Argument against high gas prices

"Cubdriver" usenet AT danford DOT net wrote in message ...
On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 07:05:28 -0700, "dave"
wrote:

If the market was truly working, then the oil companies would be increasing
capacity

How can they do that if you won't allow a refinery to be built in your
neighborhood?

Someone said 20 years; it's actually 30 since a refinery was built in
the U.S. The only capacity increases since the late 1970s have been in
adding to existing refineries.

Now go figure how much the population has increased in 30 years, and
how much more each American drives today than 30 years ago.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942
forthcoming from HarperCollins www.flyingtigersbook.com

The OP said "You will see that the gas deliveries in Mar 2007 are lower than they
were in Mar 1984." Ok, just 20+ years, but LESS...

On Jun 6, 8:46 am, wrote:
On Jun 6, 9:39 am, kontiki wrote:



wrote:

Oooh, so if I invest a whole $500 in oil, I might make what, $500 if I
am lucky? Wow, big deal...

Exactly. Do you expect them to just start paying you money while until
you save enough beer money to buy some shares? Sheesh go collect a
welfare check.

It takes money to make money in the stock market.

That's the general idea.

If you don't
already have it, you have nothing to leverage to make any real money.

Really? Wow I didn't know that!

Talk about needing an education! By the way, I have a B.S.E.E. and
have taken economics courses on the time value of money, so I
understand that anything less than $100K invested in oil isn't going
to make enough money to really be worth crowing about. With the cost
of living rising as fast as it is, you need to be making at least 10%
on your money, and $100K will only earn about $10K annually at that
rate of return. Housing, transportation and medical are the biggest
rising cost factors and they aren't included in the consumer price
index, specifically so that the government can claim low inflation!

Is $500 big money to you?

You are full of crap dude. I started with about $7K that I rolled over
from a 401K account from a previous job. I eventually rolled it into
a Roth and made modest contributions and investments over a period of
the last 7 years. Now the balance is over $80K and I didn't have to
break a sweat. And yes, I've taken the time to learn about investing
and researched stocks on my own. I've bought and sold shares in oil
companies over that time and made money. Its not rocket science.

You have a loser attitude.

You have an arrogant attitude. I have more in my 401K than you do,
but that's not the point. I have a legitimate right to gripe about
over-inflated gas prices which are clearly a result of poorly managed
supply (not increasing demand). Investing money in the industry which
I don't have at my disposal (and no, 401K funds typically don't allow
you to target one or two stocks) as a way of saying "if you can't beat
them, join them" is BS. Also, trying to insult my education is
juvenile. You are what, 25? 28? You act like 17.

Dean

Gas prices are inflated to you. They are not inflated to the guy who
is working to sell TO you.
Buy a more fuel-efficient car, car-pool, whatever. Just quit griping.
The supply isn't poorly managed. The oil pool is finite. It used to
bubble out of the ground on its own; now they are drilling exploratory
wells as deep as 13,000 feet. It's running low and playing hard to
get. AND there are more people wanting it. I do SO wish I had
invested in oil stocks about 5 years ago...

We used to have more mass transit in this country. CAR companies
worked hard to get rid of it in the first half of the 1900s, and it
worked quite well. Bummer.
Today, people can stop buying the guzzlers, and that would go a long
way to end the carping about the price of gas.

As far as the 401, "takes money to make money", etc. Many of today's
rich are not Kennedys--by which I mean they didn't inherit money and
influence, but they somehow made it. And not likely by just working
60 hours per week. They invested what they could, early in their
careers. Making $500 on an investment isn't much, but keep rolling it
back in. Next time you have $1000, next time $2000, etc. After a
while, you have some real money. Most young people today could easily
retire rich if they stopped with the $5 bottled water, cut back a bit
on the Starbucks, and bought wine for a buck less per bottle. Put all
that away from the time you are 20, and in many cases it's a pretty
good starter nest egg.

On Jun 6, 10:23 am, "Ken Finney" wrote:
"Matt Barrow" wrote in message

...





"kontiki" wrote in message
...
Nomen Nescio wrote:

And don't forget that political BS promoting ethanol blends. Save the
planet,
higher prices and lower gas mileage.

yeah.. government logic... force the use of a product because it
sounds good to people... an might get you re-elected. Oooops ...
now we discover that burning ethanol can produce some rather ugly
and dangerous by products.

Not to mention corn shortages that are ripping Mexico and other countries
apart...

Just a pet peeve of mine, but the farmers pay "check off" fees when they
sell their crops to pay for research to increase demand. That's what pays
for all those "Beef, it's what' for dinner" commercials, it isn't the
supermarkets, it's the farmers/ranchers to increase demand and hence prices.
Farmers have invested a lot of money to create increase demand for corn so
as to increase the price they receive for corn. My pet peeve is that
increased corn prices are presented by the media as an unfortunate
unintended consequence of ethanol production, where in truth, it was the
entire intent in the first place!

rant mode off.

My bigger peeve is hundreds of millions of tax money going to Archer
Daniels Midland to develop alcohol for fuel. ADM is hugely
profitable. Why are my taxes going to this? If alcohol from CORN is
viable, I don't need to subsidize it. Besides, it isn't a good deal
from an energy investment/reward standpoint either.

"Matt Barrow" wrote in message
...

"dave" wrote in message
. ..

"gatt" wrote in message Guys who bring
this up on or.politics are usually called socialists,
communists, or America-hating lieberals, and the advice they're given is
to invest in XOM. To me, that's tantamount to investing in organized
crime. At some point we're either going to force them to put the
national interest over record oil prices, or pull a Chavez and
nationalize it. I'm not being a big-government socialist when I say that
the federal bureaucracy could run the oil industry at lower user cost.
(Not necessarily more efficiently, but in ways that are less damaging to
the US economy, transportation industries, etc.)


If the market was truly working, then the oil companies would be
increasing capacity
before any predicted shortage due to summer/winter blends or recurirng
spikes in demand.

They've been begging to do that for 30 years, but a certain group is very
good at intimidating the regulators (and many are EPA regulators
themselves.

This way they would try to to get a competitive advantge over one
another, and have more gas on hand to sell at the higher price.
Eventually the recurring, predictable shortage would go away.

The problem is collusion and cartels. This is illegal, and not the way a
free market is supposed to work.

Like OPEC?

Get a freaking clue and can the high-school level conspiracy drivel.

So the US gas production is running flat out 24/7 at 100% capacity? They
can't produce 1 drop more?

A predictable, recurring shortage, such as due to switching processes every
season, should not persist year after year. One company should ask, "why not
start our summer production a month early so we can sell more at the higher
summer price while our competitiors are doing their change over". That
ladder climbing exec gets a promotion and a big fat bonus. Eventually others
catch on and try to undercut each other, until the benefit is marginal. But
this does'nt happen. I'm just asking why.

On Jun 5, 3:31 pm, wrote:
If you follow this link: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/a103600001m.htm

You will see that the gas deliveries in Mar 2007 are lower than they
were in Mar 1984. This is despite the claims by oil companies that
they have been constantly expanding their refining capacity, and the
reason for the over $3.00 a gallon pricing is due to refining
capacity. Sorry, but I just don't see the demand being much higher
now than it was in the early 80's from this data! How can there be a
refinery shortage if the capacity has been increasing, but deliveries
are flat? Add to that the fact that crude oil is $10 a barrel less
this year than it was last year, and you can figure that the oil
companies are going to report huge profits this year...

I think the truth is that the gasoline futures market is being
manipulated to maximize profits. Why else would the prices of av-gas
rise so much when demand has dropped by nearly 50% since 2000? Why
would auto-gas prices rise rapidly, when demand is flat?

The table does not yet show the auto-gas deliveries for April, May, or
June 2007. That data should be interesting given the sharp rise in
prices that occured in that time period. I wonder if demand has
dropped as a result of prices going up.

Dean

Well, it looks like we may be seeing a significant drop in gasoline
prices by July based on the Futures contract prices:
Unleaded Gas (NYM)
July 07 ($US per gal.) 2.22 +0.03 2.23 2.20 2.19 6/7 10:22am

I suspect that there has been enough of a drop in actual demand, and
enough profit taking to drive the prices back down. I also heard that
there has been a lot of stocking by wholesaler's that has driven the
supply up in the face of declining demand with the amount of price
elasticity that does exist in the market...

Oh, and Kontiki, you probably consider this to be whining as well....

In response to the original post, the oil companies are doing what
they are supposed to do; maximize value to their shareholders, which
you could become if you care to.

In the long run, though, it's worth considering that worldwide oil
production will probably peak and trend down in the next 5 years,
while demand from China and other emerging economies continues to
rise. There's only one outcome from that unless we learn to use
what's there more efficiently.

Ethanol is a bum's rush because it requires a lot of energy to
produce, and so its cost of production can only go up. Same for tar
sands.

I guess it's time to really get to work on that fission reactor for my
PA28. But if everybody did that, the supply of yellowcake would
probably run out too.

We have an entire world economy built around the assumption of
unlimited supply of cheap energy.

Whatever became of those guys who swore they had observe a fusion
reaction in a laboratory bottle about 20 years ago?

wrote in message
oups.com...
On Jun 5, 3:49 pm, "gatt" wrote:
I'm not being
a big-government socialist when I say that the federal bureaucracy could
run
the oil industry at lower user cost. (Not necessarily more efficiently,
but in ways that are less damaging to the US economy, transportation
industries, etc.)

-c

JEEEEEEEPPPPPERS!!!
Don't EVER say that out loud!
You've seen how well the feds have run aviation lately, and then say
that they might run oil companies at a lower cost???
What's in your water? (OK, insert half a smiley here....)
We know how thick the paperwork and regs books are just to fly a
little ol' plane from point A to point B. I can't imaigine how bad
the oil business would be if the job-justifying feds started running
it.


Oh, I agree that they'd turn it into a bureaucracy. That's my point; it
would probably STILL be cheaper to consumer because even after all of the
red tape, we'd not be lining the pockets of price-rigging sheiks, tycoons
billionairres.

-c

"M" wrote in message
oups.com...

I agree with you that high gasoline price maximizes oil company
profit. However as a pilot you can easily hedge on that by buying oil
company stock,

And if you pay the mob, thugs won't keep trashing your store.

I'm quite certain that I made far more from the oil companies than what I
paid
extra for the fuel, and I only have a small part of my 401k in the
energy sector.

I have an ethical problem with the idea that the way to combat corrupt
practices and preditorial pricing--which hurts the American economy--is to
invest in it.

Sorry. My conscience prevents me from doing that.

-c

"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...

You seem to be under the misconception that it is the oil company's job to
keep prices as low as posible. This is not the case. It is their job to
keep profits as high as they can. Obviously the market is able to deal
with prices at thier current rate because according to all the reports
I've seen holiday driving didn't drop a bit this past memorial day
weekend.

How's general aviation doing? How are the airlines doing? Who do you
suppose is subsidizing all those federal bailouts?

Notice that the cost of groceries and postage are going up? Notice how the
cost of airplane rentals is going up?

At what point do we say "It's not the oil company's job to keep oil prices
as low as possible, but it's America's job to protect its own economy
instead of letting Exxon make record profits while the entire US economy
suffers?"

If you guys want to get Draconian about it, I think it's perfectly fair for
Uncle Sam to push back. Don't Tread on Me, et al.

-c

Paul kgyy wrote:
I guess it's time to really get to work on that fission reactor for my
PA28. But if everybody did that, the supply of yellowcake would
probably run out too.

Yup - used up in only a few million years - so it's a waste of time! :-)

Seriously though, the supply of uranium on earth could probably supply
all of humanity's energy needs for millions of years even at per capita
consumption an order of magnitude greater than today.

In the November 2004 "Physics Today" magazine Bernard L. Cohen stated:

"The world's energy needs could be provided by uranium-fueled breeder
reactors for the full billion years that life on Earth will be
sustainable, without the price of electricity increasing by more than a
small fraction of 1% due to raw fuel costs[1]....

The cost of extracting uranium from its most plentiful source, seawater,
is about $250 per pound—the energy equivalent of gasoline at 0.13 cent
per gallon! The uranium now in the oceans could provide the world's
current electricity usage for 7 million years. But seawater uranium
levels are constantly being replenished, by rivers that carry uranium
dissolved out of rock, at a rate sufficient to provide 20 times the
world's current total electricity usage. In view of the geological cycles
of erosion, subduction, and land uplift, this process could continue for
a billion years with no appreciable reduction of the uranium
concentration in seawater and hence no increase in extraction costs."

Here's the letters section, online:
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-11/p12.html

[1] 1. B. L. Cohen, Am. J. Phys. 51, 75 (1983).

And here's a report on an experiment actually carried out on extracting
yellowcake from seawater:

"Aquaculture of Uranium in Seawater by a Fabric-Adsorbent Submerged
System"
http://www.ans.org/pubs/journals/nt/va-144-2-274-278 :

"The total amount of uranium dissolved in seawater at a uniform
concentration of 3 mg U/m3 in the world's oceans is 4.5 billion tons. An
adsorption method using polymeric adsorbents capable of specifically
recovering uranium from seawater is reported to be economically feasible.
A uranium-specific nonwoven fabric was used as the adsorbent packed in an
adsorption cage 16 m2 in cross-sectional area and 16 cm in height. We
submerged three adsorption cages in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 20 m
at 7 km offshore of Japan. The three adsorption cages consisted of stacks
of 52 000 sheets of the uranium-specific non-woven fabric with a total
mass of 350 kg. The total amount of uranium recovered by the nonwoven
fabric was 1 kg in terms of yellow cake during a total submersion time
of 240 days in the ocean."