There is no "shortage of oil" in fact there is more oil being produced today than ever before.  Several non-OPEC countries have said they couldn't increase their oil supply even if they wanted to because they are already producing as much as they can.

So if there is no problem with the supply what has caused the 40% jump in gas prices?  Current reports are the US has 9% more gas in inventory than last year.  Does anyone care to explain why gas is still so high and oil just spiked...again?


www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/petroleu.html
Production in thousand barrels per day

1990 24,456
1991 24,581
1992 25,777
1993 26,573
1994 27,070
1995 27,647
1996 28,115
1997 29,453
1998 30,605
1999 29,493
2000 31,312
2001 30,621
2002 28,906
2003 30,538
2004 32,912 highest output in 13 years

World Oil Supply in millions of barrels per day
2000 77.48
2001 77.51
2002 76.86
2003 79.46
2004 82.99

The price will rise to whatever level the market will bear.

China.

You wouldn't believe how fast they are developing. You go to any major US city and you might see one or two big cranes putting up a building. In China, at least on the coastal cities the skyline is filled with cranes throwing up buildings as fast as they can. In recent years there are also more people than ever buying cars over there now. Bikes are becomming a thing of the past with their booming economy.

That's only part of the problem IMO. I think the fact that the envirowackos keep us from building new and better oil refineries in the US is a nother major problem. IIRC the last oil refinery built in the US was in 1973.

Demand continues to rise, its simple.

Quoted: China. You wouldn't believe how fast they are developing. You go to any major US city and you might see one or two big cranes putting up a building. In China, at least on the coastal cities the skyline is filled with cranes throwing up buildings as fast as they can. In recent years there are also more people than ever buying cars over there now. Bikes are becomming a thing of the past with their booming economy. That's only part of the problem IMO. I think the fact that the envirowackos keep us from building new and better oil refineries in the US is a nother major problem. IIRC the last oil refinery built in the US was in 1973.

You nailed it on the head, the biggest problem in this Country is NOT supply which gets bottle-necked because we don't have enough refineries to keep up with demand.

Neal Boortz likes to point out that not a single refinery has been made in the US since IIRC 1976!

Quoted: The price will rise to whatever level the market will bear.

'Nuff said....

And just how high can it fucking go? I am starting to become unable to afford gas.

China is a giant sucking sound, oil, concrete, steel, fiber optics.  They are building as fast as they can. The supply will only get tighter.

I say the problem is more with US.  We won't drill in ANWAR, or off the coast for natural gas.  We won't build more refineries, build nuke power plants, replace the old oil burning power plants, or do anything serious abt fuel economy of our vehicles.  When they made outboard motors reduce emmissions the industry came up with 4 stroke engines that get 2X the mileage, are quieter & better for the environment.  We have the technology, but until there is a $ reason to do so no one will use it.  

Don't get used to $2.25 a gallon, it's gonna be $3 in the next year.  I don't know how truckers make it...

Quoted: Quoted: China. You wouldn't believe how fast they are developing. You go to any major US city and you might see one or two big cranes putting up a building. In China, at least on the coastal cities the skyline is filled with cranes throwing up buildings as fast as they can. In recent years there are also more people than ever buying cars over there now. Bikes are becomming a thing of the past with their booming economy. That's only part of the problem IMO. I think the fact that the envirowackos keep us from building new and better oil refineries in the US is a nother major problem. IIRC the last oil refinery built in the US was in 1973. You nailed it on the head, the biggest problem in this Country is NOT supply which gets bottle-necked because we don't have enough refineries to keep up with demand. Neal Boortz likes to point out that not a single refinery has been made in the US since IIRC 1976!

This little should many of us on this board, that what seemingly innocously laws at the time it was passed, could have a big impact on us in the future. Witness the US EPA, Calf EPA, what started out as that isn't going to cost too much, has grown into a behemoth with a momenteum of its own. For the rest of you in the USA, you shouldn't be laughing too hard at us souls in the PRK. The US EPA has just passed a ruling that all of the USA petroleum refinaries should make the same or nearly the same gasoline as the kind use in the PRK.

Quoted: There is no "shortage of oil" in fact there is more oil being produced today than ever before.  Several non-OPEC countries have said they couldn't increase their oil supply even if they wanted to because they are already producing as much as they can. So if there is no problem with the supply what has caused the 40% jump in gas prices?  Current reports are the US has 9% more gas in inventory than last year.  Does anyone care to explain why gas is still so high and oil just spiked...again? www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/petroleu.html Production in thousand barrels per day 1990 24,456 1991 24,581 1992 25,777 1993 26,573 1994 27,070 1995 27,647 1996 28,115 1997 29,453 1998 30,605 1999 29,493 2000 31,312 2001 30,621 2002 28,906 2003 30,538 2004 32,912 highest output in 13 years World Oil Supply in millions of barrels per day 2000 77.48 2001 77.51 2002 76.86 2003 79.46 2004 82.99

Demand from China.  Scrap steel prices are through the roof too because of them.  I have a friend in the scrap business, and he just scrapped a VERY small dragline.  He got $5000 for the scrap.  

Profiteering and the NIMBYs not allowing new refineries to be built contributes.  As far as how high it will go, I'll bet you that we'll see $3 within a year and a half.

We only get 15% of our oil from OPEC.

Quoted: China. You wouldn't believe how fast they are developing. You go to any major US city and you might see one or two big cranes putting up a building. In China, at least on the coastal cities the skyline is filled with cranes throwing up buildings as fast as they can. In recent years there are also more people than ever buying cars over there now. Bikes are becomming a thing of the past with their booming economy. That's only part of the problem IMO. I think the fact that the envirowackos keep us from building new and better oil refineries in the US is a nother major problem. IIRC the last oil refinery built in the US was in 1973.

China's usage millions of barrels per day
2000 4.80
2001 4.92
2002 5.16
2003 5.55
2004 6.80

Considering the US uses over 3 times that much every day at 20.58 the little tiny bit China is using it wouldn't make that big of a spike in prices.

US consumption has barely gone up in the last 5 years, from 19.70 to 20.58.  Unless 40% of the refineries blew up that still doesn't account for the huge price increase.

Quoted: China is a giant sucking sound, oil, concrete, steel, fiber optics.  They are building as fast as they can. The supply will only get tighter. I say the problem is more with US.  We won't drill in ANWAR, or off the coast for natural gas.  We won't build more refineries, build nuke power plants, replace the old oil burning power plants, or do anything serious abt fuel economy of our vehicles.  When they made outboard motors reduce emmissions the industry came up with 4 stroke engines that get 2X the mileage, are quieter & better for the environment.  We have the technology, but until there is a $ reason to do so no one will use it.   Don't get used to $2.25 a gallon, it's gonna be $3 in the next year.  I don't know how truckers make it...

I believe that the senate is voting on weather or not to drill in the ANWAR today.

Here's the answer.

There is plenty of oil supply currently, even taking into account China's consumption.

The reason prices are so high is because of the commodities market for oil (like the stock market, only it's for commodities).  Oil futures are being bid way up.  So, in effect, we have artificially high prices created by the oil brokers.

There is a secondary reason.  The environmentalists won't let any more refineries be built.  As a result, any downtime for maintenance slows the production of gasoline a little, and the oil brokers use it as an excuse to hike prices even more.

Yes, I'm an economist.

Quoted: Demand from China.  Scrape steel prices are through the roof too because of them.  I have a friend in the scrap business, and he just scrapped a VERY small dragline.  He got $5000 for the scrap.   We only get 15% of our oil from OPEC.

I don't know if you folks have been following the price of raw copper but it has doubled in prince in 2 years. And re-bars use the construction industry? they are in very tight supplies for major quantities because of the huge building boom in the PRC.

Quoted: Quoted: China is a giant sucking sound, oil, concrete, steel, fiber optics.  They are building as fast as they can. The supply will only get tighter. I say the problem is more with US.  We won't drill in ANWAR, or off the coast for natural gas.  We won't build more refineries, build nuke power plants, replace the old oil burning power plants, or do anything serious abt fuel economy of our vehicles.  When they made outboard motors reduce emmissions the industry came up with 4 stroke engines that get 2X the mileage, are quieter & better for the environment.  We have the technology, but until there is a $ reason to do so no one will use it.   Don't get used to $2.25 a gallon, it's gonna be $3 in the next year.  I don't know how truckers make it... I believe that the senate is voting on weather or not to drill in the ANWAR today.

Yep - and it's beyond idiotic that they are doing so.  ANWR contains very little oil, and I think we should conserve domestic resources as much as possible anyway for when the REAL crunch hits and we see $5 per gallon gasoline.  This is nothing more that a spiteful move against the left and as usual, the republicans are working toward appeasement of the masses while decimating thier base supporters  The environmentalists, for some reason, have decided to make ANWR their pwn Custer's Last Stand, and like moron, the repubs are going after than resource which will only make them look completely and totally anti-environment.  Why fuck with such a hot issue?

Quoted: The price will rise to whatever level the market will bear.

Capitalism Ackbar.

That and a bunch of speculator day-trading dickweeds and artificial shortages at the well-head.

Quoted: Quoted: Demand from China.  Scrape steel prices are through the roof too because of them.  I have a friend in the scrap business, and he just scrapped a VERY small dragline.  He got $5000 for the scrap.   We only get 15% of our oil from OPEC. I don't know if you folks have been following the price of raw copper but it has doubled in prince in 2 years. And re-bars use the construction industry? they are in very tight supplies for major quantities because of the huge building boom in the PRC.

Yeah, my scrap friend recently ran across 20 TONS of scrap copper from an electric motor rebuilder in WY.  The guy wanted $4000 for all of it.  I think my friend pulled like $17,000 in off of it.  I do know he gets about $120 a ton for prepared steel.  What was it, like $40 a few years ago.  Wow.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Demand from China.  Scrape steel prices are through the roof too because of them.  I have a friend in the scrap business, and he just scrapped a VERY small dragline.  He got $5000 for the scrap.   We only get 15% of our oil from OPEC. I don't know if you folks have been following the price of raw copper but it has doubled in prince in 2 years. And re-bars use the construction industry? they are in very tight supplies for major quantities because of the huge building boom in the PRC. Yeah, my scrap friend recently ran across 20 TONS of scrap copper from an electric motor rebuilder in WY.  The guy wanted $4000 for all of it.  I think my friend pulled like $17,000 in off of it.  I do know he gets about $120 a ton for prepared steel.  What was it, like $40 a few years ago.  Wow.

NOt only that, but have you folks checked out recyclable cardboard? The PRC is buying any and all available supplies. And  that has driven that commodity to record prices also.

It's evil free market greed ... time for .gov to step in and nationalie the oil industry.

Quoted: And just how high can it fucking go? I am starting to become unable to afford gas.

$3 before the end of this year.

What would people do if it hit $4 per gallon?  They would buy it.  They would still drive cars that get 15 mpg.  They would still live 20+ miles from work.

I had a discussion yesterday with a guy that I know about oil and he told me some interesting things that I did not know. Now, he is not a left wing lib, not even remotely so. He's very conservative, so keep that in mind when reading this.

He said that there is about $73 trillion in oil and $3 trillion in natural gas in the Caspian Sea Basin. Apparently the Taliban had control of this oil and was going to put in a pipeline. There were two major oil conglomerates who were trying to get the bid from the Taliban. One was a US and Saudi consortium, the other was Bridas from Argentina. Bridas won the contract.

Now, apparently there are high ranking government officials in the current and former administrations as well as high ranking military officials who have lots of stock invested in the US companies who were trying to get this bid. He thinks that was a major reason why we invaded Afghanistan. There are apparently 100,000 supertankers worth of oil in the Caspian Sea Basin. If we wouldn't have invaded this would have been the largest financial transaction in the history of the world.

I don't know how much of this is really true or not, I'm just relaying what he said. If this is true, then forget ANWAR. We've got more than enough oil in the CSB...

There is a lot of speculation going on, and it's not necessarily a bad thing.

GunLvr

Quoted: Neal Boortz likes to point out that not a single refinery has been made in the US since IIRC 1976!

A fella in the oil business recently shared that angle with me also .... it's not a problem getting the oil. it is turning it into Gasoline ..... it takes 7 or 8 years to build a refinery and there are none planned in the near future ... if at all ...  

THE DOLLAR IS FALLING. Even if the price of oil doesn't change relative to most American goods, it will cost more dollars than before because a dollar is worth less to its overseas producers.

The all-time-high price of gas in the US is something like $2.90+ when adjusted for inflation.

email

***************************************

Compared with Gasoline

Think a gallon of gas is expensive?


This makes one think, and also puts things in perspective.

Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29 . $10.32 per gallon




Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19 ...........$9.52 per gallon




Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 . $10.17 per gallon





Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 . $10.00 per gallon





Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 $33.60 per gallon



Vick's Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 . $178.13 per gallon





Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85 . $123.20 per gallon





Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 . .. $25.42 per gallon





Scope 1.5 oz $0.99 .......$84.48 per gallon





And this is the REAL KICKER...

Evian water 9 oz $1.49..........$21.19 per gallon?! $21.19 for WATER - and the buyers don't even know the source. (Evian spelled backwards is Naive.)




So, the next time you're at the pump, be glad your car doesn't run on water, Scope, or Whiteout, or God forbid Pepto Bismal or Nyquil.

Quoted: Quoted: Neal Boortz likes to point out that not a single refinery has been made in the US since IIRC 1976! A fella in the oil business recently shared that angle with me also .... it's not a problem getting the oil. it is turning it into Gasoline ..... it takes 7 or 8 years to build a refinery and there are none planned in the near future ... if at all ...

The oil refinery reason doesn't hold any water...because it's not just the price of gas that is high.  The price of crude oil is also high.  If oil was the same but gas was a lot higher, then sure the refineries would have a huge impact.

The main reason I see is because of the falling dollar.  The dollar fell even further today and guess what oil spiked again today.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Neal Boortz likes to point out that not a single refinery has been made in the US since IIRC 1976! A fella in the oil business recently shared that angle with me also .... it's not a problem getting the oil. it is turning it into Gasoline ..... it takes 7 or 8 years to build a refinery and there are none planned in the near future ... if at all ...   The oil refinery reason doesn't hold any water...because it's not just the price of gas that is high.  The price of crude oil is also high.  If oil was the same but gas was a lot higher, then sure the refineries would have a huge impact. The main reason I see is because of the falling dollar.  The dollar fell even further today and guess what oil spiked again today.

Total tinfoil hat time here...

What if the agenda is to continue to decrease the dollar, and that this was in connection to the fact that our borders were open? Higher oil prices were only a temporary negative impact, but the long term goal was to eventually merge North America through NAFTA or something like that into basically one single entity (kind of like the EU). And the purpose of doing that was to gain easier access to all that cheap labor in Mexico in order to compete economically with China?

China is an economic powerhouse. The only thing really holding them back right now is the lack of infrastructure. The one thing that they have going for them however is the large gap that exists in the economic wealth of the people there. Currently the Chinese who live near the coastal areas have most of the money. This area is where China is building like crazy. However, in the interior you still have lots of poor people that work for dirt cheap. Hence, they can make products much cheaper than we can.

So, Mexico becomes our "interior" and provides our cheap labor along with the diminished value of the dollar to help boom our economy and keep up with China. It would make sense as to why are fricking borders are still not closed down.

/tinfoil hat mode off

I really don't consider myself all that smart when it comes to this stuff (I'm an engineer, not a poly-sci junky) so I could be totally off base. Just an interesting theary I thought of.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Neal Boortz likes to point out that not a single refinery has been made in the US since IIRC 1976! A fella in the oil business recently shared that angle with me also .... it's not a problem getting the oil. it is turning it into Gasoline ..... it takes 7 or 8 years to build a refinery and there are none planned in the near future ... if at all ...   The oil refinery reason doesn't hold any water...because it's not just the price of gas that is high.  The price of crude oil is also high.  If oil was the same but gas was a lot higher, then sure the refineries would have a huge impact. The main reason I see is because of the falling dollar.  The dollar fell even further today and guess what oil spiked again today.

Only the price of crude as quoted from the futures market is high.  The $50 per barrel or whatever you hear in the news has no correlation to what oil companies buy it for.

I'm not even sure there is a way to find out what Exxon pays Aramco for a barrel of oil.

Even a small user can drive up prices. A price is simply what the market is bidding for resources. A country like China that is developing quickly will bid what it must to divert resources its way.

Quoted: It's evil free market greed ... time for .gov to step in and nationalie the oil industry.

SOCIALISM IS BAD!!!!

You can't think like this - the free market keeps prices DOWN, not up.  

Oil prices are high because of speculation, Chinese consumption, and the falling dollar.

When the dollar stops falling and starts rising (and it will, this is an artificial drop caused by europeans pushing the Euro as the 'new' universal currency - they attack our budgetary problems without acknowledging that theirs are much worse) everything will even out.

A similar thing would happen if China floated their currency.  China's currency is currently fixed to the Dollar, so it doesn't help our trade imbalance with them when the dollar drops, preventing it from 'helping' our economy much.  China's currency is currently woefully undervalued because of this - allowing them to dump product on the rest of the world for cheap.  If it floated, it would go up - and we'd be far more competitive.

Quoted: Quoted: It's evil free market greed ... time for .gov to step in and nationalie the oil industry. SOCIALISM IS BAD!!!! You can't think like this - the free market keeps prices DOWN, not up.   Oil prices are high because of speculation, Chinese consumption, and the falling dollar. When the dollar stops falling and starts rising (and it will, this is an artificial drop caused by europeans pushing the Euro as the 'new' universal currency - they attack our budgetary problems without acknowledging that theirs are much worse) everything will even out. A similar thing would happen if China floated their currency.  China's currency is currently fixed to the Dollar, so it doesn't help our trade imbalance with them when the dollar drops, preventing it from 'helping' our economy much.  China's currency is currently woefully undervalued because of this - allowing them to dump product on the rest of the world for cheap.  If it floated, it would go up - and we'd be far more competitive.

I'm pretty sure Red_Beard's post was pure sarcasm.