Gas Prices EASE Up

[Ron61]

Maybe the rest of the nation is going to catch up with us soon.

Ron

[Scott S]

Industrial diesel is starting to hit pretty hard, I am spending over a $1000 a day to run four machines.

Scott S

[Ron61]

Scott,

I never noticed the price of diesel as those tanks are off to the back of the gas pumps, but a friend who has a small paving business said it was worse than gas in some places. Maybe back to wood burning steam tractors and such.

Ron

[Wayne Maybury]

$100 a barrel oil is just around the corner.

Believe it or not, gasoline prices haven't really increased in Canada as oil is priced in US dollars. A few years ago, it took almost CDN$1.60 to buy US$1.00. Now it only takes CDN$.92 to but one greenback. Oil prices haven't changed much at all in Canadian dollars.

The US dollar is tanking compared to most international currencies and the Canadian dollar is actually gaining strength primarily due to oil and a fairly robust economy. Of course this strong dollar is placing our manufacturing sector at risk.

Wayne

[Ron61]

Wayne,

I don't think we have seen the bottom of this yet. Foreclosures around here are at record highs and a year ago there was a big fight between the people and a developer about some land about 5 miles down the freeway from me. They were going to bull doze the trees and build houses and the people voted it down. He went to the local politicians who had a judge declare the vote illegal, and not only that they raised our utility prices by more than double to cover providing utilities to this dam place as it won't be in the city and doesn't have to pay any monthly utility bills. Now the land is bull dozed bare and the place will go on the auction block in 6 months if they don't come up with several hundred thousand in taxes they forgot to have declared illegal. I hope that the politicians who were in on this lose their houses too. I just can't see the logic of building right now when it seems half the homes in this area are fighting to stay out of foreclosure.

Ron

[imagine2frolic]

Can someone explain to me a reasonable to answer to my question? Last year when oil was $60+ a barrel gas was the same price as it is now at $95 a barrel. I am wondering if we were getting the dirty end of the stick?

[Ron61]

Supply and demand. According to the geological society we have used half of all known oil reserves in the world as of last November I believe it was and are on the down side now. And with more and more countries using more and more, it is going to continue to get higher and higher. Right now the big argument is if the next all out war will be fought because of oil or water. If the drought we are in continues for another several years, California, Nevada, and Arizona are going to be in a bad way. The Semi Valley which is a huge agriculture area and has a gross income that is the 5th largest in the world could turn back into desert and then there would be food shortages. I don't think if this happens, people are going to be as concerned about the price of oil as they are about getting water to drink and food to eat. If you get a chance to the the Mega Disaster show on the drought, watch it.

Ron

[Wes Tausend]

Originally Posted by imagine2frolic

Can someone explain to me a reasonable to answer to my question? Last year when oil was $60+ a barrel gas was the same price as it is now at $95 a barrel. I am wondering if we were getting the dirty end of the stick?

Heck, we are only paying $2.99 a gallon here as of last night, when I filled my recently inherited Impala. I might have to go back to the old '94 Escort since it got 31 mpg city vs the impala's 20. The Escort is literally in a pasture.

My wife's now getting about 43 mpg in the city, a far cry from the 60 mpg city that Toyota advertised for their Hybrid Prius. She's still complaining about gas having gone up though.

BP is the dominent supplier here. Maybe there is an advantage to buying British fuel?

Probably not according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP . The local stations were Amoco, now the same as BP. It's pretty much us consumers against a giant worldwide industry. It's no wonder that we hear skepticism of environmental concerns from international propoganda sources such as the
( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai...climate104.xml ) that Roscoe posted the other day.
Can you imagine the profit carnage if proponents of climate change and early adoption of alternative fuels were allowed to have unchecked say?

Sounds like BP openly fought environmentalists and conservationists in the beginning:
"...BP/Amoco was a member of the Global Climate Coalition an industry organisation established to promote global warming skepticism but withdrew in 1997..." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP#Environmental_record
)

Of course there is no proof that they still are helping foster the dis-information campaigns just to enhance their bottom line.


...

[427 S/O]

Scott, you really average 300 gal. of diesel a day?...WOW!. I'm lucky, after early retirement I started a Skid Steer (Bobcat) service, the Bobcat burns about 7-10 gal. a day...

[Scott S]

Originally Posted by 427 S/O

Scott, you really average 300 gal. of diesel a day?...WOW!. I'm lucky, after early retirement I started a Skid Steer (Bobcat) service, the Bobcat burns about 7-10 gal. a day...

Almost all of my machines burn 10-12 gallons an hour.....

Our contract log truckers are getting 4.8-5.2 miles to the gallon at $3.35 for highway diesel.


There are 44 gallons of crude to a barrel, /$100 would be a starting cost of $2.27 then add refining and transportation + retail markup.

[Dirty Harry]

How did the gas price at my normal gas stop go up 46 cents overnight? If there were 20,000 gallons stored in the underground tanks, that inventory just got a lot more valuable in just a few hours. A .46 increase against a $2.79 price is a pretty hefty percentage.

[Ron61]

Harry,

We had a Chevron station here in Cottonwood which is a small town about 20 miles South of here and doesn't sell much gas. The owner there had just filled his tanks a day or so before a big .56¢ increase so he was selling it at the price he got it for until he ran out. The company sent a supervisor out to tell him that if he didn't raise the price to the new level, they would not supply him with gas any more and would see to it that no one else would. He asked them why he had to raise it as he never gave the new price for it and they told him it was none of his business, just do what we tell you. Since he is the only station in town, he had no choice as the people there depend on him.

Ron

[Maricopa]

How did the gas price at my normal gas stop go up 46 cents overnight? If there were 20,000 gallons stored in the underground tanks, that inventory just got a lot more valuable in just a few hours.

A gas station that fills it's tanks one day with fuel that it paid (as an example only) $1.00 a gallon for wholesale and is charging $1.10 a gallon retail has to raise the price when their next shipment of fuel will cost them $1.15 a gallon. If not they will lose money. It's called replacement cost.

Ron that retailer was an idiot, I'm not surprised they sent out a supervisor to spank him.