try it out.

Never having used an auto varity type of gps for this we searched and found several caches or treasurers as the kids would call them, before I discoverd I could use the satelite screen to get a better fix on my location.

This worked well an we discovered 7 treasurers while we were there.

Lost of fun and available almost everwhere. If you haven't tried Geocaching and like being outdoors I highly recommend it. Go to www.geocaching.com for more info...

Welcome to POI Factory! I think you'll find a lot of great informaton and tips on this site... I have.