Gas prices

[Charles_Main]

The price dropped to $3.88 because demand is down. It has nothing to do with Bush.

Bullshit Kirk. Bush effected the price of a barrel of oil. Or do you actually think world wide demand for oil has dropped?

See in kirks imaginary world things are only effected by one factor and not all factors.

Prices have gone down because of a combination of factors. In this case 2 of those factors are slightly less demand because of high prices, and speculation that we might actually drill because Bush lifted the executive ban.

See only in the fantasy world of Die hard partisans are things not effected by all the factors, and only by the ones that suit your blind partisanship.

 

[CA95380]

Interesting website - regarding "taxes" on gasoline (by state) ...

Gas Taxes

*Note - Source: American Petroleum Institute 1/13/05

 

[Zoomie1980]

Yeah, 75% of that is taxes right. You did that to yourselves by electing Tax and spenders.

Meanwhile we pay 4 bucks a gallon and only about 12% is actually staying in our country in the form of taxes. 87.5% of it is going off to fund terrorism

Your country is probably the size of an average American state. The average miles an American travels to and from work is enough to likely drive halfway across the pint size little flea trap country you live in. It's 800 mile from Chicago to Denver and from Kansas City to Houston. It's 250 miles from Houston to Dallas and Houston alone is 100 miles across!

Life is simply DIFFERENT here. And the main reason gas is $8-10-12 dollars a gallon is the taxes your worthless welfare state governments collect to pay for your broken socialist state.

 

[Paulie]

Your country is probably the size of an average American state. The average miles an American travels to and from work is enough to likely drive halfway across the pint size little flea trap country you live in. It's 800 mile from Chicago to Denver and from Kansas City to Houston. It's 250 miles from Houston to Dallas and Houston alone is 100 miles across!

Life is simply DIFFERENT here. And the main reason gas is $8-10-12 dollars a gallon is the taxes your worthless welfare state governments collect to pay for your broken socialist state.

Charles lives in the US, dummy.

 

[Zoomie1980]

I just paid 3.84 a gallon and felt like I was getting a deal.

THe most amazing there here is that it took the stock market almost a full year to fall 20%. Oil has fallen almost 25%, LOST ONE FOURTH ITS VALUE in less than TWO WEEKS!!!!

Why? S-P-E-C-U-L-A-T-I-O-N. Market in this day and age have little to with scientific models and technicals. It is almost 100% driven by PSYCHOLOGY and and lately, what amounts to mass hysteria. And the fundamental psychology in the energy market has begun to change. These speculative lemmings that all leaped on the oil market after stocks and real estate lost it's luster are starting to do exactly what they did to those markets and psychology has turned from mass hysteria over critical shortages to one where the supply-demand equation is actually quite stable and always has been.

Oil's REAL value is about $40 or a barrel. THat's what it costs to get it out of the ground and to the refinery with some hefty producer profit thrown in. That's the down side target at some time if enough people in the market ever get convinced we aren't going to run short of oil for quite some time yet. (We might but not for several more years).

What is also surprising to me is that refiners are not taking the chance to make some money for themselves on the way down. So far, they have been left completely out of the profit game during this insane run up.

The really big danger is that prices might drop so fast and so far as to allow us all to return to our bad habits, and it's been this recent change of habits that has turned the psychology of the market around in such a short time.

 

[Zoomie1980]

Charles lives in the US, dummy.

I meant the Euroweenie that he responded to.

 

[Chris]

Bullshit Kirk. Bush effected the price of a barrel of oil. Or do you actually think world wide demand for oil has dropped?

See in kirks imaginary world things are only effected by one factor and not all factors.

Prices have gone down because of a combination of factors. In this case 2 of those factors are slightly less demand because of high prices, and speculation that we might actually drill because Bush lifted the executive ban.

See only in the fantasy world of Die hard partisans are things not effected by all the factors, and only by the ones that suit your blind partisanship.

Prices always go down after the 4th of July.

Supply and demand sets the price of oil.

 

[Zoomie1980]

Exactly, Besides No matter what we do, Gas is not going to come down a lot from where it is now. I mean it is not going to go back to less than 2 bucks a gallon no matter what we do. SO the oil companies will still be making plenty of money, and would only make less by cutting back production. Because people will just use less again.

I feel the same way about OPEC nations. I am aware in the past they have cut production to raise prices, but today Demand is rising so fast around the world. I think there is much less danger of that. Just because we start producing more, does not mean they will cut production, because no matter how much more we produce, it is not going to out pace the growth of Demand, in developing nations. OPEC will simply sell more Oil to them, as we buy less from them.

Besides this is not about prices for me, that is a side issue, The real issue is getting off of foreign oil. For 2 mains reasons. To stop sending so much money over seas, and keep it in our own economy, which will have the added benefit of cutting our overall trade Deficit. If you ask me those reasons are more than good enough to drill as much of our own oil as we can.

Even if the price of a barrel of OIL does not go down one cent, and the Price of Gas does not either. It will still benefit us greatly to be using our own oil instead of buying it from other nations. Just imagine how much better our economy would be doing if the 700 Billion dollars are year we spend on oil was staying in our economy instead of going over seas.

Actually demand is NOT rising very fast at all. In fact it has virtually stopped in its tracks this year. It's down almost 5% now in the US, the biggest consumer in the world, still consuming more than double India and China combined. We are at the beginning of some rather fundamental changes in energy production now. The wheel is beginning to finally turn towards alternatives. It will take two or more decades to complete the transition but we are definitely entering it now. It's a lot behind the fundamental psych change that is beginning to affect the market.

 

[Zoomie1980]

Prices always go down after the 4th of July.

Supply and demand sets the price of oil.

Supply and demand has not set the price of oil in years. It is the most plentiful major resource traded on open markets in the world today. It costs about $25 to produce a barrel and get it to refineries. If it were simply obeying price and demand it would be trading in the high 30s to mid 40's today....

 

[Chris]

Supply and demand has not set the price of oil in years. It is the most plentiful major resource traded on open markets in the world today. It costs about $25 to produce a barrel and get it to refineries. If it were simply obeying price and demand it would be trading in the high 30s to mid 40's today....

I hope you are right.

 

[Zoomie1980]

I hope you are right.

If ever needed any empirical proof that the common person could see easily, that speculation COMPLETELY and UTTERLY taken over the market take a look at the daily price fluctuations in oil the last two weeks.

After a precipitous decline early in the week from records near $150 it plummeted to about $127 by late in the first week after its record. No surprise as the news of the day was declining demand (even though supply shipment and actual contract sales have been unchanged in weeks). But then a little tropical storm that was headed nowhere near the oil platforms or refineries of the upper Texas coast, based some completely UNFOUNDED FEAR, oil shot up last Monday and Tuesday to $133. This was not even a hurricane and headed nowhere NEAR the oil platforms. Complete nonsense but the moronic speculators still saw fit to run oil up $6 on completely FALSE news!!!

Once this minimal hurricane made landfall, oil went right back to it's downward move....

As for war with Iran, well for eight years Iran and Iraq fought the most ferocious, murderous war since WWII and oil plummeted to $18 a barrel durning that war. And that was a REAL war with bombs going off and everything, not something that might happen. And Iran tried like hell to shut off Iraqi oil shipments.

We have had eight wars in the middle east since WWII. And it seldom effected the price of oil. We have always had war in the Middle East. Nigeria has always been in a mess, at least since 1960. The oil keeps flowing and up until the last four years Nigerian unrest has NEVER had any effect on oil.

Same with Venezuela. Latin American governments have ALWAYS been UNSTABLE.

It's just that oil has never been a serious speculative commoditiy....until about four years ago...ANd it is produced in about same surplus level (1 to 2 million barrels a day) that it has been produced at for over 40 years. It's all speculation driven by mass media FEAR that something MIGHT happen, that has actually been happenning already for decades anyway.