The "Oil Prices" thread.

[Avatar]

Corn is not the answer. Currently corn is about to get a whole lot more expensive, anyway.

[LZ1]

@Fry

Can’t grow enough corn.

Corn is in damn near everything Americans eat. I dare you to find a packaged food that doesn’t have high fructose corn syrup or some other byproduct of corn, beef that wasn’t corn fed,

Wait. You were joking weren’t you?

I was joking :lol:

[JayS]

@Avatar

I don’t understand why the people of this country even think to look to our government to solve this problem. Howard Stern mentioned the other day (I know he’s an ass, but a good point was made); he made the statement that he hasn’t bought gas in 20+ years. He doesn’t know what it is like to worry about how much it costs to fill his tank and he is not alone. Our politicians don’t know what it is to see a growing portion of their paycheck go towards their gas tank.
People have to take this matter into their own hands. It is a consumer problem that must be addressed by consumers. Find a different way. I don’t know what the perfect solution is for everyone. My lifestyle has changed due to the cost of fuel and I’m still here. Our government has a tradition of maintaining a mostly hands-off approach to the market.

Amazing how a guy worth all those millions hasn’t noticed prices going up.
:picard:

Like I said to Newman, it’s not just about the cost of filling up YOUR gas tank, it’s about filling up the long haul trucker’s tank, the farmers tank, the tank of oil at the plastics production plant etc etc etc. It’s much bigger than your personal weekly gasoline bill.

And the government has always played a huge roll in the economy. They constantly juggle interest rates to keep the economy strong. And they set those margin requirements on stocks because of the abuses we’re now seeing with commodities. They will eventually set these requirements on commodities like oil, if the commodities exchange doesn’t take care of it themselves as they’ve been suggesting they will.

EDIT:
About 25 million people live in the 10 largest cities in the US. That means the other 275 million live in the smaller cities, suburbs, or rural areas. That 275 million probably need at least 1 car in their family because the places they live tend to lack the great public transit places like NY have. So Howard’s suggestion of “just don’t buy gas” doesn’t work for most people.

[Avatar]

Our government plays a role in our economy, I won’t debate that. When compared to other governments around the world (UK, EU, China, most Arab states) our government takes a less active role.

[justa4door]

@JayS

Like I said to Newman, it’s not just about the cost of filling up YOUR gas tank, it’s about filling up the long haul trucker’s tank, the farmers tank, the tank of oil at the plastics production plant etc etc etc. It’s much bigger than your personal weekly gasoline bill.

But with this the government helps the farmers and big truck companys to offset the cost some what anyway … right … farmers get there “farm bill” and the truck company gets to wirght it off and what ever other credits they get …

[boxxa]

There is ways that the government could help out. Look at Mexico. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25175249&GT1=43001

$2.50 a gallon.

Yes, our dollar is shit. Yes our demand is huge for gas. What prevents the US from doing something like this to help out our economy and help prevent Americans from dumping thousands a year into gas in the short term? Only argument I would see is that if gas went back down to under 3 a gallon, people would give up on solving the energy problem and go back to relying on gas instead of looking into alternative fuels because, well…Americans are lazy.

Gas is cheaper in Mexico because of a government subsidy intended to keep inflationary forces in check.

[brent_strong]

I’d love to see how much it would cost the government to subsidize $2.00 per gallon of gas and diesel. :lol:

[brent_strong]

Super quick research:

9.318 million barrels per day x 42 gallons per barrel

(http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip_gasoline.html#demand)

~391,000,000 gallons of gasoline used per day (no info on diesel…this is probably as bad or worse)

$782,712,000 a day to subsidize gasoline $2.00 per gallon

$23,481,360,000 per 30 days

So, 23 billion dollars per month on gasoline subsidies to bring the price per gallon down to $2.15-2.50 on average. Yeah…

[MOBOOST4U]

@JayS

2. Address the speculation problem. The quickest way to pop the oil bubble is to change the margin requirements for oil futures contracts to match the requirements they use on stocks. We came close last week but they had to go and tie the legislation to windfall profits so it got blocked. If more people start bitching about it though you’ll see this get pushed through by itself which would give it the support of both republicans and democrats.

A very valuable point. Im right there with you in saying this is what can be done the quickest and the most easily to help this mess.

[brent_strong]

Diesel fuel is:

4.1 million barrels per day x 42 gallons per barrel (I believe)

So, estimate another 12 billion dollars a month to subsidize diesel $2 per gallon (to ~3.00 per gallon). Another 20 billion or so if we wanted to subsidize it down to the $2 per gallon price point.

So…35-40 billion dollars a month.

[boxxa]

@brent_strong

Super quick research:

9.318 million barrels per day x 42 gallons per barrel

(http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip_gasoline.html#demand)

~391,000,000 gallons of gasoline used per day (no info on diesel…this is probably as bad or worse)

$782,712,000 a day to subsidize gasoline $2.00 per gallon

$23,481,360,000 per 30 days

So, 23 billion dollars per month on gasoline subsidies to bring the price per gallon down to $2.15-2.50 on average. Yeah…

So if you take that and divide it into the $530 trillion dollars so far on the war in Iraq we can subside the cost for how long…?

[MOBOOST4U]

:rolljerk:I say we fuck NASA for 5 years… that will help free up some cash for subsidizing;)

[Bovice]

whose down to do a fast and the furious style hi-jacking on a tanker truck? anyone?

[boxxa]

@Bovice

whose down to do a fast and the furious style hi-jacking on a tanker truck? anyone?

where would you hide it?

[Bovice]

hmmm good question…in the woods somewhere :gotme: lol i would have to think about an awesome hiding place before i could conduct such a mission…

[JayS]

@Bovice

whose down to do a fast and the furious style hi-jacking on a tanker truck? anyone?

I’m actually a little surprised I haven’t seen anything on the news about someone trying to steal it right from the underground tanks at the gas station. Think about how many aren’t open 24/7. Pull up, pop off the cap that covers the tanks, use a high volume pump to fill a huge tank in the bed of a pickup/van, profit.

Seems way better than stealing tiny amounts from individual cars, which is happening a lot.

[boxxa]

brute force the mobile speedpass hash keys. hard to get caught and free gas for life.

[brent_strong]

@boxxa

So if you take that and divide it into the $530 trillion dollars so far on the war in Iraq we can subside the cost for how long…?

Because spending half a TRILLION dollars more per year will obviously solve all of our problems. :banghead:

[JayS]

@boxxa

brute force the mobile speedpass hash keys. hard to get caught and free gas for life.

Hard to get caught? Pretty much every gas station has cameras now. Even the dim bulbs at the BPD are going to figure out all they need to do is match the timestamp on the camera to the timestamp on the gas purchase to figure out who it was.

[JayS]

FINALLY!

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/17/news/economy/oil_trading/index.htm?cnn=yes

Congress is waking up and realizing that pestering OPEC for more oil is not going to bring prices down.