It ain't opec that is screwing us (revisited)

[Psychoholic]

Read, be educated, buy beer, drink beer.

http://www.forbes.com/finance/2008/06/23/crude-biderman-margin-pf-etf-in_tt_0623trimtabs_inl.html?feed=rss_popstories

[Morella]

Tony has been telling me for years that speculation is what is driving the price of gas up.

Here's an amusing side-effect of higher fuel prices. For us in the trucking business, 10 cents a gallon makes as much difference in our profits as when diesel was $2 a gallon, because shippers have to pay a fuel surcharge, the difference between $2 a gallon and the national average fuel price. Finding that low price on diesel is still as important as it ever was. Sure, that raises the price of goods; however....

The side-effect of high prices at the pump that is saving you money on goods is that with less traffic on the road, we get the load there much sooner, and burn less fuel. The only way that we could benefit from a reduction in price at the pump would be for it to go significantly below $2 a gallon.

-denise

[LMS]

Speculation is a big part of the current gas price spike, but it is not the whole reason for the climb over the past 10 or so years.
We need to get the environmental wackos out of the picture so we can drill for more of our own oil, and make new refineries to keep up with current demands. We have not built a new oil refinery in this country in like 30 years, yet the demand for gas has grown considerably since then.

[Morella]

Not to mention that many refineries were wiped out in the hurricane. They're trying to build one in AZ, but it's taken 15 years just to get the permits to start.

Part of the problem is that there are idiots who think that hydrogen power is free, because the fuel just comes from water. It takes more fuel to separate that hydrogen from the water as it does to run your car on gas.

Don't even get me started on ethanol.

Shale oil, we have plenty of, but I would prefer that they just pump it out of the wells in OK and TX, because that's where I have some mineral rights.

-denise

[HellCat]

Not to mention that many refineries were wiped out in the hurricane.

And yet this country still has not learned that you can not have all of our oil refineries and drilling done in areas were hurricanes come through......*cough* ANWR !

[Morella]

I can definitely see how you would feel that way. The smelliest refinery town I've been to was Texas City/La Marque, and I guess you just have to get used to the smell. A few miles away in Galveston, though, you can't smell it at all. That's why I have no problem with building a refinery in Arizona, as long as they build it outside of the "bitch and moan zone"...you know, that place, usually near airports, where people buy the land because it's cheap (duh, that's why they put an airport there), they build their houses on the approach end of the runway and then sue the government because the airport is too noisy.