Gas? Seriously?

[mcjeff215]

The one barrier oil companies/speculators have on raising prices is that if they raise them too much, people will stop using their product. This has to come from finding alternate means of travel (car pooling, bikes, etc...) or new technologies (hybrids or alternate sources of power). The fact that people are going so nuts about fuel prices is a good thing, it will force them to use less of it and in turn make costs go down.

 

In the mean time, blaming the oil companies for making a profit is kind of absurd.

 

While yes, the high prices suck, I'm more amazed at the dimwits that are lining up....

[Cynical]

I know, this is F'n Bullsh.. I passed a gas station (here in Charlotte) this morning and gas was 3.69. In the afternoon it was 4.29. Long lines everywhere. I paid $4.09 close to my house and just had to wait for 1 person in front of me. The thing that gets me is that the gas has already been paid for, so the stations are just gauging. Crude oil has not been lower since April. When a barrel of oil goes UP, gas prices go UP. But when oil goes DOWN, the price of gas doesn't respond at the same rate!!! THIS IS F"N BULLSH... The american public is literally being "bent over the barrel" and something has to be done about it. Speculators raise the price of oil based on disruptions of supply so the price increases YET DISRUPTIONS IN THE SUPPLY NEVER OCCUR. More Bull .

The other problem which SHOULD BE NONEXISTANT is refining capacity. We haven't built a refinery in this country in 30 years. We know we need them, but all of the tree huggers insist "not in my backyard". On a daily basis,we do not refine enough crude oil into gasoline to meet that 1 days supply in this country. We actually import 15 million barrels of gasoline a day to meet our demand. I think that is outrageous for a supposed 1st world superpower. (1)Let's build some refineries, (2)drill for oil here, (3)build more nuclear power plants, (4)find a way to reduce our dependency on oil, AND STOP (5)ALLOWING BIG OIL TO us in the !!!

 

Country has "x" amount of resources.

 

We do 1 and 2, we will never do 4, and you might as well get used to 5.

 

Instead of doing 1 and 2, let's bite the bullet now, and do 3 and 4. Then 5 will be a rarity.

[justnzane]

While yes, the high prices suck, I'm more amazed at the dimwits that are lining up....

I went to pick up a 6 pack of Guinness on my way to a BYOB party tonite and it was rediculous to see so many cars lined up. I had a B word of a time trying to get to the register to have the Hindu dude to ring me out

[The Warden]

So, I just waited in line 10 minutes to get gas. The two guys in front of me almost got into a fight over who was there first. Every station I passed was backed up... and I paid 30 cents more than I did last time I filled up.

 

Seriously... what the hell? Are we going to do this every damn time a hurricane shows up? Had the same gas lines when Katrina hit the gulf.

 

 

Go at 6 - 7 am in the morning - no line

 

My wife just got back from Norway - rental cars are $100 a day and gas at over $10/gal (convetred from litres) - careful what you wish for

[The Warden]

Thank the speculators.

 

 

Just as many speculators are betting "up" as "down" - a whirly storm in the Gulf is just a betting excuse.

 

Katrina did not bring the nation to a standstill - and IKE won't either

 

How about drilling off Santa Barbara - where those storms don't seem to occur ?

 

The crude oil just seeps out of the fractured sea bed there - today like yesteryear

[Tcali]

The one barrier oil companies/speculators have on raising prices is that if they raise them too much, people will stop using their product. This has to come from finding alternate means of travel (car pooling, bikes, etc...) or new technologies (hybrids or alternate sources of power). The fact that people are going so nuts about fuel prices is a good thing, it will force them to use less of it and in turn make costs go down.

 

In the mean time, blaming the oil companies for making a profit is kind of absurd.

yeah lets windfall tax them.........that'll help the mostly workaday guys who own most of the oil co. stock in their 401Ks

[Tcali]

Just as many speculators are betting "up" as "down" - a whirly storm in the Gulf is just a betting excuse.

 

Katrina did not bring the nation to a standstill - and IKE won't either

 

How about drilling off Santa Barbara - where those storms don't seem to occur ?

 

The crude oil just seeps out of the fractured sea bed there - today like yesteryear

very true

[/dev/null]

yeah lets windfall tax them.........that'll help the mostly workaday guys who own most of the oil co. stock in their 401Ks

 

Yeah that'll really stick it to those greedy oil execs

[PromoTheRobot]

And for those so hot for off-shore drilling, answer me this question: What guarantees do we Americans have that the oil drilled from our shores won't be sold to China or India? After all it's a free market. You can't tell Mobil/Exxon where or who to sell to. My issue is not so much environmental, but that we are literally giving away oil that belongs to us to companies that will gladly sell it back to us at obscene profits.

 

PTR

[GG]

Houston area is home to the largest concentration of refinery capacity in the US. The spike is the reaction of the gas stations to the potential that supplies will run out next week, if the refineries are massively hit and have to be taken off line.

 

What's worse, paying $0.60 more now or not having gas next week. There's a possibility that the refineries will come out unscathed. But who was willing to take that chance on Friday, before the storm hit?

[Fingon]

The biggest refinery in the US is right in the Houston area.

[Marv's Neighbor]

Ike is going to mess up Houston/Galveston, which is where most oil seems to be refined. This is gonna hurt, brothers and sisters!

I lived in that sh*t-hole in 83 when ALICIA hit. It was a CAT 5 and I don't recall any evacuations, FEMA or other hysteria at that time.

 

The OIL Companies do evacuate the platforms mostly because it is impossible to work in Hurricane conditions. I expect all the platform workers to be back at it by Monday. Most of the refineries are on the E side of Houston. Aside from some possible flooding there's really not a lot that can be damaged by wind and rain.

 

No doubt the USA does need more refining capacity. Hopefully that will start to happen soon.

[Tux of Borg]

I'm glad i live within walking distance of the beach.

[mcjeff215]

Son of a... so this AM I was taking my daughter to ice skating lessons and wouldn't you know it? All of the gas stations around here are out of the regular stuff, so I got to put a few gallons of $4.60 into my car. The two or three that had regular still had the damn lines out into the streets.

[mtdoak]

My poker dealer was saying that gas was going up to $6 a gallon by monday. Of course, everyone at the table freaked, I tried to explain that no natural disaster could drive the price up 50%, the dealer insisted it was already 5.29 in Michigan, he knew a guy who knew a guy.

 

Sigh

[Dan]

I know, this is F'n Bullsh.. I passed a gas station (here in Charlotte) this morning and gas was 3.69. In the afternoon it was 4.29. Long lines everywhere. I paid $4.09 close to my house and just had to wait for 1 person in front of me. The thing that gets me is that the gas has already been paid for, so the stations are just gauging. Crude oil has not been lower since April. When a barrel of oil goes UP, gas prices go UP. But when oil goes DOWN, the price of gas doesn't respond at the same rate!!! THIS IS F"N BULLSH... The american public is literally being "bent over the barrel" and something has to be done about it. Speculators raise the price of oil based on disruptions of supply so the price increases YET DISRUPTIONS IN THE SUPPLY NEVER OCCUR. More Bull .

The other problem which SHOULD BE NONEXISTANT is refining capacity. We haven't built a refinery in this country in 30 years. We know we need them, but all of the tree huggers insist "not in my backyard". On a daily basis,we do not refine enough crude oil into gasoline to meet that 1 days supply in this country. We actually import 15 million barrels of gasoline a day to meet our demand. I think that is outrageous for a supposed 1st world superpower. Let's build some refineries, drill for oil here, build more nuclear power plants, find a way to reduce our dependency on oil, AND STOP ALLOWING BIG OIL TO us in the !!!

If the Federal Government got all the profit from the refined gas at that new refinery, then I'd be all for the Federal Government building a new refinery. If an oil company that's making billions of dollars in profits each year needs a new refinery so badly, why don't they just go and build one? I guess I just don't understand why my tax dollars should go toward building a refinery that some oil company is going to then charge me an arm and a leg for the gas from that refinery.

 

The problem with high gas prices is that we depend entirely too much on gas (and oil). If people want to remove the pressures of high gas, the solution is not building new refineries or finding more oil. It's finding a viable alternative to an oil-powered society. Drilling more oil and/or refining more gas just allows the the big oil guys to continue their strangle hold on this country.

 

But I digress, back to my original point, why do we want less government involvement in our lives, but we demand the government to build refineries allow oil companies to drill? Seems like we don't want the government to help small guys, but we have no problem with the government helping the big guys.

[mcjeff215]

My poker dealer was saying that gas was going up to $6 a gallon by monday. Of course, everyone at the table freaked, I tried to explain that no natural disaster could drive the price up 50%, the dealer insisted it was already 5.29 in Michigan, he knew a guy who knew a guy.

 

Sigh

 

 

Yeah, one of my wife's idiot friends sent her a text message last night... something to the tune of "Get out there and fill your tank! They're saying $6.00 by Monday!" My sanity is worth the extra $6.00 I'll pay per fill up next Tuesday.

 

They. Who are they? They are, like someone else said, someone who heard that someone else might have seen that perhaps someone heard.... bah. Iiiiiiijiots.

[The_Philster]

My poker dealer was saying that gas was going up to $6 a gallon by monday. Of course, everyone at the table freaked, I tried to explain that no natural disaster could drive the price up 50%, the dealer insisted it was already 5.29 in Michigan, he knew a guy who knew a guy.

 

Sigh

it goes up like that, I see riots breaking out all over. Oil companies have no need to raise their prices the way they have the past several years...as evidenced by the record profits each year

 

gas consumption drops yet profits increase significantly

It's price-gouging, plain and simple

[Acantha]

gas consumption drops yet profits increase significantly

It's price-gouging, plain and simple

No, it's not. Profits are so high because speculators are so good at their jobs. They buy for X, and the prices end up being so much more than that. Good for them.

 

And the lower consumption of oil HAS caused the price of oil to go down. Yes, it takes longer for the price to change at the pumps when it's going down than it does to go up. OF COURSE IT DOES! Not only is it natural for people to want to make money, but there are other market forces at work that are causing things to be more expensive.

 

Where do you think the money is coming from to bail out the banks? Where do you think the money came from to offer up $300 to most of the US? It comes from printing excessive amounts of dollars, inflating the money supply, and causing prices to shoot upwards. The cost of gas is not simply affected by the sale of a barrel of oil. The US economy is in the crapper, and it's NOT because of the big bad oil companies who aren't doing anything different than every other business in the world....making profits.

[Acantha]

But I digress, back to my original point, why do we want less government involvement in our lives, but we demand the government to build refineries allow oil companies to drill? Seems like we don't want the government to help small guys, but we have no problem with the government helping the big guys.

While I don't think that's necessarily true, it does end up that way unfortunately. The reason people want the government to step in for the big guys isn't because they feel bad for them, or want to line their pockets. It's because they feel it will indirectly help them. This is why we will NEVER have sound economic policies in this country. People are willing to let ANYTHING happen if it means even a very small, very short term possibility of good for them. Very few people look at the true implications or future damage these things cause. And those that are do are generally ridiculed.