Why I'm paying $85 to fill-up my truck...? FOG!?!?

gerryb

Well-Known Member
TECHNICAL Contributor
Oct 12, 2006
1,974
Somers Point, NJ
Boat Info
"On Vacation"
2006 40 Sundancer
Raymarine E125 & HD Radar + Garmin 5208
Engines
QSB5.9 380 Cummins
Name a reason for the spike in oil...any reason will do aparently... I wouldn't have thought Houston gets alot of fog, let alone enough to shut down the entire "Houston Channel"!
Jim, send them down some brochures of the new HD radars, please!


Copyright CNN.com
Crude supplies up more than expected
One of the reasons the supply of crude oil shot up this week is because oil tankers have had trouble delivering their supplies in recent weeks due to fog in the Gulf Coast, according to Phil Flynn, Senior market analyst at Alaron Trading in Chicago.
"Some of this oil that we are seeing was going to be delivered earlier," says Flynn. "The Houston channel was shut down due to bad weather, and so you have all these oil tankers that can't unload cargo and everything grinds to a halt."
 
Funny, I've been able to buy all the gas I've needed everytime I've been to the pump.

I have yet to see a supply problem...

How does this supply and demand thing work?

Everybody else I know has had no problem with supply either, how's this work again? :huh:
 
Remember odd and even days?

How would they handle all text vanity plates?

In the "old" days, they used A through L for odd, and M through Z for even.

Unfortunately, that won't work anymore. They can only get around to teaching the kids A through J in the 12 years that they are in school. No one pumping gas would be able to handle the tags that start after the letter J.

On the bright side... those same high school graduates can put a condom on a cucumber in 10 seconds flat... :smt038
 
Here is how the supply and demand is working:

Price goes up 2 cents. No change in demand. Ok raise it another 2 cents. Cool.

Price now up $1.00. Demand goes down 10%. But gross sales revenue is up 30%. Profits are being maximized. Cool. A round of bonuses for all!

Raise it another $1.00. Demand goes down some more. . . . but demand level hits a "floor" because people still have to get to work, and trucks are still driving. Demand maybe off a bit. . .but the increased price more than compensates. Cool! Let's raise prices another dime!

One would note that oil companies are making record prices despite a 400% increase in raw material costs over the last few years.

Unfortunately. . . . .this is where American style capitalism leaves the poor sap of a consumer with a real problem.
 
You're kidding, right?

No mention of oil going from $30 a barrel to $120 a barrel? That's a 400% increase in the cost of raw materials. Over the same time, gasoline has gone from about $1 per gallon to about $4 per gallon. This is also a 400% increase.

Profits? If you don't own stock in the oil companies, why the hell do you care? A company exists for the sole purpose of making money for the shareholders (the same folks who you call "consumers"). If the company makes no money, the shareholders bail out, and the company goes under. Guess what? An out of business company produces NO gasoline. Take the supply away, and the remaining demand will start to push the price up. The current situation is not a supply problem, so talking supply and demand about it makes no sense. The simple fact is that the increase in gas prices tracks perfectly with the increase in raw materials (crude) costs.

Now the record profits can come from any number of means. Companies that own huge amounts of expensive raw materials with constantly increasing value have lots of financial leverage to play with. Short term investments, productivity increases, new technologies all come into play as well. They can generate all kinds of revenue by simply leveraging the value of their stored oil. Its similar to leveraging the increased value on your home to make improvements, which in turn pushes up the value of your home so you can leverage it again to make more improvements or buy a bigger home.

OPEC is the issue. It would be illegal for 3 US companies to get together (like T-Mobile, Verizon, and Alltell, for example) to get together and say "OK guys... we aren't making enough money working against each other. Let's set the bottom price for cell phone service at $200 per month so we can all make more money." This is illegal in the US, yet we continue to deal with OPEC. Wanna fix the problem? Eliminate OPEC bought oil in the US and let the market determine the price. Supply and demand works great until the suppliers can set the price without regard for the actual demand. Of course, that would mean drilling domestically for oil, at which point I would need to start heavily investing in Rouche company stock. I suspect the liberals would start a run on Vallium as the drill bits hit that wasteland that we call ANWR. :wow:

Michael
 
Alot of this has to do with the value of the American dollar. The dollar has lost ALOT of value out in the global markets. Canadians are coming across the border here to buy property, cars, clothes, etc etc because for the first time in 30 years, Canadian money is actually worth more than the dollar. I went to BC back in 2001 and it was exactly the opposite back then.

Here is an interesting article from March:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/06/business/06oil.php

The feds keep lowering interest rates which in turn devalues the dollar. I have no doubts that OPEC is guilty of screwing the American consumer. I also think that the United States Congress and the FED are responsible as well. Our politicians, both democrats and republicans have set us up for this throughout the years and now we get to pay for it. The ethanol craze is going to make food stocks go through the roof in terms of price.

Guess who was responsible for the tie breaking vote which gave government subsidies to farmers and corporations for ethanol developement back in 1998?

Al Gore
 
Yeah.... Of all of the dumb places to turn for alternate fuels, the food supply is the dumbest.

Just think of what the illegals will be paying for tortillas once the price of corn goes through the roof. Maybe they'll all go to Canada...
 
You're kidding, right?

No mention of oil going from $30 a barrel to $120 a barrel? That's a 400% increase in the cost of raw materials. Over the same time, gasoline has gone from about $1 per gallon to about $4 per gallon. This is also a 400% increase.

Profits? If you don't own stock in the oil companies, why the hell do you care? A company exists for the sole purpose of making money for the shareholders (the same folks who you call "consumers"). If the company makes no money, the shareholders bail out, and the company goes under. Guess what? An out of business company produces NO gasoline. Take the supply away, and the remaining demand will start to push the price up. The current situation is not a supply problem, so talking supply and demand about it makes no sense. The simple fact is that the increase in gas prices tracks perfectly with the increase in raw materials (crude) costs.

Now the record profits can come from any number of means. Companies that own huge amounts of expensive raw materials with constantly increasing value have lots of financial leverage to play with. Short term investments, productivity increases, new technologies all come into play as well. They can generate all kinds of revenue by simply leveraging the value of their stored oil. Its similar to leveraging the increased value on your home to make improvements, which in turn pushes up the value of your home so you can leverage it again to make more improvements or buy a bigger home.

OPEC is the issue. It would be illegal for 3 US companies to get together (like T-Mobile, Verizon, and Alltell, for example) to get together and say "OK guys... we aren't making enough money working against each other. Let's set the bottom price for cell phone service at $200 per month so we can all make more money." This is illegal in the US, yet we continue to deal with OPEC. Wanna fix the problem? Eliminate OPEC bought oil in the US and let the market determine the price. Supply and demand works great until the suppliers can set the price without regard for the actual demand. Of course, that would mean drilling domestically for oil, at which point I would need to start heavily investing in Rouche company stock. I suspect the liberals would start a run on Vallium as the drill bits hit that wasteland that we call ANWR. :wow:

Michael
Looks to me like the market is determining the price. As far as the source of oil for the most part I don't care where it comes from because....go back and read the first sentence. Eliminating OPEC oil is fine with me, just one problem, where you going to get the 6+million barrels of oil each day to replace what they supply to the thirsty USA.
 
ANWR, South Dakota, North Dakota, the Gulf of Mexico, and several others. We have plenty of oil in America, just none of the bloody liberals will let us put a drill bit to the ground in any of them. After all, it would be hard to sell the "sky is falling", "we're gonna run out of oil anyway", "we need to stop burining the stuff", "we're destroying the Earth", etc. stories that they are selling to the lemmings once we have sufficient production and low prices.

This is a self made crisis, and our own government to blame for allowing us to be in this position. They have been asleep at the switch, and we just veered onto the track where we have no choice. Until we drill and refine our own oil, we are stuck dealing in the "world" market and will continue to get screwed.

Michael
 

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