prudhoe bay shutdown

... another great excuse to the consumers...

Last week, gas prices jumped $.35 over night to $3.19/gal, but only a few stations
made the leap. Several stayed at $2.86 and by noon, the price settled to $3.07. They must have got their wires crossed and thought the Alaskan facility was going down last week.

In Canada we have always had higher gas prices than the US because of taxes. But on my trip down east (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) I was seeing $1.20/litre. A litre is almost exactly a US quart so you can call it $4.80Cdn/gallon. Currency exchange brings that to about $4.10/gallon.

The kicker? New Brunswick gov't recently stepped in to regulate gas prices. They wanted to stop the wild swings in gas prices. The result - they get screwed all the time rather than just some of the time.

Got back to Ontario and the prices were fluctuating between $1.00 and $1.10

Somehow I don't think this is ever going to get better. In five years we will be looking at $1.00/litre and laughing that gas was ever that cheap.

i paid $1.31(CDN) for Sunoco 94 octane, just because it was hot outside(Thats what the clerk said)..........

We are only now paying what I paid in the late seventies in Germany, Italy was even more. The days of cheap gas are gone and will never return, fortunately I happen to have economical cars that still perform very well. After looking at Jakes latest results for fuel economy we should all be lining up to protect him from being gobbled up by some big corporation!!

Ian Stott
Moncton

PS. Price regulation by the government is stupid, it is ineffective plus it adds to the price due to admin. costs. I really get ticked off when well meaning people try to mess with a free market, 99 percent of the time they only make it worse. I guess it helps them get elected. I am now paying $1.30 litre for high test, which is only 91 octane here. BY the way a US gallon is 4 litre's, a Canadian or Imperial gallon is 4.55 litre's.

OUCH!

A fellow on another list says the price of gas in southern England was the equivalent of $2.25 Canadian per liter, so double what we are paying. Strangely enough, his handle is Lotus 15.

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this but I think we as Americans have had it easy for a long time. The rest of the world has been paying double what we have for years. There is a very easy way to get gas prices to drop. Stop driving big SUV's and gas guzzling cars. If we all did, there would be such a glut of gas, the prices would drop like a rock (for the entire world economy)

When I drive down a California freeway and every other vehicle is an extended cab pickup or a Ford Expedition, I do not have pity for us. We chose to live this way and I won't blame the oil companies for making money. It's simply supply and demand and profit. Personally, I don't want to pay either, but $4-$5.00 a gallon would solve the problem. People would finally start driving economical cars, gas usage would drop, fuel inventories would go up and prices would fall.

Take a trip to Europe, 90% drive small economical cars and lot's of motorcycles. Here, eonomical is a small SUV and a full dress Harley Davidson.

The solution is ours, we just don't want to give up the luxury...........We never will until we are forced to........

I don't think it matters what we drive based on fuel prices in the historical past of Europeans who traditionally have always driven smaller and more economically pruden cars. Strange as it seems, most cars where price of fuel is extremely high to begin with are the ones that are very economical and the government has tacked on high taxes to overcome the lack of taxable fuel burned. Go Figure.
It's just a matter of who controls the oil per barrel market and we all are seeing exactly who that is without going into the politics we dunk our heads into the sand about in this particular arena of car buffs. Not a place to discuss until the damage is done and well entrenched seems silly since this is also a part of owning a 914.
If anyone thinks this post is political, speak up. I will delete the post.

MikeCool

and companies like GM has not helped at all....they should be ashamed of thier $1.99 gas deal on vehicles like the H2 with unlimited miles during the offer (why don't they just come out and say it public "Screw the limited oil supply, just buy a GM vehicle cause we need the money right now"

Crap, you all make me feel bad now working on my 914 V8 project.
Maybe I should switch to a 914 Hybrid version ... where shall I put the battery packs?

Besides the disruptions, what worries me too is the rising price of developing oil & gas fields ... and we need to do that continuously. The big rigs used to develop big offshore fields are now $500,000/day, up from about $150,000/day 2 years ago. And the rest of the prices follows the same trend. Drilling on these deep offshore fields costs about $750,000/day now. I'm sure this won't make you feel sorry for the oil companies and that's not the point here. The problem is that most of them still do their economics based on lower oil prices (like $35-45 per barrel). So right now all companies are trying to increase their production by buying other companies (they all have wads of cash anyway). That doesn't increase the total output though.

Mike(Cool)... I don't think that was political at all. Keep it there.

One thing though. When comparing US to Euro (or Canada) you have to keep in mind that approx 66% of the price is taxes. Back that out and the cost is comparable to US prices.

Second thing. Oil is a commodity. Therefore it is subject to price speculation, influence etc. In recent financial times, it has become a haven for banks and investment houses to mitigate the effect of the underperformance of large cap stocks. Basically making the price more artificial than before. We all pay for this.

Lastly, what PRS stated is true and right on the money. Until we stop purchasing the gas guzzlers and demand that the car companies make fuel efficient cars, not hybrids or EV's, real fuel efficient cars we have only ourselves to blame. Although I will not put myself in that category. I have always driven small fuel efficient cars and always will. I don't see wasting money on those stupid oversized station wagons. Vote with your dollars people, save the speeches.

There was a very interesting special report in the 7/29 Chicago Tribune:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/special...1&cset=true

Skip

What are Jakes latest results for fuel econonomy? Jake Raby? Please explain!

I am pretty close to starting a thread asking about modifications and tuning to achieve 40+ mpg with a 1.7. I know Joe Sharp has claimed 49 mpg with a teener. I think a few simple aero mods, larger diam tires, timing adjust, and other tweaks (what are they?) could really help.

SUVs suck for daily drivers! Small sports cars rule!

If you change the diameter of your tires you'll either need to recalibrate your odometer or use some external source for measuring mileage...

Skip

Maybe not in the pure classic sense, but certainty in reality, the oil market is operating like a monopoly.

If the US government threatened to break up the oil companies, like they did telecommunications years ago, what do you think would happen to the price of gas?

I have been able to squeeze 38 average out of the 912E with a recent tune up, and it has 100K miles on it. At times I have gotten over 40 MPG out of it before when it had lower miles. I can say that drianing out the 21,000 mile oil (went that far on one oil change) was good for a solid 5 MPG! Before i spent a solid day servicing it I was down to 27 MPG at best, but it had been neglected since 2003 with hardly anything done to it...

This week I am finishing my wiife's "Super 2 Liter+" for her beetle vert... The first one did so well that I decided to boost this one and see what we could get mileage wise under nomal driving conditions with a female driver and about 200 ponies..

I have been witholding many of my results with the "Super 2 Liter" project engines simply because most of them have been unbelievable thus far.

A local TV station in Atlanta got word of it and has been on my ass to do an interview, but I could care less...

I am working to decrease the cost of these higher MPG engines, right now they are the most expensive thing in my line up, even more than a sub 2.8L engine-

I have been able to squeeze 38 average out of the 912E with a recent tune up, and it has 100K miles on it. At times I have gotten over 40 MPG out of it before when it had lower miles. I can say that drianing out the 21,000 mile oil (went that far on one oil change) was good for a solid 5 MPG! Before i spent a solid day servicing it I was down to 27 MPG at best, but it had been neglected since 2003 with hardly anything done to it...

This week I am finishing my wiife's "Super 2 Liter+" for her beetle vert... The first one did so well that I decided to boost this one and see what we could get mileage wise under nomal driving conditions with a female driver and about 200 ponies..

I have been witholding many of my results with the "Super 2 Liter" project engines simply because most of them have been unbelievable thus far.

A local TV station in Atlanta got word of it and has been on my ass to do an interview, but I could care less...

I am working to decrease the cost of these higher MPG engines, right now they are the most expensive thing in my line up, even more than a sub 2.8L engine-

Great!!! Get off my roads


Actualy I kinda came to my senses and will probably lease a new scion xa soon. Sick of having to work on cars all the time and hey the mileage in the xa isn't bad. Cheap transport.

I really want a VW lupo but they don't sell it here.

Modulo taxes the government imposes, I suspect not much, for a couple
reasons. First, crude oil is a commodity, not a service monopoly.
The price of a barrel of crude is set in the commodity exchanges
(NYMEX mostly). There are lots and lots of folks other than the oil
companies playing in that particular sandbox. Second, many of the
supply side players in the oil business are government-owned
monopolies (such as Venezuela's oil company).

Skip

Problem is, the gov. can't do that anymore -- BP is a multinational conglomerate. If we pushed them away, we would be cut off and boned. BP also owns valero, Exxon/Mobil, Arco, Chevron, Texaco, Sunoco, Shell and almost every other major brand for selling or producing oil in the US. If we told BP they need to break off their companies due to monopoly/antitrust actions, they would surely pull out of the U.S. altogether. They've got other customers with just as high consumption. Europe, China, Japan... We might be a large share in their market and our gas might cost less at the pump, but BP is enough in control that they would not suffer by cutting us off.

I must preface my comments by saying that I’m not an economist, only stating what I see happening.

Good point about BP, but I disagree that they would pull out. Their license to steal isn’t going to change in the short term, so why leave given the profits they are seeing..

But in any event in the past when monopolies have been broken up, the “real competition” created typically corrected the monopolist situation.

All I can say is its making race gas more and more attractive for my turbo charged car. Race gas prices haven't changed much in the past two years. If premium unleaded gets into $4 range I may just switch.

$4 a gallon may be the point where US starts truly developing alternate sources of fuel in commercially viable ways.

The thing that is sad about out of control gas prices is that it hurts rural and suburban middle/lower income America. Most Urban populations are already seeing great improvements in public transportation, alternate fuel vehicles, etc. Guess it wont be long before Wal Mart starts offering shuttle service to its super stores!

I have been reading and hearing about more and more gas related crime in rural and suburban areas. Some gas stations have stopped taking at pump credit cards due to large amounts of fraduelent gas purchases. Wont be long before you can buy black market gas cut with paint thinner on street corners!

I'm pretty sure BP doesnt own Chevron yet and they aquired Texaco. I think Valero is a stand alone company as well

Hmmm...

Did you know Condoleezza Rice used to be a board member for Chevron?

Chevron goes like this:

Standard Oil Company (1870-1911) -> Chevron (1911-current) -> BP (1909-current)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_Corporation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP

They already exist. It's kinda pissing me off actualy. I want to buy a VW lupo right now and I can't. 90mpg!!! Is there some reason these types of cars are not even for sale in the US?

Instead we got these bullshit hybrids that right off the bat sounded like a horrible idea.

Brando, where did you come up with that information? it is wrong.

BP has absolutely nothing to do with valero, Exxon/Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, Sunoco, Shell, except for the fact that they are in the same industry and are in direct competition to each other. Try not to post things that are not even remotely true. That is so far off the wall it makes my head spin.

EDITTED for disclosure:
I own shares of Valero, Shell, Sunoco, Tesoro, and ConocoPhillips.
BP does own Arco, but chevron and Exxonmobil could swallow up BP and still have room left for desert.

IMO, COP is the hot ticket in the oil industry. It used to be Valero but I think COP has a chance to double in the next two years.

Sammy, I posted my links. Read up on the individual companies and see where they end up.

When the vote is counted, and it might be as before, the question remains who controls all the oil empires, now so rich and powerful and the global control kings whose goals they sought, attained so quick:

Who made it happen? Was it Dumb or Dumber?
What made it happen? Excuses or just plain old apathy?

MikeCool

It's marketing, just to get people in the door, I suspect that most buyers would take the price reduction up front, or get them out out of their upside down trade in.

Detroit builds what people buy, I don't really think most Americans are truly concerned about the price of gas.

Maybe reading the material there closely would help. BP bought old division of Standard oil, not Chevron. Standard Oil was split up into 5 companies by government. Chevron emeged as a powerful company and is not owned by BP. I own stock in Chevron and havent seen any notices about a BP take over in the 30 years I have owned the stock ...and I'm not sure how you made connection of BP with Valero and Exxon?

Dude, I went back and read that link you supplied about BP, it says absolutely nothing about owning those otehr corporations or "brands".

BP (British Petroleum) is a PLC based in London and publically traded on the NYSE.

Exxon/Mobil (XOM NYSE) is also a publically traded corporation and is not owned in whole or part by BP, it is so big that BP couldn't buy enough of XOM to even become a blip on the radar screen.

Chevron is also a huge publically traded corporation and is not owned by BP (it's much bigger than BP).
(Chevron bought Texaco and was known as Chevron-Texaco until last year when they dropped the texaco part).

Valero is a publically traded corporation ticker symbol VLO on the NYSE.
I own more shares of VLO than BP does, which is probably zero.
I've dined with the former CEO and chairman of the board (Bill Greehey) on two occasions and if BP had anything to do with the corporation I would know about it.

Tesoro, TSO on the NYSE, Again I own more of Tesoro than BP does.

Royal Dutch Shell is also bigger than BP and is owned partly by the queen of england, but not by BP. I know that because because it is public information, and because I work for Shell and i'm a shareholder.

If you would like I could list the major stockholders of each of these corporations, it would only take a minute to look up.

D'oh.
Reading Comprehension: 1
Brando: 0

Boy I tell ya, if BP did own all those other corporations I'd like to be a shareholder, they would be so big they could buy Europe one day and China the next

BP commercials suck.

$1.40 per litre for 96 octane down here. That works out at about US $3.75 for one of your gallons. Diesels are starting to become very popular, but only the europeans make them.

.....and we have a winner!!

Only part about the price of gas that bothers me is how much of it is due to taxes. And yes, I know our taxes are low compared to other counrties so no need to rattle off how much the taxes are elsewhere.

You wanna know who owns ExxonMobil? Here ya go:

MAJOR DIRECT STOCK HOLDERS (FORMS 3 & 4)
Holder Shares Reported
RAYMOND, LEE R. 3,640,879 14-Dec-05
LONGWELL, HARRY J. 964,008 10-Dec-04
MCGILL, STUART R. 804,375 1-May-06
TILLERSON, REX W. 562,833 29-Nov-05
SIMON, J. STEPHEN 552,879 2-Aug-06

TOP INSTITUTIONAL HOLDERS
Holder Shares
Barclays Global Investors UK Holdings Ltd 245,473,808
STATE STREET CORPORATION 186,861,618
VANGUARD GROUP, INC. (THE) 157,056,604
JP MORGAN CHASE & COMPANY 108,004,304
Mellon Financial Corporation 94,660,139
AXA 94,497,086
NORTHERN TRUST CORPORATION 85,319,949
WELLINGTON MANAGEMENT COMPANY, LLP 80,867,713
FIDELITY MANAGEMENT & RESEARCH CORP 77,766,034
CAPITAL RESEARCH AND MANAGEMENT Co 69,224,100

TOP MUTUAL FUND HOLDERS

Holder Shares
VANGUARD 500 INDEX FUND 57,307,357
COLLEGE RETIREMENT EQUITIES FUND-STOCK 40,013,508 WASHINGTON MUTUAL INVESTORS FUND 34,726,600 VANGUARD INSTITUTIONAL INDEX FUND 30,940,332 VANGUARD TOTAL STOCK MARKET INDEX FUND 29,461,292
SPDR TRUST SERIES 1 26,735,766
LORD ABBETT AFFILIATED FUND 15,388,783 FIDELITY EQUITY-INCOME FUND 13,908,274 SPARTAN U.S. EQUITY INDEX FUND 12,794,897 AMERICAN BALANCED FUND 11,700,000


You will notice that the vast majority of shares are owned by investment funds and investment corporations. That means mutual funds, 401Ks, retirement funds, etc. You will find the same patern for any large oil company.
Most of XOM is owned by me, you, the old lady next door. Anyone with a few bucks in a 401K or pension or retirement account. As I have said many times, WE are the big bad oil company.

Yepper Sammy 'tis true werd

Americans LOVE to complain. We want what we want (gas guzzlers) without regard of the consequences. Then when gas prices go up, we get to complain. It's never our problem. We point the finger elsewhere. When gas prices exceed $4 a gallon, people will continue buying suburbans and hummers because it's the american way, and they will continue to bitch about gas prices because, really, it doesn't bother them all that much.

All of that aside, I am happy to note that there is an absolute infestation of Prius' in the bay area.

Jen

I understand that Honda quit making Hybrids.

Maybe we should all switch to economical cars... Like turbo 1.7 Type 4 914s

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Gore, that you again? Dang it, do I always ruffle your feathers?

Not who I was referring to at all. Must be what you think.
I say what I have to say without needing others to suggest what I said. You do intrude with comments like that to all it looks like just reading this thread alone seems to show.

I am referring to the public in general as well as myself as dumb and dumber.
Who we elect is who we elect, at least most times it legally is and being non partisan, I accept the choice of who the majority has chosen.

BTW. I did dinner with BG's but I don't think I am qualified to comment about Microsoft's policy.BTW, dinner was on a tv tray and BG's was on tv announcing his retirement. Yeah, cute but true.
Just ignore me. I'll do the same for you. LOL

MikeCool

South Park had an episode on the Hybrid phenomenon, about a month ago, I think it was called Smug.

I'm waiting for my 9 digit bonus check that's in no way related to the performance of my duties...

Nothing better then a car thats loaded with the latest technology so that it can get worst mileage then cars did 20 years ago

Cool dude, it looks like I reached a conclusion from your post that was in error. It seemed to me that you were infering our current executive branch was responsible for the high oil prices but your clarification indicates my assumption was wrong.
For that I ask that you accept my appology.
I will try to be more careful about that in the future.