You know, I’d ride the damn bike if the roads around here weren’t so congested!!
lowest price I’ve found lately: $3.69 a gallon. It won’t last.

I got 5 gallons for $20 this morning. $3.79 a gallon, seems rounded up by the pump doesn’t it?

I watched an editorial lastnight about how Brazil is not depended on oil, at all. They are 100% ethanol. Why the hell are we so far behind? Too busy incorporating farmland for shopping malls, perhaps?

Today: scooter!

I’d consider a motorcycle for the in-between times when i don’t have to haul equipment and material around but I’ve done my time on a bike. To the point where I felt like I was pushing my luck.

Why should I endanger my life because some rich fucks can’t do with a few hundred million less in their bank accounts?

Laura, as soon as I read your rain comment I swear a few huge drops fell! I jumped up and ran to the window because I couldn’t place the sound… LOL! But it’s over…

I was SO ashamed of President Bush, asking SA to up their production of oil [or release more] when we’ve got deposits all over OUR country that we aren’t drilling. The oil in Alaska’s north shore is said to be enough to end our dependence on foreign oil for 200 years.
C’mon, why can’t we overwhelm the crunchy granola types and drill in our own country instead of going begging? It’s demeaning!!!

Like Abbadon, Arthur and I have pushed our luck enough on bikes… it was fun while it lasted, though…

“There’s no winner but foreign oil companies and our own fatcats.”

True, Lee Ann…

I so loved those cartoons. Thank you.
Really enjoyed the fuel gauge with the Empty/Full fuel indicators for the tank and the wallet. Very clever.
Cheers, Thea

Don’t sweat it, Thea! Glad you came by!

Those cartoons are FUNNY! The gas prices?? Not so much…

I wish the oil companies were getting rich. Not so much. The profit margin to the oil compaies is much small than many other industries. Last I saw it was 8.1 percent. Oddly that profit margin stays about the same no matter the price at the pump. Well, it stands to reason, really. If the Shell Oil Company decides to try for twelve percent while Exxon stays at 8.1, Shell would make zero percent.
While I’ve never worked in the oil industry my home State is heavily involved in it. I find it amusing how everyone is crying about how much it hurts, when crude was under ten bucks a barrel and the bottom was out of the economy in the oil patch I don’t recall folks busting their heinies to help.

Being a capitalist, I would not want to take profits from the oil companies. Rather, I’d like to strip some of the taxes off the price of a gallon of gas. Taxes are killing us…

DRILL! is the keyword.

Yeah, my buying a prius isn’t going to happen.

Who sets the price of crude across the world?

The world wide price of oil is basically an auction. I drill a tankerful of crude and ship it to the port and “advertise” that it’s for sale. Then everybody and their mother in law bids on it. The highest bidder wins.

It’s more complicated than that, actually. The drilling company has contracts called oil futures. This is how they finance their work. The owner of those futures contracts will either go through the who refiner to gas tank business or will sell that contract, without ever taking possession of the oil. At any rate everyone in the world, including me, if I had the money, could buy the oil.

The futures traders are setting the price, ever upwards. At some point the price will go down, either when we drill for more oil or enough people stop paying those prices. At that point the futures traders will lose their shirts. Say I buy a hundred thousand barrels of oil at todays price, about $123.00 per barrel. Now, three months from now (or whatever term is specified) if the price is $124.000 I’ve made a hundred grand and I reinvest my original stake plus part of the aftertax profit and buy the dogs big bones. If the price goes down, though, I’m in trouble. The price per barrel used to go up and down by pennies per barrel and fortunes were made and lost daily.

Now we have other players in on the bidding. China and India never played the game, they do now. More, China is subsidising their oil and gas purchases with the billions we consumers are sending to them.

It’s a vicious circle. If we have ten people bidding for a hundred of the same items you can bet that the price will be very low. Ten people bidding for ten items, the price rises. Ten people bidding on five items and the price is what we see at the pumps. It isn’t getting any better, either. Well, not until Al Gore is hanging from a lamp post.

One link

From; http://www.sibelle.info/oped15.htm
“The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that if the green light is given it would take 7 to 12 years to sell leases, do permitting, environmental reviews, etc. and that initial production could start in 2010 at the earliest. Assuming an optimistic scenario in which the mean expected technically recoverable oil in the entire coastal plain (not just the 1002 area) - 10.3 billion barrels - could be completely recovered (i.e. ignoring market pricing) the EIA estimates production of 600 million barrels a year. In comparison, US daily consumption is 18.5 million barrels a day, or 6,752 million barrels a year. Thus in this scenario ANWR, once on tap, would provide less than 9% of US annual usage (given that usage is trending upward..). Assuming a less positive scenario, at a market price of $24/barrel the mean estimated commercially recoverable oil is 5.2 billion barrels, and since the oil is in multiple plays rather than one large play the costs of exploting the oil will be higher. ”
Disregard the per/barrel prices and note the percentage of US usgae it can replace.

ANWR will help and I’m not against drilling there but one needs to be made aware of the reality of ANWR oil.
It is not the be all end all of the dependance on foreign oil. At best it might reduce the barrel price by 1.8%

Then some people are lying out their asses.

I don’t know if they’re lying or just not telling the whole truth.
I looked at a lot of sites that claim ANWR can do miraculous things and not one ever showed any math. Only charts with no substantiated information.
If one does the math.
US daily consumption 20.8MM bbls/day(2005 numbers, probably higher now)
Best estimates for ANWR production(from the API who really do want to drill there) 1.64MM bbls/day
That is only 7.8% of our total daily requirements.

Couple things, as I was talking to a friend about this.

We were reaching the same conclusions as Peter. the problem is not supply VS, Demand, it’s the price being driven up by futures traders. And a lack of wthics.

For my money, this is one area that government DOES need to step in, and pronto. There is no reason for futures traders to be involved, IMHO. And since the price of oil will severely impact EVERYONE and EVERY aspect of our lives, the unethical trading needs to be taken out of the equation. Now, concerning domestic production - we can’t JUST rely on ANWR. We also have to look at more nuclear plants and increased offshore drilling. The increased nuclear waste could be dumped in Berkeley for all I care.

Problem solved. When is the Gore hanging party?

I don’t give a rat’s ass how much they make. i want to know why we’re subject to the predatory practices of traders for a commodity that we all rely on so heavily. We could all buy Priuses tomorrow and that isn’t going to amount to a piss in a bucket to alleviate the problem.,