I've never given electric heat a serious thought or analysis, honestly. I know electric heat is generally very expensive. Heat pumps are electric and I believe reasonably efficient. They are popular in places where it doesn't get too cold and heating requirements are not very high (like my Mom's place in South Carolina). They are part of the central air system so they are cheap to add-on and you don't have to run expensive copper plumbing for hot-water radiant heat. In the NE where it gets damn cold at times, you need more BTUs, and radiant heat is best IMHO.

Agree still not cheap, but 25% reduction in price is a material savings. I'll take it.

saudi arabia will not be cutting production.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/business/energy-environment/opec-saudi-arabia-oil-production-price.html?_r=0

LOL! now opec is crying because their ability to create extortionary pricing has a chink in it:

Gulf oil exporters blame non-OPEC producers for glut - MarketWatch

because, you know, it is the USA's fault that they cannot continue their forced scarcity of an abundant resource. this is just like debeers moaning over canada's diamond production....

I find this issue to be an example of how the media can make a story out of anything :

Old story: High oil prices are destroying our economy

New story: Low oil prices are destroying our economy

-Sent from my Galaxy s5 using Tapatalk

nick, a lot of truth in that post. however, it is my opinion that the former is reality. high oil prices drive up the cost of everything. higher prices mean less spending, which is exactly what is happening with oil supply and demand, to an extent. oil (gasoline) got expensive and the consumer responded by buying less and less.

Halliburton closing shop and pulling out of our market place.... I am sure some will cheer... You know...big oil bad..fracking even worse..G Bush's buddys have enough dirty money..bla bla bla..The real truth is this is a blow to our economy, lots of guys losing well paying jobs right now. This doesn't hold good for my short term future earnings....:(

I have some how managed to retain my job with big red. A lot of my coworkers haven't been as lucky.

This sucks.

Its hitting kinda hard now. Found out that they want us to take a week off unpaid next month. ANd of course our state budget will see a shortfall of 1.6 billion, due to oil. So now everyone in Louisiana that benefits from education and health care are now effected. Real estate is now beginning to slow in the state. And with the strike at 2 of the refineries we have, prices at the pump are climbing. No the sky isn't falling but this drop happened so fast with not much time to prepare.

We have a big agricultural base here as well. The Halliburton spokesman at the press conference put it this way (paraphrased) This market we are in right now would be equivalent to everyone here only being to harvest half their crop after having the expenses of planting and tending the full crop. Ya sometimes gotta put things into terms the locals can visualize.
Glad to hear you guys are hanging in there....I am as well but see some belt tightening in my near future.....

Low oil prices def effect my business. As a commercial mortgage broker I do deals across Canada. In 2013-2014 about 75% of my deals were in or involved security in Alberta. It used to be the economic engine of Canada.

Alberta has an oil dependant economy and the low prices render refining/exploration/capital projects cost prohibitive. At $100/BBL there is decent margin in the business. At $50, not so much. Many companies are curtailing activities there.

Consequently lenders are worried about a projects ability to pay and the liquidity of the security should they have to foreclose. We have a couple of deals in the shop that would have been easily funded when oil was $100.

Like every business it is cyclical so it's only a matter of time that Alberta comes roaring back.

At least gasoline is back up to 95cents per liter.

Can't wait to see what it goes to when oil prices rise.

The big rollers will not have too wait long.
Its headed North.

No kiddng...
What a fricking scam...

I work in oil and gas - been working on a big number over the last 12 months designing a new terminal that allows the import of ethane to Scotland from the USA.
Project I am working on should start to tail off in the next 3-4 weeks.
Once finished - I'm expecting to be on gardening leave for the rest of the year.
The market has just dried up completely with no new projects being announced - just repair orders being approved.
These things happen in this business - seven year cycles of boom and bust.

Drepessing as **** here, layoffs in the thousands, lots of companies implenting salary cuts throughout the company, more days off without pay. Dumping contractors, colusion in the indusrty to ask all vendors to cut their rates or costs by as much as 30%.

I had my meeting on Friday and agreed to a 9% reduction to my rate. Dividends cut to the bone, major and minor projects cut or full stop. This will have big, long term affects, a lot different that the other 3-5 oil panics over the last 20 years.

Weekly meetings with the big companies trying to figure not just how to weather the storm, but to stay in business. I'm not sure how many of the ancilary companies and industries will survive.

On a positve note we may have a new client - a new Lambourghini dealership opening here :)

All good for me, no oil stocks and no way connected to the oil business. I'm really thinkin' about a big ass car with a V8 again. http://ehealthwoman.com/apple/images/38.gifhttp://ehealthwoman.com/apple/images/49.gif

Crude prices are still below $50/bbl, but carb B wholesale spot price has jumped from a low of $1.29 in January, to $2.43 today.
Why the huge jump?
Two things:

exxonmobil's FCC blew up and will be down for quite a while. That unit produces allot of gasoline.

The cananananandian running the united steel worker's union went for a total power play and called a national strike. It's cut production on several plants and shut one refinery in the bay area down completely.
That along with as few others performing manditory maintnenance, has cut the gasoline supply to the point where we gotta import it. That makes it really expensive.

Wholesale spot price for CARB B unleaded fell 9 cents/gal overnight, looks like the spike is correcting.
If it is, the price at the pumps should stabilize and start trending downward again for a while. Only slower this time.
We'll see.

$1.32 per litre here this a.m. Also, better than 45% of that is taxes!

Awesome. The monkeys in the provincial capital decided an increase in gas taxes is needed to help fix forty years of their incompetence.