Yep, it's really bad!

[widebody911]

Originally posted by Serge914
Why buy apples that comes from the other side of the country? Why buy computers that comes from the other side of the planet ?

Well, when you live in a country that doesn't physically make the computers, and the apple orchards were bulldozed to build strip malls and tract homes...

[rob justice]

Just filled the tank - works out at $6.86 per gallon - superb!!!!!
Someone is coining it in over here.

[artplumber]

Red,
Do you have the graphic for petroleum co profits? They keep on making record profits, right?

And the speculators (read investors), raise the price based on fear rather than actual changes in supply/demand. .

[artplumber]

Originally posted by widebody911
Well, when you live in a country that doesn't physically make the computers, and the apple orchards were bulldozed to build strip malls and tract homes...

The only way to stop this is to stop people having babies. Is this the next idea (don't forget what it would do to other parts of life)?

[Yellowbird RS]

We pay 3.20 per Gallon here in MX

[Rich76_911s]

Artplumber, I agree. Everyone is talking about the bubble in housing prices. How are they missing the bubble being built into oil/gas prices. I've read an article from one economist that thought oil was overpriced by 40%. China just said they are not going to add to their reserves (too expensive), and we just added more to our oil reserves today but crude is up a dollar. Demand has increased but the price of crude has outpaced the demand increase. We'll see what happens hopefully it'll come down soon, but probably not.

[legion]

I always thought the current bottleneck was refiner capacity, not crude output.

[LeRoux Strydom]

Just for comparison, in SA we pay $2.16/US Gallon at today's exchange rate. This is for 97 octane at the coast, 93 inland. Indeed, 'tis all taxes upon taxes.

Le Roux

[arcsine]

There will be no oil bubble. Best guesses are that existing reserves are good for 25-50 years. OPEC and the oil companies and are doing their best to make what they can when they can. We should start getting ready for a world where oil supply is THE socio-economic-political power that will be sought after and fought over in ways we have never seen.

[techweenie]

Originally posted by arcsine
There will be no oil bubble. Best guesses are that existing reserves are good for 25-50 years. OPEC and the oil companies and are doing their best to make what they can when they can. We should start getting ready for a world where oil supply is THE socio-economic-political power that will be sought after and fought over in ways we have never seen.

I believe that is the explanation for a lot of what's happened in the past 5 years. Personally, I wish the politicians had sufficient faith in our intelligence to simply tell us outright that a tractable and docile Afghanistan and Iraq were going to help us extract more/cheaper oil from the middle east. Oil is a strategic commodity worth fighting for.

[red-beard]

Afghanistan doesn't have any oil...

CIA World Fact book:

Oil - production:
0 bbl/day (2001 est.)
Oil - consumption:
3,500 bbl/day (2001 est.)
Oil - exports:
NA
Oil - imports:
NA
Oil - proved reserves:
0 bbl (1 January 2002)

[red-beard]

http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/margins/



Last Years Prices



And before _anyone_ states otherwise, this is the State of California's estimates.

It sure looks like the crude oil prices

[KNS]

Originally posted by techweenie
I believe that is the explanation for a lot of what's happened in the past 5 years. Personally, I wish the politicians had sufficient faith in our intelligence to simply tell us outright that a tractable and docile Afghanistan and Iraq were going to help us extract more/cheaper oil from the middle east. Oil is a strategic commodity worth fighting for.

Three quaters of a million people died in Rwanda in the 1990s, some estimates are closer to one million. Not one US soldier set foot there. Now if they had some oil reserves we could have saved those people.

[artplumber]

Red,
As far as I understand the table, the profits and refining costs are rolled into a single category. They show at latest estimates one of the highest amounts among all of the values in the table. Recalling numerous "record profit" stories, are you suggesting that the records are due to volume sold? If this is the case, most industries usually see diminshing profits on increased volume - ie the refining costs+profit should be going down, but are being propped up artificially.

The funny thing about the commodities markets are just how herd-minded they are. "The hurricanes are going to disrupt supply" - didn't happen. "The summer supply is going to be low" - didn't happen. Now something else... I guess that's not that funny, just means that there's a bunch of scare-tactics folks making me pay more for gas without a demand/supply inequity.

[M.D. Holloway]

Originally posted by legion
I always thought the current bottleneck was refiner capacity, not crude output.

been to plenty of refineries in this country - none are at full cap, but when you hear the public relations people talk you would swear that they are running and gunning to meet demand. Thats just not the case.

[Rich76_911s]

Originally posted by legion
I always thought the current bottleneck was refiner capacity, not crude output.

I have heard that too. But I think up until the last couple weeks our reserves of gasoline have been 5% higher than they were last year.

Red beard thanks for the great resource on the department of energy.

Arcsine the fact that oil reserves will be used up in 25 to 50 years is not something that is new from last year in fact they have been saying it for more than 25 years. Which makes a 100% increase in price over the past year due to that reason unrealistic. Maybe everyone just decided that they really mean it this time, I don't know that could be the reason. I'm just trying to rationalize what makes something double in value in a year. Typically it is demand vs. supply and we have more crude in the US right now than we did last year. So supply has not decreased nor has it been significantly outpaced by demand. Maybe there is a chance that hedge funds have gone at it again and driven up the price of something, just listen to the way they talk about oil stocks never going down again rah rah rah. To me it sounds a lot like the Internet stocks of a couple years ago. I agree that time is ticking but I can only hope that human ingenuity takes precedence over more wars for the stuff.

Anyone want to start a company converting 911's and muscle cars to electric power or alternative fuels?

[artplumber]

It's probably going to get worse... Unocal shareholders just approved takeover by Chevron.

[legion]

I love that the choices there were be taken over by a Chinese Government-Controlled company, or another U.S. oil company.

The thing that confuses me is this. Standard Oil got split up in certain-sized chunks, presumably to prevent any chunk from dominating the market. Yet, 100 years later, we allow all of the chunks to merge back together?

[artplumber]

Preachin' to da choir brudda!

[legion]

Seems like big business is a lot like my lillies. Every so often, they have to be broken up and separated.