Spiraling fuel prices strapping truckers; public transit ridership up

"Gas Prices Could Pass $3.50 in Weeks," read an Associated Press headline from just a month ago.

Now, with the staggering upward trajectory drivers have faced recently at the pump, $3.50 per gallon would undoubtedly be considered a relief.

"There's only one positive thing from the truck driver's point of view -- on the road there's less traffic because less people are traveling, but the flip side of the coin is look what's going on everywhere else," said Ed Furney, a seven-year veteran truck driver for Radiology Corporation of America, after filling up in Ukiah on Thursday. "We're probably looking at 5 or 6 dollars (a gallon) before this is over."

[Joe Citizen]

The way those greedy oil excs are going with gas prices, they are going to bankrupt our nation. The USA is going to fall eventually. Sad but true. History always repeats itself.

[writch]

I don't agree with the Measure B people who insist that you can get three to four crops per year of pot, but I did see a study that said you could get two plantings, at approximately 150 gallons per acre per planting of bio-diesel from pressing the seeds, and an unspecified amount of ethanol from fermenting the cellulose (leaving high-protein animal feed as the waste product).

[soundslikeBStome]

writch, you seem to be overflowing with words and opinions, but you have no actions, unless you include typing on these forums. I guess you're just too high!

http://www.youtube.com/watch...

[Thought Monster]

Joe Citizen wrote:

The way those greedy oil excs are going with gas prices, they are going to bankrupt our nation. The USA is going to fall eventually. Sad but true. History always repeats itself.

You have no clue what you are talking about, educate yourself on the oil industry and the world market, then make valid opinions.

[Because I am HIGH]

soundslikeBStome wrote:

writch, you seem to be overflowing with words and opinions, but you have no actions, unless you include typing on these forums. I guess you're just too high!
http://www.youtube.com/watch...

LOL
we think too much alike!!!(from my previous post)
You will enjoy this too.

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_...

[writch]

soundslikeBStome wrote:

writch, you seem to be overflowing with words and opinions, but you have no actions, unless you include typing on these forums. I guess you're just too high!
http://www.youtube.com/watch...

I know. I'm almost up to going over to Estelle's office and doing data entry like she asked, but I'm really still too cripped out to do much. My office is much more forgiving than most, since I designed it for maximum ergonomics.

I was thinking of ringing her up to see if I could get a stance from her on IRV, but I don't want to bother her till she's done with work.

Since you were all so nice as to post these neat videos, heres one from me:

http://blog.writch.com/...

[Blah]

Oh wait, I thought the war was for oil?

While I agree that the oil companies do rake it in. We ourselves have brought this on. And no, not because of our "evil foreign policy". We have voted for restrictions on what is put in our fuel. Witch made things cost more. We dont have very many refineries. We dont drill enough, these days we can drill with less environmental impact. Yes, there will be some, but you walking through the woods even has some kind of impact.

SUV's, just because you are a Mom and you have kids does not mean that you NEED, a huge SUV. Get a Mini van or a small Hybrid SUV. Youll get roughly 3k back from the Gov if you get a hybrid.

Even if we fixed all the above, we should still find another way for energy. Oil will run out.

If I was the CEO of Shell, Chevron, Exxon etc. I would take those huge profits and invest it into research into finding a new energy source. To keep my profits going. But non of this will work if "whatever the new energy is" is produced in unstable countries.

Maybe someone can help me out, but if I remember right, we import most of our oil from Canada, not the Mideast.

[Easy Living]

So, quit your belly achin' and start a "medical" marijuana grow. You can make $150K a year, tax free, easy, off of 25 plants. C'mon you schmucks, that is what it is all about in Menocino.

[Easy Living]

And the Sheriff don't give a crap, and the D.A. won't prosecute. EASY MONEY! Hell, I know folks that made a couple hundred grand last year, just putting a grower on their land. WISE UP ALREADY!

[WTF]

Why does everything on these boards ALWAYS go back to the Measure B and Pot? Is that all you people and think about?

[writch]

Thought Monster wrote:

<quoted text>
You have no clue what you are talking about, educate yourself on the oil industry and the world market, then make valid opinions.

I would tend to assume they are running a scam like the one the power companies did here a few years back (running brownouts and such). They basically had an 'agreement' to make some electricity scarce so that other people could run up their profit on the 'surplus'.

It's all documented in Greg Palast's book, "The Best Democracy that Money Can Buy" if you're interested.

He said the limit of gouging was that the 'bidding' system only had four digits.

You can probably find it somewhere else, but it's better to give cash directly to Greg:

http://www.palastinvestigativefund.org/

[James M Kinder]

writch wrote:

<quoted text>
I would tend to assume they are running a scam like the one the power companies did here a few years back (running brownouts and such). They basically had an 'agreement' to make some electricity scarce so that other people could run up their profit on the 'surplus'.
It's all documented in Greg Palast's book, "The Best Democracy that Money Can Buy" if you're interested.
He said the limit of gouging was that the 'bidding' system only had four digits.
You can probably find it somewhere else, but it's better to give cash directly to Greg:
http://www.palastinvestigativefund.org/

I read it too. Pretty impressive, but utterly undocumented.

[Willits Watcher]

Blah wrote:

While I agree that the oil companies do rake it in. We ourselves have brought this on. And no, not because of our "evil foreign policy". We have voted for restrictions on what is put in our fuel. Witch made things cost more. We dont have very many refineries. We dont drill enough, these days we can drill with less environmental impact. Yes, there will be some, but you walking through the woods even has some kind of impact.
SUV's, just because you are a Mom and you have kids does not mean that you NEED, a huge SUV. Get a Mini van or a small Hybrid SUV. Youll get roughly 3k back from the Gov if you get a hybrid.
Even if we fixed all the above, we should still find another way for energy. Oil will run out.
If I was the CEO of Shell, Chevron, Exxon etc. I would take those huge profits and invest it into research into finding a new energy source. To keep my profits going. But non of this will work if "whatever the new energy is" is produced in unstable countries.
Maybe someone can help me out, but if I remember right, we import most of our oil from Canada, not the Mideast.

The war was about oil. Everything else that you wrote is correct

[Thought Monster]

writch wrote:

<quoted text>
I would tend to assume they are running a scam like the one the power companies did here a few years back (running brownouts and such). They basically had an 'agreement' to make some electricity scarce so that other people could run up their profit on the 'surplus'.
It's all documented in Greg Palast's book, "The Best Democracy that Money Can Buy" if you're interested.
He said the limit of gouging was that the 'bidding' system only had four digits.
You can probably find it somewhere else, but it's better to give cash directly to Greg:
http://www.palastinvestigativefund.org/

First of all your are making opinions on assumptions and second the electric company in California is a monopoly which is not traded like the oil industry that is traded on the world market. Also with PG&E besides the conspiracy theory mentioned above in your post, California had a huge growing population and had the same existing sources of electricity. Most of the their plants were old and at max capacity and no one wanted a new plant in their "backyard". So logically they would do brown outs not to overload the grid.

[Thought Monster]

Willits Watcher wrote:

<quoted text>
The war was about oil. Everything else that you wrote is correct

Really if it's about oil why are we paying $4.00 a gallon?

[ukiahan]

Thought Monster wrote:

<quoted text>
Really if it's about oil why are we paying $4.00 a gallon?

so that Chevron can make 10 billion dollars in profit in the first quarter. The same reason diesel cost 4.60 and is less refined. And who is making the profits from the oil in Iraq? It surely isn't the Iraqi's. There are no problems with supply right now, it is purely profit for the oil companies. Look at all of their first quarter profits, all records again. In Brazil when this would happen all the truckers would park their trucks on all the on and off-ramps and right in the middle of the highway and just leave them. Thousands of trucks blocking traffic all over the country. Things would always change quickly because there was nothing the government could do with all the trucks. Here, we just complain and nothing changes.

[Thought Monster]

Blah wrote:

Oh wait, I thought the war was for oil?
While I agree that the oil companies do rake it in. We ourselves have brought this on. And no, not because of our "evil foreign policy". We have voted for restrictions on what is put in our fuel. Witch made things cost more. We dont have very many refineries. We dont drill enough, these days we can drill with less environmental impact. Yes, there will be some, but you walking through the woods even has some kind of impact.
SUV's, just because you are a Mom and you have kids does not mean that you NEED, a huge SUV. Get a Mini van or a small Hybrid SUV. Youll get roughly 3k back from the Gov if you get a hybrid.
Even if we fixed all the above, we should still find another way for energy. Oil will run out.
If I was the CEO of Shell, Chevron, Exxon etc. I would take those huge profits and invest it into research into finding a new energy source. To keep my profits going. But non of this will work if "whatever the new energy is" is produced in unstable countries.
Maybe someone can help me out, but if I remember right, we import most of our oil from Canada, not the Mideast.

The Oil companies are investing in alt fuel cars. Companies like BMW have a hydrogen engine coming out soon. These companies, believe it or, have smart people in R&D that innovate and research and this is all they do. They most likely have a vault of patent technology where they keep patented until the time needed. It's not uncommon for a random person to have an idea about a new "concept" for an engine or whatever and when they go to patent it, it's already patented.

Also, oil companies know they have an elastic good which produces a constant revenue stream. The world is dependent on oil and will be for a long time. In the future when the US converts away from oil, if possible, many 3rd world countries will still need this to operate for they will not be able to afford the new modern technology and infrastructure.

These companies know what oil is out their they know how much the world has and they know when to move on to the next alt fuel when oil loses it's revenues. From my experience in manufacturing, companies like Chevron, Exxon, etc all spend a lot of capital on driving out inefficiencies out of the refining system, drilling, etc. Also a lot of their profits go to exploring for new oil fields, building new tankers, building new oil rigs. These cost billions to build.

To answer your question about importing oil. We produce a lot of our oil in the US and US shores, but we import more from the middle east. We ship a lot of our crude oil to Canada which refines it for us and ships it back down to us, this aligns with your 'not enough refineries' statement.

[Thought Monster]

ukiahan wrote:

<quoted text>
so that Chevron can make 10 billion dollars in profit in the first quarter. The same reason diesel cost 4.60 and is less refined. And who is making the profits from the oil in Iraq? It surely isn't the Iraqi's. There are no problems with supply right now, it is purely profit for the oil companies. Look at all of their first quarter profits, all records again. In Brazil when this would happen all the truckers would park their trucks on all the on and off-ramps and right in the middle of the highway and just leave them. Thousands of trucks blocking traffic all over the country. Things would always change quickly because there was nothing the government could do with all the trucks. Here, we just complain and nothing changes.

First, there is a supply issue, Nigeria is having problems with their supply and the smallest ripple in the production can trigger price inflation like what happened in the 70's.

Second, although they did have record profits, explain how when a barrel of oil was $70 gas was $3.30 a gallon and when a barrel of oil hit $100 gas was still $3.30 a gallon. Now, with those increases would ate the margin? I'm not advocating them in any way but stating the facts. A week after the Q1 profit announcements in the Wall Street Journal another article came out stating Exxon's profit (which was a record) was less than expected! Crazy huh.

Exxon for example the 2nd biggest company in the world (1st being Walmart in terms of revenue) had the highest profits of all companies in the world, but everyone buys gas and needs it. If you had a business that had something that everyone needed, why should they get penalized for providing that service? Exxon paid over 100 billion dollars in taxes last year thats insane.

Oil is trading on the world market, its supply and demand (and speculation). Exxon/Chevron singlehandedly does not control market price, OPEC doesn't control market price only production. The BRIC countries which are the top emerging countries in the world (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are consuming more and more resources one of which is oil.(It's more so China and India). Outside of the Nigerian supply issue there has been more demand from these countries which increases price.

What I've mentioned in related oil forums before is that the government should increase the tax on gas. The federal average is $.40. If they increased the tax therefore increases the price of gas, this would change American consumption behavior. This is called the Pivogian tax. The higher price will make people not get Escalades or other gas guzzling SUV's but more efficient cars. In Germany, the government charges $5.50 tax per gallon and yet they did not go back to the stone age, but rather they adapted.

Lastly, Brazil is not a first world country like the US, if the truck drivers did that here they would probably get fired and or they wouldn't care because it's their employer who pays for gas and that gets passed on to the customer.

[writch]

Thought Monster wrote:

<quoted text>
First of all your are making opinions on assumptions and second the electric company in California is a monopoly which is not traded like the oil industry that is traded on the world market. Also with PG&E besides the conspiracy theory mentioned above in your post, California had a huge growing population and had the same existing sources of electricity. Most of the their plants were old and at max capacity and no one wanted a new plant in their "backyard". So logically they would do brown outs not to overload the grid.

Nah, that's just wrong. That's what Rush was saying, but it's just BS.

Electricity was traded in CA like a stock market. At the time, there was a large outflux of individuals (bought up half of ABQ and almost doubled the value of my home in five years).

The last bit about how 'old' and decrepit they were is the cover story.

It's all in the book.

It's for a British TV show, and for his articles for the Guardian (his chair is the 'American Desk' just like his predecessor, George Orwell).

Brit law on libel is FAR more complex, since they don't have a 'freedom of speech' like we do (Palast comments a lot on that). As a result, the documentation supporting his claims is a MUCH bigger deal to them.

If it were false, he'd have been sued, already.

On the other hand, it's a compilation of articles, not scholarly works. Newspapers don't tend to include either footnotes or bibliographies.

The book doesn't have it either. They save those for the trial. It's just a news report.

Still, it's right about the energy trading scam (and the cover story). If you note, the trading companies DID have to give (some) of the money back.

The book's just got a lot of facts about stories that our press didn't think was important enough to tell us, too.

But the book's just one source. Here's another (a little more documented). I'm pretty sure the company is a household name by now, right? Enron?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron#California...

[Blah]

The thing that angers me the most is not how the enviroment, refineries, demand etc, impacts the price. But the speculation that goes on. It seems like, A man stubbs his big toe on an oil pipe line somewhere. The price of oil goes up.