Repercussions for people outside New Orleans

Back when Andrew came through, the damage created tremendous and lasting
shortages of building materials. Plywood became unobtainable in the northeast
for a short period of time and scarce for nearly a year after that. Prices went
up and stayed there. A few years later, manufacturers reduced the thicknesses
and quality of the material. Kiln-dried lumber disappeared and is still hard to
find in this area. We are just now seeing the return of some decent quality
plywood -- it's being billed as "classic" material.

I believe we can expect the same sort of thing when the restoration effort gets
under way after Katrina. I think that, if any of you guys have projects in mind
that require plywood (perhaps work on your hangar?), it might be a good idea to
buy it now.

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.

"George Patterson" wrote:

if any of you guys have projects in mind that require plywood
(perhaps work on your hangar?), it might be a good idea to buy it now.

Just try buying any roofing materials in the next 12 months.

I believe we can expect the same sort of thing when the restoration effort
gets under way after Katrina. I think that, if any of you guys have
projects in mind that require plywood (perhaps work on your hangar?), it
might be a good idea to buy it now.

Better buy gas, too. The gougers and racketeers have already jumped to $3
per gallon in Des Moines, as of this morning.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:GqqRe.79170$084.12017@attbi_s22...
I believe we can expect the same sort of thing when the restoration
effort gets under way after Katrina. I think that, if any of you guys
have projects in mind that require plywood (perhaps work on your
hangar?), it might be a good idea to buy it now.

Better buy gas, too. The gougers and racketeers have already jumped to $3
per gallon in Des Moines, as of this morning.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Fox showed a station in Atlanta where the low test was $5.65/gal ... The
guest they had on did, however, mention that this is probably an intentional
move to deter a rush on the pumps and keep the supply as available as
possible...

I'm afraid this is just gonna get uglier and uglier...and to boot, my wife
and I are heading off shortly for a week-long vacation in Durango, CO and
Santa Fe, NM...driving it, no less...timing, sheesh.

Jay Beckman
PP-ASEL
Arizona Cloudbusters
Chandler, AZ

"JH" == Jay Honeck writes:

JH Better buy gas, too. The gougers and racketeers have already
JH jumped to $3 per gallon in Des Moines, as of this morning.

Snicker Uh, Jay, that would be free market entrepeneurs. Or have
you suddenly gone righteous/socialist on us?

JH Better buy gas, too. The gougers and racketeers have already
JH jumped to $3 per gallon in Des Moines, as of this morning.

Snicker Uh, Jay, that would be free market entrepeneurs. Or have
you suddenly gone righteous/socialist on us?

Thousands of gas stations jacking gas prices nationwide, in lock-step with
each other, because of a trumped up "disaster" (and in the face of the
release of the Strategic Oil Reserve, which will totally off-set any effect
of Katrina) is not "entrepreneurship" -- it's criminal.

But it's an inevitable and utterly predictable result of our government's
ill-thought-out destruction of independently owned gas stations in the 1980s
and '90s. All we have left now are the big company stations, controlled by
a relatively small number of owners -- so it's easy for them to control
pricing.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

There are _far_ more variables involved with the pricing of gasoline to
just say it's price fixing that's going on right now.

Anyways, to try and get this newsgroup _back_ on topic, I present to
you the following bit of information a friend of mine just pointed me
to. Might make us Americans appreciate just a bit more our "free"
private pilot certificates.

Check out how much they charge for a instrument skill test _after_ a
partial completion!

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/175/srg_fc...ges_ppl_05.pdf

--
Guy

Jay Honeck wrote:



But it's an inevitable and utterly predictable result of our government's
ill-thought-out destruction of independently owned gas stations in the 1980s
and '90s. All we have left now are the big company stations, controlled by
a relatively small number of owners -- so it's easy for them to control
pricing.

That's BS. Here in Montana we had regulated gas prices until about 5
years ago. Every link in the chain was required to sell it for at least
8% more than he bought it for. The reasoning was to protect the little
guy. Screw the little guy. If you can't make a profit then go do
something else. As soon as we got rid of that stupid law gas prices
fell because everyone could set their own price. To say the big guys
come in and force the price up is a red herring. Today the most
expensive gas is always the mom and pop shop. Here the cheapest gas is
at Costco, one of the larger companies. Next cheapest is the medium
sized stations with convenience stores, like Super America. They use
their cheap gas to get you in the store to buy overpriced dairy products
and donuts. Then comes mom and pop, bitching about the damn corporations

What 99.5% of people fail to understand is that without getting certain
parts of the infrstructure back online, it won't matter how much crude
you release from the national reserves because the refining and
delivery system won't be online.

Right now you have just about 2.5 million barrels per day refining
completely shut down for one if not all three of the following reasons:

1: The plant itself is under water. If there is as little as 6" of
water in a lot of these plants, the units can't be run because many of
the pumps and their motors are in standing water.

2. They don't have any electricty....no power no operations

3. The natural gas piplines that provide the fuel to run the plants are
not operating....same outcome as #2.

One thing that has greatly helped is that the EPA had temporarily
dropped the rules on reformulated gas. Under the rules the gas that was
blended for the northeast coupldn't be piped anywhwere else because of
the smog rules. And so on and so on. What this means is that the
plants can run just a single blend of regular unleaded instead of the
60+ custom blends that the EPA mandated. This allows the plants to run
longer production runs and not have to limit the runs on how much of
one blend or another they need. Now they can run until all the storage
capacity is filled with the single blend and not get gonged by the EPA.
In the short term it's going to play some havok with the smog levels
in some locations, but that's better than having the entire country
screwed up by idiodic rules.

The worst thing people can do now is panic over the price and start
trying to hoard and store fuel. That causes an artificial shortage. One
station operator in Atlanta pointed out one customer to a news crew.
Said that he was in the station with a third vehicle and six more jerry
cans in less than an hour....just what we need.....

Once things shake out a little and the pipeline people and the plant
operations people get their basic power, water, fuel and feedstocks
back into some kind of operation, there won't as much of a problem.
Most of the drilling and production companies are already working to
get the rigs and production platforms back into action as fast as
possible.

BTW most places price their fuel based on what the next tanker drop is
expected to cost them and not what the current stock cost, and they
base that number on the daily spot market price.

Craig C.

On 2005-09-01, Jay Honeck wrote:
Thousands of gas stations jacking gas prices nationwide, in lock-step with
each other, because of a trumped up "disaster" (and in the face of the
release of the Strategic Oil Reserve, which will totally off-set any effect
of Katrina) is not "entrepreneurship" -- it's criminal.

The Strategic Oil Reserve is crude oil. With 6 major refineries
currently shut down due to Katrina, releasing that reserve doesn't
really do much if the shortage is now in refining.

The price of refined fuel has gone up because of the laws of supply and
demand - there is extra demand as people try to hoard, and restricted
supply because refineries are offline. It's just the free market you're
so enthusiastic about operating in its normal manner.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"