So I am curious who is to blame for the current raise in gas prices? I mean, Bush got blamed for the last increase by the current administration, is it Bush again?
Who do you feel is to blame and why?
I have an interesting theory I'd like to float, but I want some opinions first. Missing? Andrew?
Yes, Bush blaming is allowed to continue for 8 years after his departure from office. It's in the rules.
Remember that time, though, when gas prices went to almost ridiculously low prices? Did he get credit for that?
I don't have an answer, but I do have a question. Why can't we drill for our own oil?
Obama. His fault. Shoulda propped up the U.S. friendly government in Egypt. Hmm?
F&B, you are starting to ask retarded questions now. "Why can't we drill for our own oil?" That's dumb.
In 2003, net imports of crude oil and refined products accounted for 56 percent of U.S. petroleum consumption
Source of above: http://www.netl.doe.gov/KeyIssues/secure_energy3a.html
So, it looks like 44% of US consumption of oil is from domestic sources. Clearly, we can, and are, drilling for our own oil. Problem is, we use more than we have, requiring we import. Finding these numbers took me about four minutes with Google.
When you say you listen to Rush, do you mean that your only source of information is Rush? You can't just dump turds (like that dumb question) and expect others on this board to clean it up, or force us to have to step around it. You're starting to head back into troll territory, man.
Short answer Bush.
It takes a lot to build, operate, and secure an oil deposit in Africa, Mideast, etc. where the largest oil reservoirs are. My experience is Americans, Canadians, Europeans don't do well in those environment, the technical challenge is no shortcoming either. So if the oil fields that supply the United State or any other country isn't a first priority to a company like Magal which is an Israeli company, gas prices in the US will rise. I'm not an expert on this, but it was what I was told from instructors I had, that it could be their job to be in places where the oil is.
1) I meant why not use the resources that have been restricted?
2) I don't get all my information from Rush, so please don't blame my ignorance or perceived ignorance on Rush.
3) I'm happy to be informed about something I hadn't known, such as our current level of domestic production, but if you must insult me because of my ignorace or perceived ignorance, it's very crappy of you to use a word like "retarded" as a put-down, not for my sake, but for the sake of those who are so challenged.
4) I was never in "troll territory," but when someone uses a person's posts as an excuse to continually insult him, that's what I perceive to be trolling.
5) You could have made a more effective post with one or two lines stating your facts, and refraining from the one-upmanship.
It's all Clinton's fault....
Oh look, JoelinPDX is back!
*dryly* Oh goody. Woop woop woop.
I mean, 267 posts in almost six days; there's got to be a few eyebrows being raised around here.........
Ya know...
GAS isn't really expensive to me these days...
..I don't buy any..
F&B, if you put as much effort into crafting your initial questions as you did into your explanations/clarifications, there wouldn't be any confusion. Seriously, so many of your questions have a very UNbalanced (and uninformed) slant to them. I'm always expecting your next question to be something like:
Why do the pro-choice people think killing babies is good?
What do welfare recipients do with all that free money?
Since low taxes are good, shouldn't no taxes be best?
How do public workers sleep at night after taking the people's money like that?
It's like an unfunny Stephen Colbert.
Now back to your "revised" question:
"Why not use the resources that have been restricted?"
Seems like you need to find out why they have been restricted first. Do your homework, then come back and tell us why you think they shouldn't be restricted. That's what I mean by you asking questions that are veiled statements of opinion, then expecting the board to do the legwork.
It's troll-ish behavior.
"Oh look, JoelinPDX is back!"
Nah, it's not him, because he uses really childish words like "Libotard", "Democrap", and "Kitzslobber".
Stephen, gas is high for two reasons:
1. Prices have been rising for some time due to the global recovery and the expectation that demand will outpace supply in the near future.
2. The unrest in the middle east has added a premium to an already rising price that's been in motion for some time.
What we need to do is harness the power of something that is cheap and plentiful.
Someone needs to build an engine that runs on ignorance and despair.
"Clearly, we can, and are, drilling for our own oil. Problem is, we use more than we have,"
How much of "our" oil is exported? IIRC I remember reading somewhere that most of the Alaska oil is exported.
Here is my theory and it's not based on anything I've read or heard, just something I would not be surprised to see happen.
Currently cars get between 18 and 50 mpg. I'm sure that the technology exists for 100+ mpg vehicles. The engineers at Toyota, Ford and GM aren't idiots and I'd bet they have already developed the technology for it. I think that the gas companies and car companies are in cahoots (I love that word!!) and we won't see the 100+ mpg vehicles until gas is $5+ per gallon.
Again, it's just my dumb little theory, but wouldn't be surprised at all to see it happen that way.
"Someone needs to build an engine that runs on ignorance and despair."
That would bankrupt the oil companies in less than a week!
We all probably know that prices are set in part by marketing buzz and how much people are willing to pay for them.
Right now the marketing buzz is civil unrest in oil-producing countries, peak oil, and a State of the Union Address where President Obama discussed ending all subsidies for gas production. So, whether or not any of them are true, there's someone in a corporate board room somewhere saying "let's jack up the price because we can!"
With how the country is set up, there's no way to get around gas prices or gas consumption. Therefore, they could charge virtually whatever they want and get away with it. Goods have to be shipped somehow. Someone who has to be at work 8 AM every morning doesn't have years to wait for a light rail vehicle route to be constructed near their home (which is probably made out of petroleum products anyhow, which means one is still a user of oil-based products).
What we need to do is harness the power of something that is cheap and plentiful.
Imagine something that ran on human gas. Only problem with that is for a fill-up you'd have to go to Taco Bell.
Currently cars get between 18 and 50 mpg. I'm sure that the technology exists for 100+ mpg vehicles. The engineers at Toyota, Ford and GM aren't idiots and I'd bet they have already developed the technology for it. I think that the gas companies and car companies are in cahoots (I love that word!!) and we won't see the 100+ mpg vehicles until gas is $5+ per gallon.
I'm going to guess more like $10 or $15 per gallon.
Also remember that all state governments are dependent on gas tax revenue to fund some portion of government services. High MPG vehicles would mean less revenue while having obligations to fund road expansions and repairs.
Edselehr beat me to it re: F&B.
And Stephen, if you have an opinion to share please just do so.
Is framing your opinion in the form of a faux query to solicit opinions you neither care to hear nor have any intention of allowing to sway your predetermined position some kind of new conservative meme I missed documenting? Are you and Fair and Balanced attempting to start a trend?
As noted; it’s trollish behavior.
This issue in question is ridiculously complex encompassing macro economics and foreign policy, corporate business, domestic politics, the tax code, energy production and it’s associated legalities, costs, and risk analysis benefits, environmental issues, societal attitudes, and more than likely two dozen other factors I couldn’t come up with off the top of my head.
I never blamed Bush for high gas prices. I may have blamed his administration’s polices for being overly friendly, ridiculously so, to large oil companies; often at the economic expense of others. But that’s not the same thing as saying the former President or his policies directly affect gas prices. They’re but one factor. And it’s arguable how much influence they actually have. President Obama is almost an inverse of his predecessor in regards to long term energy policy. Yet he too is unlikely to have much effect for good or ill over short term gas prices.
I blame Bush for the deaths of several hundred thousand completely innocent people that occurred during his deeply idiotic and entirely unnecessary war in Iraq; but that’s another thread.
Were I forced to make any single entity or factor majority culpable I would choose the oil companies themselves. They demonstrably care not a whit for anything other than exorbitant profit margins; all while escaping paying anything resembling a fair tax burden and contributing little to nothing to the world other than an inflated bottom line and carbon emissions.
Here's what I don't understand;
When the price of crude oil takes a jump today, the price at the pump rises immediately. Why? (I know the answer; because they can)
The oil that just went up won't be refined and at the pumps for probably a month.
The oil companies are crooks.
Edit add: And when the price of crude drops, it takes a long time to filter out to the pumps!
Ding
"I'm sure that the technology exists for 100+ mpg vehicles. "
Only at walking speeds for a conventional ICE. Mileage at that number may be achievable with hydrogen, though.
As an RF guy, Bill, you should know that physics does have its limits. In ICE technology, the industry has pretty much maxed out the curve significantly short of 100 mpg. Hybrids do really well, but that's not the question.
It's really about miles per dollar, or dollars per mile.
Theoretical Mileage of a Sedan Car
Calculated at 60 mph constant highway speed.
These are ball-park numbers used to simply show you how this all works. You could probably obtain the frontal area of your vehicle and the drag coefficient of it from the vehicle manufacturer.We learned before that the Dynamic Pressure is related to the Momentum in the air and is simply the product of the mass-flow of the air times the speed. In the examples here, the one square foot cross-sectional area is air's density times volume (1/415 slug/cu ft * 88 f/s) times the velocity in feet per second (88 f/s) which is 18.6 pounds of Dynamic Pressure force.
A Large Sedan might have a frontal area of 22 square feet and a drag coefficient of around 0.43. Therefore, we would have an Aerodynamic Drag of 18.6 * 22 * 0.43 or 176 pounds. The Tire Drag for that vehicle weight would be about 45 pounds so the total Drag is about 220 pounds.
This drag is multiplied by the velocity (88) to get 19,500 ft-lb/second used to move the vehicle. We can convert this into horsepower (35.4) or watts ( 26,400 ) or Btus/hr ( 90,000 ). We know that a gallon of gasoline contains around 126,000 Btus of chemical energy in it, but also that automotive engines and equipment are not particularly efficient at around 21%, meaning that we then only get to use 26,500 Btus of that energy to move the vehicle.
So if we start with one gallon (26,500 Btus of available energy, and we know that we would need 90,000 Btus to drive an entire hour, we can see that our vehicle would travel 26.5/90 of that hour before running out of gasoline! This is just under 18 minutes, and since we are going 60 mph, we are going one mile per minute, and so we know that the car we just described would get around 18 mpg mileage. It ain't that complicated!
In other words, with today's petroleum liquid gas as fuel there is only so much energy that can be produced and it isn't enough to propel a reasonably sized automobile at reasonable speeds for as many minutes/miles as it would take to achieve three digit mileage numbers.
The simple answer is....
... because you are willing to pay that price.
If you and most of the rest of the drivers in a specific geographic area were not willing to pay the posted price for gasoline then...
... the price woudl fall. At the retail end, it is as close as I know to that "free market" that we were discussing before.
The price of gas is based in large part on the price of oil, which has been going up.
So we might ask instead, why is the price of oil going back up? Unrest in North Africa for one, obviously, but it was going up anyway before that. Why?
Some claim the oil market is rigged, but it is still largely a market of supply and demand. It was subject to great speculation through 2008 until the oil market fell when the world economy collapsed and projected future demand was reduced sharply - for the near future. But the other factors that were driving up the price of oil in 2008 are still in place: increasing demand from China and India while old oil fields tap out and new ones become more expensive to develop, as we used up the world's oil supply.
The great recession of the last few years only temporarily rolled back gas prices. They're just continuing on the same course they had been on in 2008.
Who's FAULT is it that oil supply is getting more expensive to get while demand increases? It's more a matter that the US in particular hasn't developed alternate sources of energy to curb future demand for petroleum - and the oil market has factored that in. You can blame US leaders from the last few presidents and the Congress for that. Jimmy Carter was really the last president who had a vision for alternate energy sources and look what happened to him.
It occurs to me after reading this that while our economy is based on oil it is much more based on speculation.
hedge funders and wall street types can no longer speculate on mortgages and the many other shady endeavours that have recently collapsed.
I guess the next biggest opportunity for them is fear based speculation on oil and gas.
Someone is profiting off of this as the price of oil and gas has no real connection to the actual cost of acquiring and refining the resource itself.
Ding!
Agreed. Though there is some relation, it's not a one to one link.
And so what is wrong with speculating in the futures market? That speculation helps stabalize prices, and the speculaters assume risk.
Oh look, JoelinPDX is back!
*dryly* Oh goody. Woop woop woop.
I mean, 267 posts in almost six days; there's got to be a few eyebrows being raised around here.........
I was going to say something but as soon as I do 99% of the time everyone says I'm crazy... Well... I know that but..
I'm just sayin'.....
I have a problem with the speculation happening right now, where the speculator doesn't actually take ownership of the items they are speculating on.
That actually disturbs prices, and doesn't add value.
Somebody taking ownership of those things, then speculating is taking a risk, and that's fair to profit from, and a good check on being too aggressive about it.
The way it is now with oil, they can speculate on things they don't own, using money they don't have, which is essentially gambling and profiting.
That should be a thread of it's own.
A growing example of this being a problem is food speculation happening right now, done the same way.
A very quick search on Google News turned up a Chicago Tribune article that confirms what Andrew and Notalent said:
Analysts point to escalating unrest in Libya and other Middle Eastern countries as factors for the surge in prices. Fighting in Libya may have shut as much as 850,000 to 1 million barrels a day of the North Africa's output, according to the International Energy Agency. Crude oil futures for April delivery have been hovering around $100 a barrel as fears that the unrest could spread to larger producers in the region.
In other words, the output of some oil producers has been handicapped, due to political unrest and the people who trade in commodities markets are bidding up prices.
I once tried calculating the caloric efficiency of a human on a bicycle, and I recall that the number came out somewhere in the low 20% range, about the same as that achieved by a gasoline engine in converting the chemical energy of the gasoline into motion. Converting chemical energy to kinetic energy just seems to be messy, no matter how it is done. Besides the efficiency of the gasoline engine, there are other factors that conspire to kill gas mileage:
Driving a car with a fuel economy readout has been a very educational experience. If I drive a route with minimal stops (like the freeway or TV Highway late at night, when there is little traffic and most of the lights are green) without using the A/C compressor, I can achieve 37-40 mpg (average). If the A/C compressor is used, this figure drops to 33-35 mpg(average). By comparison, the instantaneous miles per gallon when accelerating are on the order of 12-20 mpg (and I am often criticized for not liking quick acceleration!). Instantaneous gas mileage when climbing a hill (like that found exiting westbound from the Vista Ridge Tunnel) is about 20 mpg.
"And so what is wrong with speculating in the futures market? That speculation helps stabalize prices, and the speculaters assume risk."
Nothing could be further from the truth. Even Faux news agrees on that.
It does not stabilize anything.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166038,00.html
Here's the answer from Walter Williams:
Instead of condemning commodity speculation, we ought to recognize the vital function it serves. Let's look at it with a simplified example that captures the essence of speculation in commodity futures markets.
Say that today's price of corn is $6 a bushel. I have a hunch that because of future supply and demand conditions, such as drought, war and increased other uses for corn, that in May 2009 corn will sell for $12 a bushel. I stand to make a lot of money if I buy corn now for $6 a bushel, hold it, and in May 2009 sell it for $12 a bushel. Sure, I've made a bundle of money for myself but is my speculative activity deserving of condemnation? The answer is no; I've served a valuable social function.
Supposing my guess is correct about future supply and demand conditions and corn will be scarcer in the future, what is the socially wise thing to do now so that more will be available in the future? The answer is to use less corn now. How do you get people to voluntarily use less corn now? If you said, "Let the price rise," go to the head of the class. That is exactly what happens as other speculators and I buy corn now. Today's price of corn will be bided up. The result is people will use less corn now and more corn will be available in May 2009 than would be the case if the current price of corn remained at $6. The valuable function of futures markets is that of allocating goods over time. It is wise to take the future into account in decisions that one makes today.
The futures market is no bed of roses. My guess could be wrong. There could be a bumper crop of corn and its May 2009 price might be $3 a bushel. I'd have to sell corn that I bought today for $6 a bushel for $3 in May 2009 and suffer a big loss.
Rest of article here:
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2008/05/28/futures_markets
Comparing corn to oil is pretty lame. Not to mention that in May 2008 when the article was written, the DJIA was still riding at near highs (around 12.8k) and the other shoe from the first Bush recession was about to drop but hadn't.
Pretty lame response IMO.
Oh, and try reading the Faux article. It gives substantive information, not an imaginary corn adventure. And yes, it pains me to credit Faux, but you are so misguided or uninformed that most of your responses seem driven by the need to post a response, not to make a point or clarify a position.
I read the fox article. It doesn't convicne me. And there is nothing wrong with using corn as an example. It's the same principle.
"If you and most of the rest of the drivers in a specific geographic area were not willing to pay the posted price for gasoline then..."
That may or may not be true. I don't really know.
We depend on gas so heavily there really isn't any way to actually prove this by not buying fuel.
Also, I suspect not buying gas would hurt the guy that owns the franchise station more than the oil companies. With Exxon making $35 BILLION in profit in 2009, how much hurt could we really put on them by not buying gas in our little corner of paradise?
The franchise guy makes money selling food. Gas is the loss leader.
@Alfredo: some comments on your previous post-
I once tried calculating the caloric efficiency of a human on a bicycle, and I recall that the number came out somewhere in the low 20% range,
I've heard that the best one can expect to get from an internal combustion engine is 25%. I had also heard that a bicycle is the best widely available machine for converting human power to kinetic energy. (I don't want to imagine the calculation you tackled to get your above number)
Besides the efficiency of the gasoline engine, there are other factors that conspire to kill gas mileage:
* People tend to like to accelerate quickly from stops, and getting the car up to speed takes much more energy than maintaining a constant speed.
As you indirectly point out, if people didn't have the "need for speed", or at least the need for quick pick-up in their vehicles, then smaller and more economical engines could easily replace what we now use. Most of the power (and inefficiency) designed into an engine is for snappy acceleration.
* Many people would rather use air conditioning in the summer than open the windows or just ignore the heat, and the A/C compressor uses a lot of energy.
This concept may have become outdated. When cars weren't aerodynamic and engines were inefficient pigs, an open window made little difference in mileage. Today, with cars being wind-tunneled for near-zero resistance, and engines and compressors being ultra efficient, it's actually becoming more economical to keep the windows up a all times and run the AC if it gets too hot.
* In some cars, engaging the windshield defroster automatically engages the A/C compressor (to dehumidify the air).
Despite a degree of fuel use, this is a safety feature that I wouldn't be willing to see discontinued.
* Americans love their automatic transmissions. Automatic transmissions lose power in the torque converter, and they limit how the driver can maximize use of the car's momentum.
Again, what was previously common knowledge is being upended by computers and engine/transmission design. Fuel efficiency with automatic transmissions today matches and often exceeds that of stick shift cars. Computers can identify the torque curve of the engine much more accurately than the driver, and can execute shifts at exactly the right points during acceleration for optimal power and fuel efficiency. There is no longer any practical reason to build cars with manual gearing. Only enthusiasts who love to shift (ME!) have a reason to buy a stick shift car.
"The franchise guy makes money selling food. Gas is the loss leader."
True.
But the vast majority of people would not be in his establishment if it wasn't for gas. It's worth it for him or her to break even or even take a slight loss with the gas when it gets them in the door buying Slurpees and Slim-Jims.
I doubt they lose money on the gas, I'm sure they make money on it, maybe not the margin that they do on other things though.
I'd be willing to bet that it is the majority of their cash flow though.
(I don't want to imagine the calculation you tackled to get your above number)
In my recollection, the way that I did the calculation was something like this:
1) I went to an activity calculator website, and I looked up the number of (kilo)calories that somebody of my physical size (140 lbs) would use riding a bicycle at a moderate rate (approx 15 MPH) for an hour.
2) I converted the kilocalories to watts; the result was about 590 watts.
3) Some time ago, I pedaled an exercise bike with a wattmeter, and I found that pedaling at a steady rate, like I might use on the road, I produced about 150 watts.
4) I divided the amount in (3) by the amount in (2).
I am not an advocate of people driving around with fogged-up windshields, but I just wanted to point out that in my car, there is a measurable drop in fuel economy when the A/C compressor is engaged. Safety should not be compromised in the name of saving a few dollars at the pump.
"Fuel efficiency with automatic transmissions today matches and often exceeds that of stick shift cars."
They are very good today, but not that good. For a general case driver, I would agree that many automatic transmissions can perform well that way. For drivers that really use the transmission, there still is no contest.
"* Many people would rather use air conditioning in the summer than open the windows or just ignore the heat, and the A/C compressor uses a lot of energy.
This concept may have become outdated. When cars weren't aerodynamic and engines were inefficient pigs, an open window made little difference in mileage. Today, with cars being wind-tunneled for near-zero resistance, and engines and compressors being ultra efficient, it's actually becoming more economical to keep the windows up a all times and run the AC if it gets too hot."
I'll attest to the fact that my '98 shows no noticeable mileage difference with the AC running.
A mileage gauge is standard equipment, and clearly accelerating or cruising above about 75 mph are bigger causes of not obtaining optimum mileage. Also, I'll venture a guess that uphill climbs and jack rabbit starts result in much lower numbers than you have given, Alfredo, unless you drive really really conservatively.
I get on it from time to time and accelerate quickly to the speed limit when traffic allows and climb hills in second gear and plenty of throttle, and I still get 20 mpg around town. For a performance engine, that is awesome.
As far as the profit on gas for a retailer, it's not much more than a dime or so per gallon.
http://www.nacsonline.com/NACS/News/NACSTV/Pages/WhatDoRetailersMakePerGallon.aspx?tag=Gas%20Prices
I consider myself one of the ultimate gas-misers, much to the annoyance of my passengers! 
If I want the "thrill" of acceleration, I get on my bicycle and pedal really hard, while quickly shifting from a low gear to one of the highest gears.
I'd be willing to bet that [gas] it is the majority of their cash flow though.
Perhaps, but I doubt too many franchisees are depositing the cash and are earning interest until the next time the fuel truck driver comes up.
Ultimately, I think that this discussion shows how many Americans (me being one of them) are painfully out of touch with world events. A number of my acquaintances and I had been wondering, "Why are the gas prices climbing so quickly? Is it because of the events in Egypt?" I had to look around for newspaper stories to explain what is going--and I halfway expected that many stories would just interview people who were angry about the gas prices without offering a real explanation; fortunately, I was wrong about that.
It's an accounting document call the FDD, there you can find the earnings of any franchise. Most don't do well, and it's better to get a career.
You must log in to post.
