gas is going up some more

As I've said before, the oil companies will not drill immediately on most of the newly opened land. Even though they could drill on more US land then they are now, they are not moving quickly to do so. In other words they currently have all the oil leases they apparently can use, for the time being. That will change over time and there will eventually be a need to open up more land. Most of the areas with an infrastructure already allow drilling - that's why there's an infrastructure.

The "Free Market" is ripe for abuse. Look at what Enron did to California's electricity prices earlier in the decade. This was enabled by deregulating the energy markets. Without a system of checks and penalties for certain actions we'll all be paying through the nose to keep the speculators rich.

 

I understand what he is getting at, but the oil market is global. The US adding a few % to the available world reserves is not going to offset the large expected growth in world oil consumption.

The markets are being manipulated by the speculators. What is needed is better government oversight and closing a few loopholes that let the abuses legally happen.

Sure there would a slight downward bump from the psychological effects of more oil available, but it will be small and not solve the actual problem. It's sort of like bailing when your boat is sinking because you left the drain plug out. Just put the plug back in. In this case the plug would be better regulation of markets, decreased demand through higher fuel economy standards, increased insulation in homes, alternative energy sources. This would really need to happen world wide. Luckily higher prices will encourage conservation, so in this way the market forces will take care of the problem. Government can help speed things up though.

 

I'm afraid that if the price of oil or gas goes down significantly in the months and years ahead it is only going to be as a result of a serious economic downturn world-wide. It will be a definite good news-bad news proposition. The good news will be that gas is less expensive; the bad news that the economy is totally in the crapper.

I'm afraid that, taking a phrase from Reverend Wright's play-book, this is just a case of the chickens coming home to roost. We've known this was coming for a long time (or did you forget or are too young to remember the first vestiges of OPEC and the gas lines of the 70s) and did jack-shit to prepare for it, guzzled gas for the last couple of decades like there was no tomorrow. Prepare for $5 by Labor Day, $6 by next summer, and $8 by the end of the decade.

 

wow. i know its higher in other parts for the country....but i'm still filling up at $3.95 a gallon

 

Ever notice...not ONE mention of the GAGGINGLY PHENOMINAL PROFITS the oil companies have made and are making and WILL continue to make behind those prices>>simple: sraight from our many pockets to their few pockets. As I always say, GREED throws the game. GREED and 'free market' are two different animals. What ever happened to 'commonwealth'?? Not freebies or entitlements-but the REQUIRED balance in a society? Answer: GREED!!!!!

 

Here is the best article I’ve read recently about oil. It’s from the magazine The Week (which I should point out as one of the best sources of news available). Yes it’s long by the standards of the average post but some of you only have part of the picture. CometKat


Briefing: OPEC and the soaring cost of oil
As the price of oil hit an all-time high of $139 a barrel last week, some government officials pointed the finger at OPEC, the international oil cartel. Is OPEC the main culprit?

Is it fair to blame OPEC for the high price of oil?
To a degree. After all, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries—a 13-nation body dominated by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Middle Eastern countries—was created with the express purpose of influencing prices. In the 1970s, it did in fact hold the world ransom by restricting supply. (See below.) The U.S. and other oil-consuming nations maintain that the cartel is once again driving up prices by limiting production, even though OPEC now controls only 40 percent of the world oil market, down from 70 percent in 1973. The U.S. House of Representatives has even called for the Justice Department to pursue antitrust and price-fixing charges against OPEC.

What does OPEC say in its defense?
OPEC members claim that most of them couldn’t supply more oil even if they wanted to, because they are already pumping at or near capacity. Only Saudi Arabia has substantial surplus capacity; yet when the Saudis, at President Bush’s behest, agreed recently to produce 300,000 extra barrels a day, global oil prices were barely affected. Last week, the Saudis agreed to an additional 200,000-barrel increase. In any case, OPEC insists that it’s not in its own interest to let oil prices rise uncontrollably.

How could that be?
OPEC has been burned before. The price rise it engineered in the 1970s led to a global recession, a slump in demand, and a drive by other countries to find new sources of supply. This was disastrous for most of the cartel’s oil-rich states, which are rich in little else. Since then, OPEC has aimed for long-term price stability. In 2000, it adopted a policy of cutting production if the price went below $22 per barrel and raising production if it passed $28. However, after 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, prices skyrocketed. So OPEC has abandoned official price targets.

So what’s behind the recent price explosion?
OPEC points to the U.S. Federal Reserve. To prop up domestic banks, the Fed has slashed interest rates and expanded the money supply, severely weakening the dollar in the process. Since oil is bought in dollars, it now takes a lot more of them to buy a barrel of oil. The problem has been exacerbated by speculators, OPEC says. When economies slow, investors tend to move into commodities such as food, gold, and oil. Commodity prices have recently reached historic highs, and anticipating additional price increases, investors are piling into oil futures—driving prices even higher.

What does this mean for the oil market?
Whatever the immediate causes of the price hike, it’s clear that the long-term trend is deeply affected by the huge rise in demand for oil from India, Russia, the Middle East, and, above all, China. Together, they now consume 20.7 million barrels of oil a day, compared with 20.3 million barrels a day in the U.S. And global demand will prove increasingly difficult to meet. “Eighty-five million barrels of oil per day is all the world can produce, and the demand is 87 million,” said Texas oil mogul T. Boone Pickens. “It’s as simple as that.” OPEC claims daily supply is in fact 88.75 million barrels, but even if there is enough to meet today’s demand, the big concern is about the future.

What’s the problem?
Oil production is decreasing in 54 of the world’s top 60 oil-producing nations—including the U.S., which produces 5 million barrels a day, down from 11 million in 1970. The overall amount of oil discovered has been falling for 40 years; easily reached oil fields are being depleted, while untapped reserves are often small and hard to exploit. Many experts expect non-OPEC production to peak around 2010; outside the cartel, the best new source of oil is said to lie under the Arctic. But reserves there are believed to be relatively limited, and the conditions are extremely hostile.

But doesn’t OPEC have huge reserves?
In theory. Until recently, Saudi officials routinely claimed that the kingdom, which produces 13 percent of the world’s exported oil, had an almost bottomless well. But some analysts fear its reserves aren’t as plentiful or easily available as suggested. Sadad al-Husseini, a former top executive at the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco, says that Saudi production has already reached a peak and will begin dropping in 15 years or less.

So will global production soon reach a peak?
Again, that’s contested. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil thinks global crude supplies will top out at 87 million barrels per day at the end of this decade and then decline. But the more authoritative International Energy Agency, which advises 27 industrial nations, believes we won’t hit a peak until around 2040, when supply will be at 100 million barrels a day. The real problem right now, the IEA argues, is posed by the “above-ground hindrances” in the major oil-producing nations.

What are these hindrances?
The threat of violence from armed militias severely hampers production in Iraq and Nigeria. The nationalist autocrats of Russia, Venezuela, and Iran are reluctant to let Western oil giants fully exploit their resources. In the U.S., environmentalists vehemently oppose efforts to expand offshore drilling or to allow exploration of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. For their part, the Saudis could spend more to increase production and bring down oil prices. But why would they want to do that?

When OPEC got greedy
OPEC was a relatively benign force in world affairs until 1973, when it decided to halt all oil shipments to countries that backed Israel in the Yom Kippur War. The oil embargo resulted in a quadrupling of the cost of a barrel of oil and sparked global economic mayhem, perhaps best symbolized by the miles-long lines at gas stations. But OPEC then began to fragment, as each member, trying to cash in on the high price created by their collective action, surreptitiously sought to exceed their agreed-upon quotas. Soon enough, supply and demand began to even out. By 1980, the reduced demand from a battered world economy, coupled with overproduction, led to a drop in prices, which remained low throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s. Most analysts now say that because of the growth in oil production in non-OPEC countries as diverse as Russia, Norway, and Mexico, OPEC has never been able to reassert the market control it once enjoyed.

 

Seems to me that the U.S. has lived highest on the hog for so long that we've dug ourselves into a hole of self deception that's going to be exceptionally tough to get out of. As the single most wasteful nation on earth we've convinced ourselves that the rest of the world owes it to us to continue our rampant form of consumerism and the throw away life style we've become addicted to. Nothing in my view could be further removed from the painful truth that we've just beginning to realize.

The chickens coming home to roost are carrying with them a lot more than simply bird flu, and for all our feeble efforts to keep them at bay we are powerless to do so..

Ride sharing, mass transit, telecommuting, bicycling, walking, staying home, ..get used to it! Now there is a fully electric car available that gets great mileage, recharges in about 4 hours, and will do 125 mph. The only problem is that it costs $125,000, which makes it something that us Gen1 and Gen2 Tacoma people and others like us are going to have a tough time coming to grips with!

 

How the hell can you guys slam your own Country like that? Why are you subscribing to the rantings of a racist America hater? Single most WASTEFUL Country, Rio? Take a look at friggin China! And hide your dog. Stop the self-loathing and be proud you are a part of the country that makes life better and feeds the rest of the world. I exclude this current administration for credit in this as they are the GREED machine and are putting the hurt on us and others- but the UNITED STATES is the heart of this earth-the ENABLER of other countries-and anyone who doesn't feel that way about the very Country that accomodates your way of life and allows you FREE SPEECH with no threat of a beheading or torture-you can go live with them. God Bless the U.S.A.

 

I'm starting to get a Yamaha fever, I tell ya. If I could make these truck payments go away...


I do believe we need more folks like Ridgerunner these days - BELIEVE and TAKE OWNERSHIP, people! If things are screwed up, it's your house and you need to clean - not whine. RESPONSIBILITY is a lost virtue.

 

Hey Ridge, I'm not slamming America. It's still the greatest country in the world, no doubt about it. What I'm pointing out, just as others have done, is that we have been the largest and most productive society in history, along with being the best fed, best clothed, and most pampered people on earth. And we've come to expect such things must somehow continue as some kind of a "right" simply because we are Americans.

Unfortunately our political leaders have sold us a bill of goods with their "great society" BS and the "New World Order" that they've harnessed us to, and Americans have lost almost all the edge they once had as far as the world around us is concerned. All we have left is a monster military machine and breaking down economy, and if America is to be saved it will be by people like us who buckle up and get after the things that need to be done.

The politicians that got us into this mess are incapable of getting us out because they have neither the will nor the means to effect real change. And real change at every level is what we need most of all, change that will bring us back to common sense and a reverence for country and constitution.

I absolutely couldn't agree with you more Ridge!

Amen brother, amen!!

 

you have to be messing with us?!? do you live in the ghetto?

hahaha who uses that term haha

 

He'll fix it.

 

Here is a solution from today’s news….

BERLIN - A German man doused his BMW with gasoline and torched it on Friday in protest at skyrocketing fuel costs, police said.

The unemployed 30-year-old man drove the black 1995 BMW 3-series sedan onto the lawn outside Frankfurt's convention center grounds at about 7:30 a.m., police spokesman Karlheinz Wagner said.

He then jumped out, emptied a canister of gas over the vehicle, and set fire to it, Wagner said.

By the time the fire department got to the scene, the car was entirely burned out.

The Bavarian man, whose name was being withheld because he has not been charged with a crime, told police that gas prices were so high he could no longer afford to drive the vehicle.

 

I would love to know how many gallons of fuel the US Military uses in one day compared to the amount used in 2000

 

gas is going up

I wonder what dealers are going to do with 08 and 09 coming in already

09 is cooler with the new color and other crap, still doesn't mean it will move of the lot! Especially it went up on the price!

I like the Gunmetal color!! SO AWESOME!!

 

or it may have happened at the construction site Chris

 

Ha cool then-I'll bet those thieves are well aware by now that newer Tacomas have a plastic tank so they go after yours and ran smak into your tank armor LOVE IT