thats why i will be riding a 50mpg motorcycle as much as i can.
these oil prices wouldn't be such a problem if the dollar wasn't so weak. I am starting to think that opec sees we are in a slump right now so they jacked up the price of crude so that they can make the slump even worse. its never a good idea to buy anything from people that hate you, openly or covertly.
It's not just that the dollar is weak so OPEC jacked up the price. That's only one side of it. I think most people don't realize things like the fact that we haven't been allowed to build any new refineries in this country for nearly 20 years because of enviromentalists complaining. Never mind that those enviro-weenies didn't have any complaints about a sewer line being forced through several backyards right next to a creek by my house, through a wetland area, etc.
Since our refining capability has never been increased to handle demand, we have to import a large amount of finished fuel from the Middle East. Because they're not only holding a hand on the taps of the oil wells, they also hold onto the taps for the finished fuels too, we can easily get bent over at the pump.
The Biggest problem with the oil right now is the fact China is buying up Every bit they can get their hands on. The fact that OPEC is'nt increasing their output is just icing on the cake. Think about it, why would they increase production when it would lower the price of a barrel of crude. Just my .02 though.
China is forcing up a lot of prices, just look at the bloated cost of metals now and how much turning in scrap generates. We've handed China our economy on a silver platter and now we're paying the price because they took the platter too. We're paying now for moving companies over there to "benefit" from cheap labor.
You may not like what I have to say but I'm saying it just the same. The REAL REASON we have this problem is mainly because we AMERICANS are spoiled rotten & even when prices go up BECAUSE WE USE SO MUCH GAS, we just keep right on driving anyway. As long as any of us refuse to cut back in some way or the other with total disregard to the prices, we are just going to keep on paying HIGHER PRICES. Like it or not but that's the real truth. And has anyone considered SLOWING DOWN on the highways? NOT in Virginia where I live they haven't. If anything they are driving faster then ever before. People's attitudes are such that they say: I bought it so I am going to drive no matter how high the gas gets but then they turn right around & started bitching & crying about how high it has become. Go figure that one out. HA!!
OPEC has already stated they do not care what people in other countries think, say do about the high prices of oil. It belongs to them & if anyone wants it they will have to pay OPEC's prices regardless how hard it becomes on everyone else. AND, gas is like cocain to ALL OF US. We ARE addicted to it & if you say you aren't then you are lying to yourself. We all have become so used to driving our cars, trucks, boats, planes, go-carts, racing machines etc etc that we #1) can't do without doing these things AND #2) we are not willing to do without either. It's a FREE country & we will do just as we damned well please regardless what anyone says. AND THEN???? We all sit back & bitch & complain about the high prices. And as long as everyone keeps this kind of attitude it is just going to keep getting worse.
I for one don't like it anymore then anyone else as the "trickle down" affect makes everything go higher in price. Food, clothes, medications, rent & everything else goes higher. And many people who work for a living & those on fixed incomes & poor paying jobs are going to be hurt the worst. AND you can believe one thing if you don't believe anything else. It's going to get a lot worse before it ever gets any better. You think the price for a gallon of gas is high now? HA!! you just wait & see what it's going to be in about 6 months. We will be wishing it was back at 3.25 a gallon. Just wait & see.
Supply & demand is just one part of the problem. GREED for the MONEY by big oil companies, share holders & suppliers & the demand by everyone to have access to oil & gas as well as no one being willing to cut back on useage is just all adding more to the BIG PROBLEM. So what's the answer??? HELL I dont' know. If I knew that I would be the richest man in the whole world. But I do know as long as the demand for gas & oil is what it is today & getting even worse, OPEC is going to drain us all dry & never look back.
Here in Virginina where I live we are paying 3.199 a gallon for regular gas with some stations charging as much as 3.259 in the northern part of the state up around Washington, DC. Have I cut back on a lot of my activities in order to save money? You damned straight I have & will do it even more if the prices keep going up & up. I like the money MORE in my pocket then I do seeing it in the pockets of the big oil companies.
Yes, there are some people out there like that. But not all of us can reduce our fuel expenditures significantly. My boss only drives his trucks to and from the job, and to fetch supplies. Because he does construction work he has to use a truck. Because it's concrete construction, we have to have at least one dump truck. The trucks get 8mpg, 9 highway. But guess what? 98% of the time the trucks never see a highway, they only go the 10-30 mile trip to work, and most of the time sit there all day until it's time to head home. When I'm not driving a dump truck for my boss I'm driving my pickup because I need something to haul my tools and any misc gear that my boss needs at the job that doesn't fit on his truck. Driving a motorcycle or car to and from work is simply not an option for me. Dragging a small trailer behind a car is even less of an option because quite often we have to get the vehicles off the road. Guess what? That means limited parking, usually in dirt/mud or if you're really lucky, on #3 or #4 limestone.
Going slower doesn't mean gas savings either. My Ranger usually gets 25-28 mpg on the highway, but I've seen it hit as high as 31. When I hit 31 mpg with it, I wasn't doing 55 on the highway... I was cruising at 70 mph. Todays cars are built around the idea of being able to do 65 mph on the highway efficiently.
Because it's a free country we're allowed the right to bitch. Places like China don't have that luxury. But you're right, we do need to do something instead of just wringing our collective hands.
Yes, it seems like many people don't realize that a significant raise in fuel prices means that everything else has to go up accordingly. It's simple economics, when something changes, everything else has to change to reach an equilibrium point. Of course, wages have to go up too, and so far there has been significant resistance to that happening from what I've see, and that's only making things worse.
Greed is part of the problem, but not all of it. Like I said earlier, the enviro-weenies have been very effective in not allowing us to produce oil from within our borders, and have prevented the construction of things like new refineries and nuclear power plants. Yet nuclear power has become something relatively clean and relatively safe. Instead we're relying on aging refineries and aging power plants burning fossil fuels, and doing it all in an inefficient manner because they've been prevented from updating their equipment. Of course, that all is only still the tip of the iceberg so to speak, there's much more to the whole problem than just that.
The reason drilling more in the US soil isn't terribly practical is expense. Arab oil is cheap. Cheap to locate, cheap to drill down to, cheap to put well heads on, and cheap to pump out.
ANWR oil is extremely expensive. Instead of drilling through sand, soil, and a little bit of shale, you're drilling through a few thousand feet of bedrock that's been folded over a hundred times. Every drill bit worn out is tens of thousands of dollars, every crack in the substrate is several million dollars to seal off and move through. Every day of drilling is a couple hundred grand. Then, even after the oil is reached, it pumps poorly. You'll need to drill extra wells all over the place simply to pressurize. Oh, yeah, and when it's not horrendously cold, it's mud. Mountains all over the place, earthquakes, mudslides, and pissed off eskimos.
And all taht bedrock and all those fractures make locating oil very hard, which is why the estimates on the amount of oil up there are all over the map. That means lots of dry wells, adding to the cost.
After all that expense, they still need to pay off the fat-assed execs. By the time it gets to the refinery and your pump it's gonna be $8/gallon.
We're never going to run out of oil in the sense that we'll pump the very last drop out of the ground. It'll just keep getting more expensive until nobody wants to buy it anymore.
We didn't get to that point because liberals are evil, or because cars don't have enough batteries. We got there because one, we waste energy all over the place. Why does it take a 5,000lbs vehicle to move a 200lbs person? Ride a damned bike. Second, the dollar is falling. Not just a little either, but huge leaps and bounds. The US economy has been puking out better than $50billion a month for ever, eventually it had to give. Other countries like China have actually been trying to prop us up because it's in their interest to do so, but now they just can't afford it anymore. A buck is less valuable, so it takes more of them to buy anything.
Ride a bike, turn off your AC, kill your TV.
At $5, I'm parking my truck except when I ACTUALLY NEED IT. Until then I'll be as wasteful as anyone else.
I'd rather pay these higher prices for our own oil than to someone overseas. In case you haven't noticed, there ain't a whole lot that's still made here in the USA. 99% of things have been shipped in from overseas.
Of course, you're also overlooking the huge amounts of oil found in other parts of our country and that there are companies chomping at the bit to get their hands on oil from ANWR.
A significant portion of the wasted energy is due to enviromentalists preventing things and politicians being too limp-wristed on all sides of the aisle to do anything about it. If we could just update our refineries and power plants we could drive the cost of fuels down because we wouldn't be wasting so much due to outdated technology.
I don't know about you but I can't ride a bike to work. I've thought several times about buying a motorcycle for transportation, but as Will said, the cost of buying one outweighs the benefits. I have to drive a truck for work, either my own pick up or my boss's dump truck. I can't drive a motorcycle to the junkyard to get an axle for my truck and I can't take a motorcycle to haul in a load of scrap metal. So it would only be useful when I go out somewhere for fun, right? Well... hate to say it, but I don't do that much because the rising fuel costs prohibit it to a large degree, which more or less eliminates the need for a motorcycle, doesn't it?
where im at we have gas from $3.38 - $3.50 and with me being 17 i can only work 13 hours a week im scheduled to work about 10 of those hours at $6.25 since if your young you get paid 85% of min. wage but i luckly got the 17 cent raise but making about $55 a week and only getting 18 mpg with my 4x4 3.0 i have to hit the pump the same day every week i fill up costing me $51 and those 4 bucks i have left has to feed me at work the days im there for that week. i think the thing that needs to be done here is all of this food stamp and WIC BS that we pay for all of these lazy people to eat more expensive and better food then most of us buy needs to stop we work to earn the money and why should i pay for someone else to eat when i hardly have food on my plate? i've also heard about the plan of why we are outsourcing jobs at from what a teacher said it is that we are giving other countries the jobs so they can make a better life and raise to our level (which is rapidly falling) so we can make the world equal and then have it balance out to all money is equal and prices will go down but i dont see how this is going to work maybe after another 50 years.
Amen! Though to me it sounds like your teacher is a socialist... world equality. I guess we should all be like Russia.
Gas has increased $2.40 here since W invaded Iraq. A jar of peanut butter has increased about $2.50, same for a gallon of milk. The national budget deficit and debt are at record levels, and W's Iraq misadventure isn't even on budget yet.
30 Years of trickled on conservative economics are coming to a head, and hopefully, the damage done can be repaired without a second republican great depression as the catalyst to fix it.
Oh, and the Democrats didn't "take over" congress. They got a working majority in the house, and a token 1 member majority in the senate. The senate republicans have set the obstruction record since then with filibusters.
Sorry, this problem is not because of George W. It's not because of the Republicans. It's actually not even really because of the Democrats. It's largely because NONE of the political parties have the balls to stand up and do what's right for the country, they're too busy lining their pockets and wringing their hands. My vote is for a necktie party.
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