The Key to Gas Prices

Quote:WASHINGTON -- Rising in the Senate on May 13, Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, explained: "I rise to discuss rising energy prices." The president was heading to Saudi Arabia to seek an increase in its oil production, and Schumer's gorge was rising.

Saudi Arabia, he said, "holds the key to reducing gasoline prices at home in the short term." Therefore arms sales to that kingdom should be blocked unless it "increases its oil production by one million barrels per day," which would cause the price of gasoline to fall "50 cents a gallon almost immediately."

Can a senator, with so many things on his mind, know so precisely how the price of gasoline would respond to that increase in the oil supply? Schumer does know that if you increase the supply of something, the price of it probably will fall. That is why he and 96 other senators recently voted to increase the supply of oil on the market by stopping the flow of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which protects against major physical interruptions. Seventy-one of the 97 senators who voted to stop filling the SPR also oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

One million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 President Clinton had not vetoed legislation to permit drilling there. One million barrels produce 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel. Seventy-two of today's senators -- including Schumer, of course, and 38 other Democrats, including Barack Obama, and 33 Republicans, including John McCain -- have voted to keep ANWR's estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil off the market.

So Schumer, according to Schumer, is complicit in taking $10 away from every American who buys 20 gallons of gasoline. "Democracy," said H.L. Mencken, "is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." The common people of New York want Schumer to be their senator, so they should pipe down about gasoline prices, which are a predictable consequence of their political choice.

Also disqualified from complaining are all voters who sent to Washington senators and representatives who have voted to keep ANWR's oil in the ground, and who voted to put 85 percent of America's offshore territory off-limits to drilling. The U.S. Minerals Management Service says that restricted area contains perhaps 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- 10 times the oil and 20 times the natural gas Americans use in a year.

Drilling is under way 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are.

ANWR is larger than the combined areas of five states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware) and drilling along its coastal plain would be confined to a space one-sixth the size of Washington's Dulles Airport. Offshore? Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed or damaged hundreds of drilling rigs without causing a large spill. There has not been a significant spill from an offshore U.S. well since 1969. Of the more than 7 billion barrels of oil pumped offshore in the past 25 years, 0.001 percent -- that is one-thousandth of 1 percent -- has been spilled. Louisiana has more than 3,200 rigs offshore -- and a thriving commercial fishing industry.

In his "Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 'Energy Independence,'" Robert Bryce says Brazil's energy success has little to do with its much-discussed ethanol production and much to do with its increased oil production, the vast majority of which comes from off Brazil's shore. Investor's Business Daily reports that Brazil, "which recently made a major oil discovery almost in sight of Rio's beaches," has leased most of the world's deep-sea drilling rigs.

In September 2006, two U.S. companies announced that their "Jack No. 2" well, in the Gulf 270 miles southwest of New Orleans, had tapped a field with perhaps 15 billion barrels of oil, which would increase America's proven reserves by 50 percent. Just probing four miles below the Gulf's floor costs $100 million. Congress' response to such expenditures is to propose increasing the oil companies' tax burdens.

America says to foreign producers: We prefer not to pump our oil, so please pump more of yours, thereby lowering its value, for our benefit. Let it not be said that America has no energy policy.

NJ1 Wrote:yo, could we either consolidate all these threads, or maybe start a special "gas prices" forum?

no argument from me

If tigertom posts I'll just copy and paste what I said about him to this thread. This will lure him like flies to a honeypot

I've heard from several people that drilling in the ANWR would be so expensive with the incredible pipe and road maintenance that it takes, (especially in the ever growing areas that don't stay frozen all year), that it could only be profitably exported to japan and eastern asia and would have negligible effects on our market.
The reason there hasnt been too much about it is because all the oil companies that funded the lobbying have withdrawn their support cause it just wouldnt be profitable for them... now maybe once we get solid to 5 bucks a gallon it'll be worth their time.. but i'm not lookin forward to that either way..
Another thing to consider is it would take 15-20 years after making it possible/legal to reach any levels near peak production in the area that could even hope to give relief to our prices...
I'm hopin in 15-20 years theres a better solution.

Sigh........The whole Energy/Oil crisis...price gouge is a sham...maybe one day the sheeple will wake up. Prices could be cut in half within one year. If we only SERIOUSLY threatened to drill our own oil again you would see these gas and oil prices fall faster than they have gone up. Our politicians are a bunch of traitorous crooked scoundrels that have sold us out. (But their retirement is good)

drive less or pay more.

THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!

Quote:Crude futures lingered near $122 a barrel for much of Thursday's session, and then without warning rocketed nearly $6 higher in the last hour of trading, an unprecedented surge that marked the largest intraday price move in the oil contract's history at the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The session started out abnormally slow, with energy traders tinkering with a myriad of news headlines in an attempt to cajole crude oil out of a three-day losing streak.

Crude's late-day launch occurred out of nowhere, with no new data release or news headlines for an impetus. The last hour of trading can only be described as hysterical, with oil traders calling financial reporters, desperately trying to find out what vital information they were missing that the rest of the market had apparently discovered.

Chuck Marvin, Thestreet.com

You can argue supply-and-demand all you want, but when the largest single-day increase in oil prices since record-keeping began stems from the Chicken Little mentality, that's an irrational market that is unattached to fundamentals.

oil supply is not an issue because of the lack of oil. it is an issue because the OPEC countries who supply the world's oil "control" the supply. additionally, the companies that refine the oil also keep supplies tight.

We can grant access to drill ANWAR, but foreign oil will always be cheaper to produce; so once domestic investment is made and the oil begins to flow, the OPEC countries will flood the market with cheap oil and shut down domestic production... again. It is basically what happened in the 1980's and what left Houston, TX a veritable ghost town. I just don't see the domestic oil producers...knowing what happened in the 80's...making the same investments 25 years later.

Original Sabretooth Wrote:oil supply is not an issue because of the lack of oil. it is an issue because the OPEC countries who supply the world's oil "control" the supply. additionally, the companies that refine the oil also keep supplies tight.

We can grant access to drill ANWAR, but foreign oil will always be cheaper to produce; so once domestic investment is made and the oil begins to flow, the OPEC countries will flood the market with cheap oil and shut down domestic production... again. It is basically what happened in the 1980's and what left Houston, TX a veritable ghost town. I just don't see the domestic oil producers...knowing what happened in the 80's...making the same investments 25 years later.

I guess that someone should let the millions of people living in Houston know that they're living in a ghost town.

jgardne Wrote:If tigertom posts I'll just copy and paste what I said about him to this thread. This will lure him like flies to a honeypot

Just to make your day and mine, why don't YOU tell us all what to do?

It appears that this subject continues to be of serious interest to an ever increasing amount of people. Tell us all how unimportant it is to you, to us here and those beyond the confines of this little forum.

I'm prepared to wait 'til Hell freezes over for your viable solution.

Thank you !

HHammerhead Wrote:

Original Sabretooth Wrote:oil supply is not an issue because of the lack of oil. it is an issue because the OPEC countries who supply the world's oil "control" the supply. additionally, the companies that refine the oil also keep supplies tight.

We can grant access to drill ANWAR, but foreign oil will always be cheaper to produce; so once domestic investment is made and the oil begins to flow, the OPEC countries will flood the market with cheap oil and shut down domestic production... again. It is basically what happened in the 1980's and what left Houston, TX a veritable ghost town. I just don't see the domestic oil producers...knowing what happened in the 80's...making the same investments 25 years later.

I guess that someone should let the millions of people living in Houston know that they're living in a ghost town.

Houston in the 1980's went bust. The city has since rebounded, but people were literally walking away from their homes and leaving Houston 25 years ago when oil prices bottomed out.

"Sigh........The whole Energy/Oil crisis...price gouge is a sham...maybe one day the sheeple will wake up. Prices could be cut in half within one year. If we only SERIOUSLY threatened to drill our own oil again you would see these gas and oil prices fall faster than they have gone up. Our politicians are a bunch of traitorous crooked scoundrels that have sold us out. (But their retirement is good)"

The first part is correct the second part is not. $40.00 of the current price is added by speculation from the financials that got burnt in the subprime market who are now looking for a place to make a quick buck. This type of market manipulation should be illegal, but is not.

Here's a two pronged solution.....


First we take a couple of the extra ICBMs we have lying around (and we do have a couple)

We point a few at Saudi Arabia, and a couple more at Wall St. Then we say...

"We like paying $1.00 a gallon for gas. You like us paying that too, right?"


LOL

Gas floating back up today

Back in the late seventies, it was said that if oil ever hit the astronomical price of $60 a barrel, it would be cost effective to process the oil from shale in Colorado. I realize the $60 needs to be adjusted to today's dollars, but no one is mentioning it now.