Thank your lucky stars your country only has 16,000 sq miles, ours has over 3 million!

So that's why BSE was let loose. :hmm:

Oil is power and power is money and money is controls of us that is to say while it lasts.

Europeans arent forced to commute like we are, therego they are incapable of understanding. Id like to see one commute every day accross the 91 Freeway, 35 miles to work, and back home again, 5 days a week, filling up at 4 dollars a gallon, going through a tank and a half of gas a week. Being forced to live that far because its the only affordable place to live. Then lets see if he changes his comment about "how americans think cheap gas is a god given right".

There are a few million per day commuting into London alone. Some of them 200+ miles return per day....and paying over $10 per gallon.

In the Netherlands more then 10$ per gallon, although a small country, a lot of commuters doing avg. 30 miles daily one way trip. profit of SHELL a dutch oil company went historically high in the first three months of 2008 (42% more net profit and now 6.75 billion dollars). Although it's a good thing to be prudent with using energy resources it is a difficult problem and as I do not think all americans think cheap gas is a god given right, it is a little bit off a simplification to generalize and say that we do not understand the problem, I think you underestimate the commuting or overestimate the possibilities of other means of transport. I personally did 60 miles daily per train (one way trip) for over a decade to come to my work. Not only because of the price of housing, but simply because there was no housing available and affordable for me and my family. Now I have a new posting and make over 60 miles by car, no public transport alternative available. Now I will try and sink some japanese oil tankers. Realising It wont solve the problem:rotfl: . but it's good for my subsim career. Greetings from an TMO fan.

I drive approx 14,000 miles/mo at an average of 5 mpg in my Freightliner XL.

14,000 miles / 5 mpg = 2800/gals per mo X $4.15/gal = $11,620.00/mo in fuel costs.

Ouch...

You sound like a congressman we have here where I live named Dennis Kucinich.

Look, if you put a windfall profits tax on the gas companies the only ones that would suffer is the consumer because corporations don't pay taxes, they pass them on to the people that buy their products by elevating the price.

There are many other industries that have a higher profit margin than oil companies. Further most Americans have their retirement invested in petroleum through mutual funds, 401Ks, and pension funds. The largest labor unions such as the AFL-CIO, Teamsters, NEA, UAW, and AFSCME retirement pensions are heavily invested in oil.

I love capitalism and profit. John D Rockerfeller grew up from nothing, came from a huge family and helped to raise something like 8 or 9 other siblings. He became incredibly rich by turning us into the modern oil and gasoline burning economy we have today. He created the modern industrial revolution but people hated him and were jealous. However, if it wasn't for him there would be no middle class which was also created from the many fruits of his efforts. Capital creates wealth and creates jobs and my paycheck has never been signed by a poor man.

The price is being driven up by several factors but none of it is Dick Cheney and Haliburton sitting with CEO of Exxon at a table in a dark room planning how to stick it to the American people.

1.) China and India are putting huge demand on oil because instead of riding bicycles they are all driving now.

2.) Oil is a finite resource and the wells are running dry. Saudi Arabia just had to open a new oil field and use all types of expensive drilling techniques and methods just to keep up with the 12.5 million they produce.

3.) The USA sits on the largest coal supply in the world including 1.3 trillion dollars worth of the cleanest burning coal in the world locked up in a national park in Utah. We also have nuclear technology and some of the brightest scientists and engineers at our fingertips. Further recent discoveries show that the US may have the largest supply of oil in the world as well. There is the Alaskan reserves, oil in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast, oil under the great lakes, there is a massive deposit of oil shale all throughout the rockies, and the recently discovered Bakken Formation in North Dakota may contain 175 - 500 billion barrels of oil that could be obtained through horizontal drilling technology. As a comparison, Saudi Arabia is estimated to have 220 billion barrels remaining.

So all this said and do we build refineries? Do we drill for oil at home? Do we build coal and nuclear power plants to reduce demand on oil? The answer is no. Bureaurcracy, government, red tape, and environmental groups all block us from saving ourselves.

Q: Are oil companies to blame for high fuel prices?
A: Not in the UK; for that last 10 years you can lay the rising cost of fuel firmly at gordon browns door. Prior to that it was the tories 'fuel price escalator, designed as a means of generating revenue and forcing people to use their cars less.


If a litre of petrol cost 107.9p, it would be split in the following way:

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/5...diagramvn4.gif

http://www.petrolprices.com/fuel-tax.html

Whatever way I look at it, we pay too much tax... on just about everything here. :dead:

Interesting. Ever notice how increased prices are always the brainchild of some bureaucrat or a government policy that trys to balance one thing but only ends up screwing over the entire economy and stifles productivity?

All said and done. I CANNOT see past record setting profits, coinciding with record setting gas prices. That is just bullschitt. Plain, and simple bullschitt. I can see rasing prices to maintain a profit, but NOT a record setting profit. No amount of pro big oil statistical maniulpation will ever convince me otherwise.

That is a rather arrogant generalization, considering how different the European countries are...eventhough Denmark is a small country I know many people who commute that same distance for the very same reasons you state. I can hardly imagine how it is Germany ,the Netherlands or the UK...

Agreed.....see post #25

I don't know what the national average is or whether such an average would be even relevant but a 35 mile commute is fairly short compared to what most people i know travel. 50 miles would be closer to an average i'd think.

The furthest I've had to commute has been about 25 miles, all of it on public transport/bicycle.
I remember my father doing 60 miles each way in the early 90's, that was a pain.
Higher petrol taxes pay for better public transport, so you don't have to buy expensive petrol :p

Yes. Thats whats ticking me off. Oil is more available this year then last by 12% yet they are pleading supply and demand while reaping record profits and frankly I don't give a ???? about somebodies 401k.

Of course you're going to have a higher supply of oil, look at the price of the stuff!

EDIT - the other factor is the more interesting one. I wonder how much it costs to insure millions of dollars worth of oil and tanker through the Strait of Hormuz? I wonder how much it cost before Operation Iraqi Freedom?

EDIT #2 - Found a nice article by the author of OilShock - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m.../03/do0311.xml

in the process of reading it, thought it was relevant :)

Hello,
having enough experience in the oil business myself i can tell you that what happens has not much to do with "free" capitalism any more. The market is "split" by not more than 5 major global oil companies who now talk to each other, what they did not some 15 years ago - it is more or less a cartel.
Oil is being traded as "energy" at the stock market, and price gouging is anything else than unwanted.

Apart from that crude oil is not scarce. I am sorry to say it, having read all those recent books in a cosy armchair, dealing with those horror scenarios of shortages and breakdown of civilization, which (who already guessed it?) only adds to the rising prices. But it is not scarce, and will not be for the next 200 years (ymmv). The scarceness is artificial.
Then there is "free" market economy, and there is "social" market economy. We have said goodbye to the latter some 15 years ago.

"Our" problem is that we are so lazy letting our corrupt politicians decide what to do, who again are "advised" by ... (who guessed it?), if they do not come from that industry themselves. We do not even look for other possibilities to use and conserve energy. As long as there is only gas and oil without alternative searched for, do you really think prices will fall ? Why. should. they.

Greetings,
Catfish

Because if they don't people won't be able to afford to buy their product anymore?

Hello,
what would you think happens, if poorer people cannot afford it anymore ? Those managers who now make profit do not think more than, hhmm, 10 years ahead ? A typical manager of a profitable company like the "Deutsche Bank" or "ExxonMobil" has ethical values of a churchyard worm. This is what he is paid for after all.

There is no event in history that companies would have lowered prices in favour of "the poor" - in all scenarios big companies would rather go bankrupt than that, or find another strategy or product to go on. Only reason for low prices is dumping to drive another company out of the market.
Oil companies in Europe now head for hydrogen production and solar energy, and ... water resources. If you control the satisfaction of a population's vital needs you can demand any price.

There are already people in Europe who cannot afford fuel any more. It does not matter much, there are german SUV cars that burn more than 20 litres/100 km (don't know how much mpg that is), and even if there are less poor who pay, there are some rich who do not care. And believe me those SUVs sell better than ever. It is just that the difference between poor and rich is currently developing a gap that never has been that wide before. Which is a situation that certainly can become explosive by itself. I just read the 20 percent of the population who is "well off" in Germany does not care until prices reach 2 and a half Euros/litre.

Oil, ok. We speak about production. Speaking of the upstream market oil is not really being produced, it is pumped up, sometimes with a lot of technology, admitted. Having a worldwide statistic including exploration, building and maintaining rigs and drilling with an assumed failure of 70 percent, the "production" of a barrel, which is a bit more than a litre (or 159 of them to be exact) costs around 52 Dollar cents (yes, a barrel).
Now you argue there are technical costs, transportation and raffination into the different petrochemical products, taxes etc. - but you will never reach the price that is demanded today. Petrochemical companies are currently making more $$ than ever. Question is how long, but ... who cares ?

Greetings,
Catfish

Its an easy assumption to make from coutnries that have extensive subway systems, super commuter trains that are so damn slick they end up featured on televsions shows, and double decker buses.

Compartively we have very little of that. So, thinking that europeans dont commute like we do, is a very natural and easy conclusion to draw.