Gustav = Gas Prices Will Go Up

[HellCat]

Just an FYI for everyone....go get gas in all of your cars before Sunday. Gustav will be in the Gulf of Mexico by Sunday and possibly being a category 3 hurricane. No one is taking chances this time and evacuations are already getting underway for the oil industry in the gulf. Even if the storm does no damage gas will still go up because of the shut down and threat from the storm.

*On a personal note my family down in New Orleans is already making plans to leave by Sunday (headed to GA) if the storm looks like it is headed their way. Let's hope it doesn't come to that!

[Scary Guy]

Any reason to make it go up they'll use. A CEO could sneeze, think he has a cold, and then increase it.

[Hearse_SS]

Ya, and yet they keep gettin away with it, its like my god, lets just keep gettin screwed by big oil, hey why not? lol

[Morella]

Define "Big Oil". I've never met anyone who could.

My great grandmother is the biggest oil I ever knew. She left me enough oil to fill my swimming pool, and it's still pumping.

-denise

[Scary Guy]

It's easy. "Big Oil" = the companies that make up the oil cartel. The major players that define the prices and sell the oil to the smaller companies. Those that own the refineries and hold the patents.

[Morella]

I thought we decided that the speculators controlled the price of gasoline. Wait, are we talking about the price of gas, or the price of crude oil?

Is Sunoco "big oil"? I don't think I could hate them, because they send me money every month, and they sent me $500 so that they could look for more oil on my land and send me more money. I think they're the best friend I have. Once they buy the oil, they own it, and if you own something, I think it's your right to do whatever you want with itl

Microsoft makes more profit than all of the oil companies combined, but nobody calls them "big disks". (Oh, please...)

How about makes Oxycontin, a pain relief drug. Unfortunately, a fluke of nature or an accident can dish out as much pain as medeival torture did, but it lasts forever, and never offers you the option to repent or die to escape it. A prescription for it, on average, costs $200-800 a month, and thousands of them can be harvested from a single plant, with a little processing (like crude oil...it gets a little processing)...but I've never heard the term "big opium". Oxycodone, which is not time released but just a pill, like aspirin, costs almost as much. Why? Ironically, for the same reason as the medeival torture did. By controlling the drug, the government controls people with pain. Torture. How often do you hear the term "big medicine?

When you buy a $30,000 car, you drive it and you put "big oil" in it (I guess), and if decide later that you don't like that car, it will cost you at least $15,000 to get rid of it, as soon as you drive it off of the lot. How often do you hear "big auto financing"?

"Big groceries"?

I've probably bored you to tears by now, but just remember that we all have some control over this. Keep your old car. Repair it with quality parts so that it will last a long time. Don't smoke cigarettes...pot is many, many times cheaper, because 0% of it is tax instead of 99% or so. Just take a small puff. They're banning tobacco anyway, (I don't have this option...I would lose my pain medicine if I tested for anything else, but maybe you can). Don't drink, or if you can, just have one or two. Buy shareware instead of MS, and register it if you like it. You usually pay a quarter of the cost of an MS product. Don't use a hacked version...they often contan virii, and you're helping to put MS's competition out of business. Don't trade in your old, dependable car for a new one that uses less gas. Crunch the numbers...you're fucking yourself by about 500% if you do. Just drive less. Save up your errands so that you can do them in one gas-saving trip. You have to eat. You don't have to eat charcoaled ribeyes every day, or expensive fast food.

Do what you want. I'm just telling you how we live almost as well as we used to when we had three times the income that we do now, and I wasn't sick. BTW, I also dropped about half of my prescriptions that I didn't REALLY need.

I'm losing focus, wearing out my backspace key and I have to take a break. Good luck with "big oil".

-denise

[jlprigmore]

I agree with most everything morella said. But... there's always a catch, oil has everything to do with pretty much everything. Big Groceries,Big Medicine, Big Auto Financing, Big Disks are all starting to go up because of Big Oil. Now I do believe that its not all oil companies doing this I firmly believe that speculators do have a huge part in this. One gets ansy about a storm or about a skirmish in a little podunk country that has nothing to do with oil, another speculator getting the flu, president has a bad hair day, something will change his/her opinion on how much things are gonna cost that particular hour of the day. Now this happens with everything but we focused on oil because that pretty much runs everything in this country. Obviously Oil companies don't mind this since higher prices do benefit them. But here's the thing that irritates me to no end. Oil prices went up, a little bit, gas prices went up a little bit, and again and again and again. Now oil prices drop and drop and drop and yet gas prices go down only a little. Hmmm now whats wrong with this picture? Seems like the price of oil only seems to affect gas prices when it goes up not when it goes down. Now who's starting to profit?

[Hearse_SS]

its all just maddning really, i mean here we are at the mercey of all this and haha i am sorry for sayin were gettin screwed by big oil, i was kind of tired when i wrote that but haha ya most of this is the speculators fault, and no matter what were at there control, which i think sucks that just because you get thise speculators and they get all antsy an gas goes up, and yet nothin else really gets controlled that way, so why does oil? somethin thats soooo important and vital to us? bah, i never been able to fully understand all that stuff lol

[Scary Guy]

Big oil is exactly that, and it's not completely their fault. The government, the speculators, inflation in general, everything else plays a hand in it. But in the end the price is directly determined by how much it is selling for, which is determined by the salesmen. Also from what I understand gas is just one of the products refined from the crude.

The price of corn has skyrocketed because of this (good alternative fuel source) and many of the Mexicans who own the fields that grow the bean for tequila in Mexico are switching to corn because of the higher demand. So there is now a tequila shortage because of it.

As far as Microsoft goes, no one calls them "Big Disks" but they do call them "Micro$oft" and some neat sites exist like http://www.kmfms.com

Big Medicine isn't called that because "the pharmaceutical companies" is evil enough as it stands now.

[Morella]

Oil prices went up, a little bit, gas prices went up a little bit, and again and again and again. Now oil prices drop and drop and drop and yet gas prices go down only a little.

...and Fuckie, Fuckie, Fuckie....

But wait. Hang on a sec. Say I buy and sell candy bars, for instance. The price of sugar stars going up, and the candy maker who sells them to me expects the sugar to go up even more, so he raises the price and I have no choice but to meet it. Now sugar goes down 3 cents a candy bar and you wonder why I can't sell it for that...maybe because my warehouse is full of candy bars that I paid more than that for? I can't sell them for less than I paid for them. What is in those tanks, ready for sale, was not purchased and refined at the lower price. It's the stuff that cost them more money, and they have to sell for more money until the cheaper stuff starts flowing into the tanks.

I'm not suggesting that the issue is this simple; actually quite the contrary. It's very complicated. However, oil companies make as much or less profit on what they sell than many other companies do...maybe even most companies. If you're really worried that oil companies are making too much profit, then BUY FUCKING OIL STOCK AND GET RICH!

[Psychoholic]

Gustav weakened, oil went down.

Like Morella said, it's combination of a bunch of different things - one being the weak dollar, the other was index speculation - which you can't really blame the guys for doing and driving up the price of oil. Post-katrina oil skyrocketted, so people didn't want to be the last who didn't get in, so they started pumping their money into it, so it drove it up further, more people got in, drove it up further, the clear signs of recession came, housing tanked, people put more money into oil since the dollar was weakening, oil kept going up.

Then, as most cycles do, oil peaked and then retreated back down, dollar picked up some strength, oil went down, Gustav didn't ass rape the gulf, oil went back down. It will probably head sub-100 bucks here soon and then settle into a realistic price point per. I don't know the number, but there are fairly strongly calculated support/resistance lines just like any other traded thing and when it breaks through the next next resistence line it will take another dive, pick back up slightly for profit takers, then go back to a system of supply/demand. It sucks to live through, but it's interesting to watch. I'm horrified with how much in gas I'm going to spend driving my Buick to Viva Las Vegas next year, but it's the cost of doing business when you own something ancient.

[Morella]

Want to hear the big, ugly truth, from my POV? People who own old cars and want to keep them for a long time and drive them need to be spending as much on maintenance as they do on gas, and that's if they do it themselves or have friends help. Otherwise, they're going to be running around complaining about all of their mechanical problems. Of course, this number is still a fuck of a lot less than the costs of a new car.

One simple case....doors. Door maintenance, inside and out, on my Chrysler is called for in the FSM (I don't think it's in the owner's manual) every 25,000 miles, as I recall, and mine are simple...just a round tube and a slide, with gear regulator and spring. They don't grease or adjust themselves , though, or make sure that water can't get in through the gaskets and fuck things up. There are door lock solenoids down there, locks, open handle lnkage inside and out, and it all needs the proper lubricants. You may need a few different ones. It has to be thin enough to get in there, and thick enough to stay. You may need a thin person or a long piece of vacuum hose on an oil can to get some spots. Working things loose with WD40 is not a lube job! It doesn't stay in there. What is satisfying is having a car door that feels like a new car used to when you open and close it, and work the windows.

BTW, there IS a special tool to pull the panel off of the door without breaking your panel backing around the holes, and there are screws that hide behind places that Ch*ltons and H*ynes don't know about, so think first and pry later. Nothing should ever have to be forced to get an armrest or light cover off. The 70's-80s Cadillac switch panels are a good example...I know that H*ynes actually says to PRY those out, when there is a screw behind the the light panel underneath it.

That just a simple example, to illustrate that if the price of parts and expendables went up, that would upset me more than an increase in gas prices. You will NEVER purchase a used car that has had the maintenenance and inspection plan in the FSM kept up with. You'll have to hook ass, spend some money and get back on track just to get caught up so that you won't have mechanical problems when you go on a trip. That's what you money goes with an old car. With a new car, it goes to taxes, maybe increased licensed fees (I've seen $800/year here, $20 for old cars) ridiculously higher insurance fees, and you still have to do all of your scheduled maintenance, unless you plan to toss it into the shitter every three years. (BTW, Carfax doesn't tell you anything about that, so if you buy a 3-year-old car, ask for the maintenance records and take off 10-20% if they don't have them).

Gas will be negligible compared to maintenance many times, so get a factory manual for your car and keep it in good repair. One problem leads to another. For instance, bad shocks can take out your front tires and prematurely wear every part in your front end. A bad vacuum line to your EGR can burn up your cat. A bad plug wire can take out $700 worth of computer sensors (this happened to my car). It sure does add up.

OK, I'm getting long-winded. I slept all day.

-denise

[Psychoholic]

I could see that being valid if I worked less than 10 minutes away from where I live, however it just isn't the case.

A few things come into play - one gets accustomed to a certain standard of living (size of home, creature comforts, lack of crime, etc...) and don't feel like downsizing to something cheaper, so in order to get the most 'bang for your buck' you live in the sticks, since gentrification and 'convenience' has driven the cost of homes in the city through the roof (I shudder to think how much my house would cost if it was close to work) - so you live out there.

So my daily commute is 96 miles round trip. I sold my cobra, bought a corolla (shoved some 15's in the trunk, 'cause there ain't nothin cool about a corolla - it might as well bump) and we STILL fill up 5 times a month at 40-50 per fill up. That isn't quite so bad as putting $45 in the Cobra every 2.5 days, or if I was driving Morticia with her 8 mpg, I'd go through 12 gallons a day - I'm sorry, but regular maint and tuning isn't going to make it cheaper to drive an old car, even if the shit was bone stock. For the money I save each month even by having a car payment, insurance and still paying for gas I could build a new motor every 6 months in the car I'm NOT driving. In my little example though, I went one step further and I car pool - Cliff pays for the gas and insurance, and I pay the car payment, so I'm out 300 a month, plus my half of the parking (my share is 55 a month, then I expense 50 of that out, so it's 5 bucks a month to park in the covered parking at work).

[HellCat]

I am so glad that I was wrong. If the Hurricane had taken the same path as Katrina we would have seen things go a different way. The fact that the refineries were not damaged makes a big difference.

[jlprigmore]

Everyone is dealing with the high gas prices in their own way and in my "opinion" no particular way is right or wrong. Everyone's case is different and takes different measures to deal with. People talk shit because I drive a newer model hearse. But this is my answer to dealing with high gas prices. I wanted a hearse and wanted to drive it daily, well guess what I do that at 22.5 mpg with my "p.o.s. newer model" front wheel drive hearse. The main point that was trying to be made with all of this is, gas prices are extremely high and we're all just trying to deal with it and venting about it.