| Author | Message | ||
     Buellifer |
A barrel of oil is now at $82.02... Average for a gallon of gas is about $3.50... Gas should have dropped more than ten cents right? The last time a barrel of oil cost around $82 was November of 2010... Cost was $81.98 A gallon of gas in November of 2010 cost $2.86... Now with inflation if you look at the numbers from this year to last year... Gas prices should be around average around $2.95 right now. I bet my life the second the barrel increases the slightest amount gas prices will increase just as much. I call it greed... This is the first time I have decided to vent my frustration with the greed of the oil companies controlling the gas prices and not decreasing them as much as they should. It sucks to spend damn near as much in gas each week as I do to feed my family. | ||
| Kilroy |
Hell - everyone was blaming it on Bush 3 years ago. I find it interesting that I hear absolutely NO blame directed toward our current leader, even though his policies on domestic oil production are incredibly more detrimental to our wallets than anything Bush ever did WRT energy. | ||
| Cityxslicker |
inelastic demand - cartel controlled supply. | ||
| Cowboy |
REG----REG----REG----REG----REG Remember this is Regulation nation. | ||
| Boogiman1981 |
more like speculation nation... so much of the daily use commodities are bought and sold a few times by the speculators before the companies that use them to make what we need actually get a hold of them. hard for it to be a 'free market' when we the market have no real say in what we pay for goods that are required for day to day life in our current societal model. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Quantitative Easing. You'll see a lot more of this. | ||
| Kenm123t |
OIL sold on the commodities market has a delivery date Gas you bought today was sold 3 months more or less ago. The lag is delivery and production. | ||
| Hybridmomentspass |
"Hell - everyone was blaming it on Bush 3 years ago. I find it interesting that I hear absolutely NO blame directed toward our current leader" This is a great point | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Maybe Obama made some Oil Company friends since he's been in Washington. I hear they buy the best lap dances. | ||
| Brumbear |
NO that will be $150.00 please | ||
| Wolfridgerider |
.... well explain this to me.... http://loureedmetallica.com/ | ||
| Cyclonedon |
maybe if Texas Governor Perry gets elected president, things might change! Better tax breaks for the oil companies, but the school system might not do so well under his leadership. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/26/texas-ref ineries-tax-refund_n_981764.html | ||
| Billyboy |
Boogiman has it correct. Speculation is a driving factor in oil and gas prices. That and the fact that OPEC is a cartel which is basically a group of oil producers that collude to set prices at the outset. What MAY help, although it would never happen in a million years is making commodities speculators have to "take delivery" of the product they are speculating on. It's an intellectual/gambling exercise to place bets on huge volumes of oil and petroleum products if you never touch the stuff you're trading. If these traders were required to take delivery of the product, warehouse it and deal with its disposal (sale), there might not be so many small players looking to make a quick buck and driving prices crazy. | ||
| Sifo |
Many of the "speculators" do take actual delivery of the products they buy. My step brother did this when he owned a heating oil business in Connecticut. Airlines do this in a big way. I'm sure many businesses do this on a regular basis to try to keep costs down. Even a speculator the never touches the product pays for moving and storing the product though. There's no free ride. | ||
| Johnnymceldoo |
I wonder if "big oil" supports higher energy prices via the new green religion? Nah, government would never get into cahoots with corporations to drive a new make believe industry of carbon credit money. That would be as silly as saying you would drive electricity prices up during a recession! | ||
| Whatever |
Bauman said she will get it down to $2 a gallon... I am voting for her !!! Then she can pick Mickey Mouse as her running mate and Pluto as secretary of state. | ||
| Chauly |
Ron Paul said that it's already down to $.10/gallon, provided you pay with a silver dime... | ||
| Boogiman1981 |
Sifo the airlines and other huge industries that actually use the finished product from the oil they buy is speculation yes it is not the damning speculation that is done by the rest that in reality are just gaming a system that was originally set up to help reduce and stabilize volatile commodities such as energy that is produced beyond our borders. it is however now being bastardized and abused to our expense. now we could actually tap our oil but why do that when we can use theirs? positioning ourselves to be the last or nearly the last ones with oil left in the ground definitely seems like a good idea to me. may not pan out all that well either who knows? care to speculate? lol | ||
| Sifo |
I believe that the market will dictate successful technologies in their own time frame. Oil prices will go up as demand increases. Eventually this will make competing technologies more affordable. Saving oil waiting for that to happen will make others rich nations while quite possibly leaving us with large reserves of a low value commodity when it's no longer viable as a large scale cheap power source. This is the time when oil is king. Sometime in the future that will no longer be true. | ||
| Oldog |
IN NC, there are almost 1.00$ taxes on the stuff, fed, state, local thinking of 9,9,9 | ||
| Cowboy |
Sifo you are on the right track by the time we use the vast reserves we have oil want be worth $10.00 a bbl.( might even have pay some one to depose of it) | ||
| Johnnymceldoo |
So youre voting for someone who is going to have mickey mouse as their vp and pluto as secretary of state? I think I can one up ya! Iam a coal miner in west virginia and Iam going to vote for the guy that wants to eliminate coal power as much as possible! Whats my prize? | ||
| Scooter808484 |
I bet my life the second the barrel increases the slightest amount gas prices will increase just as much. Not true. There is always lag. Refineries lose money as crude prices go up because the retail fuel prices are behind. They make money when crude prices fall. Also to consider, crude oil is traded on a pretty much global market, since it travels around on the oceans. Fuel markets are much more localized. You generally can't afford to ship gasoline around on ships, so local prices are affected by distribution. For example, there's no pipeline that crosses the rockies, so the West Coast US market is completely divorced from the rest of the US. One more thing, $82 a barrel is $1.95 a gallon for crude. Not all of the crude can get made into gasoline, and if you've ever been to a refinery, you'd know that it's a huge, expensive, complicated, dangerous manufacturing operation. Turning crude into gas for $1 a gallon doesn't leave a lot of money left over. Big Oil (and all of those countries over there that pump crude as well) make all their money on crude production, not refining. | ||
| Cowboy |
refining means massave employment means masave revenue in sales tax. OUR LEADERS JUST DONT UNDERSTAND how the system works. | ||
| Chauly |
Unfortunately, refining doesn't employ a lot of people after it's built. There may be 100 full-time jobs running a typical plant. Now, if you had to grind the oil by hand between two stones... :-) | ||
| Ted |
Gas is pretty much its own commodity now. if a refinery goes down, Gas is harder to get so it goes up. dont know about your area, but there hasnt been a refinery built in western Canada in 25years. | ||
| Sifo |
There's also the issue of switching blends in many areas every change of season. I'm not sure exactly when the switch happens in the fall, but it's got to be right around this time. | ||
| Scooter808484 |
Unfortunately, refining doesn't employ a lot of people after it's built. There may be 100 full-time jobs running a typical plant. Now, if you had to grind the oil by hand between two stones... :-) 800+ where I'm sitting and it's only medium size and one of the most modern in NA. Many many more at some of the larger refineries. Don't know where that 100 number came from, unless it was a tea kettle somewhere. | ||
| Chauly |
How many are Operators, and how many are Maintenance? And how much of the Maintenance is contracted out? | ||
| Boogiman1981 |
doesn't really matter if contracted out or not if there are 800 pairs of boots on the ground i will bet you my paycheck none of them are working for free. |
