I wish I could have jumped on this one earlier. But I hope you see this MM because we both know we haven't always agreed on the facts but Hell MM I can't even find the facts. You can't believe a fucking thing the speculators and bean counters are saying.

Shit it would be obvious at least the US oilfield would sulk for awhile after Obama got elected, but I haven't heard a one of the big boys try to blame it on liberal politicians and too many taxes, yet. Instead they seem to be actually telling the truth. Lack of capacity.

But what I can't figure out is none of it really makes sense. One thing that hasn't changed is we're scrapping the bottom of the oil barrel world wide. We both know they've been lying out their asses about production and reserves. And demand has not really dropped off a nickels worth and nothing has changed about India, China and the far east coming on line for oil consumption. But damned if everybody hasn't just taken the money and run.

I haven't heard a peep out of the gulf of Mexico Boys. They were rattling for expansion six months ago but if they've now pulled in their horns instead we could be looking at a long stack out.

 

I like how you guys would rather fight then attempt to solve anything.

I like how it makes me feel unimportant and irrelevant, and helpless.

I enjoy this sense of disenfranchisement as you track down who's fault it was and attempt to flame a meaningless scapegoat rather then be pro-active towards preventing this kind of fiasco again.

 

Since I'm already in oilfield mode fuck you tenguy and go pound sand in your ass. They're excuses you dumb fuck. Just like all the excuses that were given for the record prices. Not a fucking thing has changed since then in fact they've gotten worse. But not one of them. Not earthquakes, hurricanes, not Chavez, nor Nigeria, nor competition from China and India is causing increases in the price of oil now are they genius. And yet three months ago you were defending all of those as ligitimate concerns that would have an effect of futures trading and record prices.

Now you get this through your fucking head. The standard oil grade of the whole fucking world in North Sea Brent. A sweet oil, i.e. low sulfur. Almost all the oil we import from the Middle East is light sweet i.e. low sulfur. Most of our domestic production is sweet i.e. low sulfur. About the only oil we import that isn't is that tar sands shit we're importing from Canada that made sense to refine when oil was more than $50 a barrel.

 

Ok so what's your assessment of what's up with gasoline prices, the price of oil and the overall solutions we should be looking at?

 

Sarcarsm, table for one? :laughing:

Hey, I'm with you, THLC - the source of our problem lies in a thorough and appropriate education . . . an educated, responsible and diligent populace is difficult (if not impossible) to manipulate.

I believe that teaching our children how to think (not what to think) as early as possible is the key to unlocking the next level of human potential. Unfortunately, the libertarian in me wont go so far as to make illegal the very loud, very persistent voices of dogmatism that saturate most discussion (and thereby, decision-making).

Who will take the first step away from the entrenched interests that currently have control? Who will forego their current level of relative comfort and prosperity to risk it all on creating a paradigm that threatens every existing power structure on this planet? Who?

 

Since you are so attuned to the crude being delivered to US refineries which are producing ULSD presently, might you like to explain to all the nice folks how diesel with a limit of 15ppm sulfur can be cheaply produced from Brent which has an average of 1,800ppm.

Who is paying for the additional equipment?? Since only a trickle of diesel at the EPA mandated level was possible before just a few years ago, how did the refineries obtain the equipment?? And at what cost.

The technology and equipment used to produce the 500ppm diesel that was so previlent can be used without additional cost??? Is that what you're claiming??

Get real, you are blowing smoke once again. Please try to be concise for a change.

 

I really apologise, I didn't know we were trying to solve the problems of gasoline costs. I believe the OP question was "what's up with gasoline prices". I believe someone else asked why diesel was higher than gasoline, as well.

Then Mr Stumbler tried to say that the cost to produce diesel was lower than that to produce gasoline, I was addressing that error.

Now should we talk about conservation or maybe fuel tax increases??

 

im not going to bother to read the whole thread because well im lazy, but where i am gas is at $1.99 a gallon right now...

oh and kimi you should look at my last post on that so called "evidence" thread and answer my question

 

OK tenguy since I already exposed your bullshit on Kimiko's Health Care thread I might as well blow you away here and make your night complete.

Here's the overall trend. In 1970 gasoline was lets say 50 cents per gallon and diesel fuel was 5 cents per gallon. Get it diesel which is a by product of refining gasoline was one tenth of the cost. So when the fake energy crisis and Oil embargo hit in the early 1970's (remember I already educated you on that one) consumers switched in large numbers for the cheaper fuel to try and save money. The oil companies would not allow that so the more people switched to diesel the more they jacked the price up on it. Now please don't be stupid enough to try and claim that was supply and demand. There was an increased demand but an over supply of diesel.

The trend has been for diesel to increase in price ever since because as I said before gasoline consumers may come and go but this nation moves 70% of its goods and products with diesel and has no alternative at the present time.

The trend was also to lower the sulfur content in diesel since then.

Now here is what makes your argument total bullshit here. What I asked is why isn't the price of diesel falling at the same rate that gasoline is falling NOW. The refinery capacity for making low sulfur diesel was in place three or four months ago and nothing has changed about that NOW. Except the price of oil has fallen approximately more than 60%. The price of gasoline has fallen only 50% however (get it they are still making 10% more profit) and the price of diesel has only fallen 45%. (Get it 15% more profit on diesel). Why? Because it is the fuel we cannot cut back on. We have no choice and no other way to move our goods and products.

Now here's the next place you argument falls to total bullshit. The ULSD adds about 5 cents per gallon. But it was mandated in 2006. (Get it, that is not NOW that was two years ago). So all the things you keep trying to claim have already been implemented and factored into the price. And yet NOW the price of oil is dropping faster then the price of gasoline and the price of gasoline is falling faster then the price of diesel because conserving does not really work because they just raise the prices somewhere else where we can't conserve.

So NOW this is twice in one night that I've proven you wrong. Have you had enough or are you still thristy for more?

 

Minor correction Stumbler I paid 25cents per gallon until Nixon's fake crisis
in 1973

 

Tennguy... I dunno.

These threads always start out pretty solid, with reasonable sounding arguments for reasons why coming from both sides... I guess.

And then, ultimately collapse into this name calling slugfest that just makes any previous argument, regardless of how sound it may have seemed at the time, seem just as childish and crass as the name calling.

As far as whats up with gas prices, I have no real answers as I'm not close enough to the decision makers to know for sure how and why any of this happened the way it did. So any argument from either side, regardless of how sound, still turns into a blame game and becomes purely speculative.

Given, some of it is a good read, but in the end speculative.

I feel, and I would imagine you and anyone else who's reading this thread would feel, like what happened is definitely something I would not like to experience again.

So it would seem in our collective best interests to seek alternative routes for fuel.

I happen to be aware that most cars made after a certain year (I THINK 98, but maybe 2000) are ALL flex fuel adaptable. The Ranger I'm currently driving is tested to run fine with an 85% ethanol blend. I wouldn't be surprised with some minor modification if it could run on straight ethanol.

So let's try and nip a few problems in the bud with one fell swoop:

1: Seriously. Legalize Hemp for the production of ethanol. It grows stupid fast, it grows everywhere, it has 4x the celluloid content of any other currently grown commercial crop (The celluloid content of the plant being what distills into ethanol and methanol), using it as a fuel crop won't effect food crop pricing, and it could be grown LOCALLY, as in each state could effectively produce enough fuel for itself and then some.
Not to mention a slew of other environmental factors that hemp is proven to assist in (IE: it literally consumes more bad air per acre and produces more oxygen per acre then and acre of trees, corn, or most anything else for that matter)

2. Create local refineries. With Industrial manufacturing shipping overseas we're experiencing a serious drought of jobs for the traditional middle class unskilled laborer. These factories and farms would create a permanent job source locally, stimulating local economies nationally and thus the national economy as a whole. As we're no longer sending excessive amounts of money into foreign oil producers pockets our own personal coffers will have a chance to grow everytime you fill up your tank. One ethanol refinery and one Bio-diesel refinery per however many acres it takes of hemp to produce the adequate amount of fuel for a local area. Maybe even Several such stations per state nationally. Output could even exceed demand and excess fuel created could even be shipped globally to other such interested parties.

So now we've got fuel AND jobs. Fuck yes, right?

In addition:

More durable paper and fabrics could be manufactured and as these crops occur locally, so could the factories, thus creating a choice between traditional wood paper and hemp paper. between traditional natural fibers and synthetic fibers and hemp fibers. The blue jeans you may be wearing were originally made from hemp, and loved because of their incredible durability.

I personally hate feeling dependent on someone else, and if I have the opportunity to realize independence I move towards it. I think as a country if we could become more self reliant fuel wise it would only bolster our local economy, so it's distressing to see that this option isn't even brought to the table.

Electric cars may be the future yes, but currently our power plants that generate electricity still predominately run on fossil fuels, fuels that could conceivably be replaced with home grown organic fuels.

So many things could be made non-toxic, and therefor easier to dispose of without increasing detriment to the environment by making them from hemp seed oils instead of fossil fuel oils.

It's like this one little innocuous plant is standing there trying to hand you a $100 bill and we keep fighting with a chunk of oil shale for 50 cents.

Not to mention the simple social cost of legalization, the amount on non-violent hemp users in prison would become non-existent, reducing the cost of maintaining prisoners in america dramatically as a large percentage of non-violent criminal offenders or minority hemp users.

Science itself and the health care industry could benefit as Cannabanoids (compounds within the cannabis sativa plant) have been found to neutralize and even kill some cancer cells without effecting the surrounding tissue could be more readily tested and examined and if their potential holds true to the initial findings things like breast cancer, leukemia, prostate cancer, etc. may no longer be life threatening or even intimidating diagnosis by doctors.

The rate at which the plant grows and its oxygen output are so formidable as to perhaps even make extended space travel an option using the plant literally as an oxygen producing plant within a space faring vehicle.

In all seriousness, searching for more oil, digging for more fossil fuels, nuclear power, all potentially available but with the fossil fuels there is only a finite amount so any new discoveries are themselves a temporary fix and in another however many years this problem will surface again. Nuclear energy produces incredible amounts of energy, but also an incredibly toxic and dangerous waste that if relied upon solely could be even more dangerously contaminating to the environment then all of our current practices combined.

Organics, either today or in the not to distant future (assuming no one gets cold fusion off the ground) appear to be the one re-occurring, safely sustainable, environmentally sound solution to our fuel and energy needs and they are blatantly ignored and routinely condemned.(mostly by major chemical and pharmaceutical)

I don't know what else to tell you.

 

I know what to tell you THLC. Tenguy is just going to LOVE this answer. Just about as much as he loves me.

 

hi

 

wtf

 

Well. It's different, I'll give it that Stumbler, but seriously.

We have gas.
Gas shortage in the 70's.
We have gas
Gas shortage in 2000.

That's 30 years. That isn't even a whole Generation. Let's mix it up or we'll be doing this again when I'm 60 and can't afford this shit.

 

In the early 70's the prophets of doom said that by 1985 we would be out of natural gas and by 1990 out of oil.

Funny we never run out of one thing - prophets of doom!.

 

just a reminder for you (and me ) brits

asda cutting to 90p per litre

 

We'll probably be using gasoline in our cars for the next 50 years.

 

Your post addresses what is clearly an answer to part of our long range energy concerns, what the biomass is is rather academic, we have the resources and the ability to expand the production of bio fuels.

However, the increase in bio fuel production comes at a rather high cost, not only in dollars, but in reduction of our potential to produce foodstuffs and feeds. There are many other alternative methods to produce fuels that have less impact on one of our very strong suits.

But that was discussed in finite detail in a thread (or was it threads) some months ago.

This thread was "Whats up with the gasoline prices".

Sitting here reviewing the thread this morning I found a point that Stumbler had made and I had missed. First was his question then a response to my answer:

He seems to have ignored a very important fact about refining petroleum, you can not simply distill either gasoline or diesel from crude oil. Crude oil is a complex blend of hydrocarbons, while light and heavy, sweet and high sulfur have varying viscositities and impurities, they all have about the same content of potential distillates.

You cannot extract a different ratio of distillates than about 19 gallons of gasoline and 9.6 gallons of diesel per 42 gallon barrel.

The only way you can change the make up in hydrocarbons is by cracking, or breaking down the hydrocarbons and then re-assembling them. This is a much more expensive process and is used in the production of chemicals.

We have a situation today where the gasoline demand is down, but the diesel demand is up, this results in a glut of gasoline. To move the finished products through the distribution channels and then allow the production of more diesel, the price of gasoline dropped.

The problem is that the consumption of gasoline did not increase, therefore there is a more acute shortage of diesel. The price of diesel reflects that shortage.

 

Neil Young and John Goodin's Linc Volt Conversion

https://www.lincvolt.com/



[FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica] The Automotive X Prize, a competition for 100 MPG vehicles has been announced and the Goodwin Young "Linc Volt" team has had its "letter of intent" to participate accepted. A qualifying race will be held in 2009 and the final race from California to Washington D.C. will take place in 2010.

Linc Volt is a 2.5 ton Lincoln Continental Mk IV convertible manufactured by Ford motors in 1959. At 19.5 feet long, it was the longest car of its era. A new series-hybrid system for powering the car is in the final stages of tuning and development. Testing is scheduled for March and April.

"Linc Volt" a film by Neil Young, is in production at Shakey Pictures, under the direction of Bernard Shakey, produced by L.A. Johnson. Filming has been ongoing over the past 6 months. No release date for the film has been announced.
[/FONT]