Gas prices for high test is $4 to $5 per gallon
 

I don't think this is political. Just heard the President's speech. He pretty much admitted that he doesn't have the short term answer. Said something about making gas out of algae. I think you need alot of algae to fill a tank. What about the fish? environment? cost? $100 per gallon?

I think gas will be $10 per gallon soon.

You're probably right. (We grow that stuff in the ground up here ;-))

Isn't it subsidized? How much will it cost when subsidies stop? Doesn't it increase the price of food when corn is diverted for gas?

Contrary to popular belief, presidents don't have a magic dial behind their desk that affects gas prices. Neither Democrats nor Republicans. ;) Obama's right in that there aren't any short-term solutions.

Policy certainly can effect gas prices, but it's more a mental game than an actual physical effect. Opening up the strategic oil reserve or allowing more drilling does calm the oil futures market, but only because people's fears & greed drive the market.

Really though, it's supply and demand. The rest of the world is using more and more oil, so prices will only continue to rise for everyone. 18 million cars were sold in China last year, almost 6 million more than in the US. I'd wager that a fair number of those 18 million cars are to people who have never had a car before. People who have never needed X gallons of gasoline a week. India is also emerging as a significant market as well. That supply has to come from somewhere.

This recent surge is because we're coming out of winter in the US and because many economists think the world economy is regaining strength (a topic for another thread... :roflpuke2: )

But it's not all doom and gloom.

The flip side is that supply & demand economics works both ways. As prices rise, there's more incentive for companies to tap new sources of oil. The oil is there, it's just expensive to get it from the ground to your tank. Deeper capacity rigs & more complicated (and expensive) extraction techniques become fiscally viable. More incentives to develop alternative fuels. And when those things happen, more oil is introduced into the system, which calms down supply fears, which tends to stabilizes prices. It's all a matter of cycles.

Hate to break it to you, but good ole petrol isn't exactly kind to fish or the environment. Bio fuels, like the algae-based methods is something that suppliments other sources, not replace them. Its just ethanol when you get down to it and the more alternatives, the better. There is no short term answer because the science is still in its infancy. It's a non-polluting & more importantly renewable energy source. You'd have to be nuts to still believe the "drill baby drill" mentallity is the sollution. The reason gas is so high is because the oil company has us by the balls. They can swing gas prices at will.

Natural gas prices are 80% down. The supply of nat. gas is great. Sypply & demand works there. We refine & export gasoline all over the world. Why don't we raise the taxes on the "big bad gas companies" on exported gas. Why don't we drill & develope our oil & work with Canada to develope their's. We would have enough for about 100 years. That would give us time to develope nuke & other forms of energy.

I want people in charge to find answers & take responsibility!!!!!!!!!

:iagree:, I was getting ready to trade my wife's Honda fit in this week for the juke but the gas price going to 5-6 or more has caused me to rethink trading abcar that gets 35mpg to one that gets 24ish (awd model) guess I won't be stimulating the econ this yr

The upside is cars like the Leaf! I may be in the minority but I really want to see the next Z go electric or hybrid at the least. MPG is becoming a bigger factor for me personally in buying cars.

Maybe prices are rising because Dubai is going broke? Lol

A huge portion of our oil does come from Canada and our own. 100 years also isn't a lot of time. What do you think will happen to gas prices when we reach the 90 year mark? Who gives a crap, you'll be dead right?:rolleyes:

Electric cars are no better, that's a gimmick to make people "feel" green. Where does most of the electricity come from? Coal burning plants.

They'll pry my gas burning engines from my cold dead hands.

The biggest mistake is allowing a gasoline/oil to be traded on the open market as a commodity like a stock. Anytime investors stand to make money, and the news propagates all this "gas will be $5 a gallon" of course they make it happen by buying up the price of the commodity on the market.

Supply and demand has less effect on fuel prices than the actual market does. That should be eliminated.

Unless, of course, you own stock in oil companies or are a commodities trader. :stirthepot:

;)

Hybrids are worse for the environment than gas engines. It does help get us away from oil, but in the end, we need to find an alternative fuel source. Electricity in the United States primarily comes from burning fossil fuels.

Or maybe Saudi Arabia is running out of oil... Supply and demand ;)

I agree, to an extent.


I think you guys should take a look at this documentary with Michael Ruppert. It's called Collapse and it's available for rent on Amazon.

Amazon.com: Collapse: Michael Ruppert, Chris Smith, Kate Noble, N/A: Amazon Instant Video



I'm not saying to take everything in that film as truth, but just being aware of the things mentioned in that film is a good start. Do your own research.

Exactly my point. It's not like this is some product that people can live without. These types of products shouldn't be traded on a market that influences the prices folks have to pay. Let real supply and demand dictate that.

Also those batteries in electric cars are toxic to make, and toxic to dispose of when they're belly up after 5 years. Expensive to replace too.

The problem is that there isn't a clear alternative & renewable enery source. Even doubling our Nuclear plants wouldn't really take that huge of a dent from our dependence on petroleum. Not only that, we keep using more energy, not less.

How are hybrids worst for the environment than a gas engine? It's still technically a gas engine.

This. Also for electric cars, they may not be as clean as most people think because the electricity comes from dirty sources FOR NOW. That doesn't mean that this will always be the case. There's obviously a push to move towards renewable sources of energy for electricity production. As time passes and there are more technological innovations as well as cost reductions, renewable sources will become a much larger portion of where we get our electricity from. Whenever that does happen, electric cars will be far cleaner the gas powered cars.

The other thing you have to realize is that by the time electricity sources become more clean, we will need the technology for electric cars and a whole new infrastructure to adapt to them to be ready to go. If we start working on all of that now, it will save a lot of time later. You can't just wait 25, 50, 100, or how ever many years it takes for electricity to become more "green" and then be like "ok now that we took care of that let's start thinking about how we can use electric cars now."

There's no immediate / short term solution for lower gas prices but of course the GOP will blame Obama as they do for EVERY THING.

The U.S. contains ~ 2% of the worlds oil and consumes ~ 20%. The solution isn't drill, drill, drill.. Its much more complex. Drill baby drill is nothing but a bumper sticker.

Between the amount of fossil fuels and petroleum it takes to produce them and ship them, to the fact that the batteries are difficult to dispose of, in the long run they're worse for the environment than a conventional non-hybrid gasoline engine.

I agree on the fact that a primary issue is the lack of a viable alternative energy. Nuclear power would be a start, but again, it would take a whole lot of nuclear power plants to offset our reliance on fossil fuels. Nuclear plants also use a lot of energy to build, and take quite some time before they become operational.

I was thinking of buying a Yaris or something like that as my DD on days that are rainy because people around here lose their minds when it rains just a bit. Also if I dont get to work early enough and dont get my usual corner spot its door ding city in our company lot... That Yaris is looking really good now

My understanding is that half of the electricty produced are from coal and oil ,and I believe in the future solar, wind, and hydro will become the majority.

An electric engine is very efficient and a gasoline engine is not because a lot of the energy is lost through heat and friction. So less energy is needed to make the electric car travel than a gas car.

I don't drive much but I still want to own an electric exotic one day. The sooner we become less dependent on middle western oil the less bs I have to read in the news.

I think those are things that will be fixed with technological innovation and more widespread use of electric cars. With expanded production and production in more areas, the shipping costs/pollution should be significantly reduced. We'll just have to wait and see if someone can come up with a practical way to recycle their batteries or maybe develop different battery technology that will be easier to recycle.

Funny. I actually found an electralotus in my parking lot a couple days ago. Its the first time i've seen a tesla in person. Wish I could have heard it run.

http://i1238.photobucket.com/albums/...ness/tesla.jpg

I'm a veteran of the oil shortages going back to the 70's. And ever since then the ones who fought the construction of new nuke plants and new refineries and drilling in oil rich areas weren't the Republicans, but were the tree hugging leftists and those who lived in fantasy land. If we would have done those things 30 years ago we wouldn't be still talking about it. I'm no fan of the Republicans but it is partly Obama's fault and the fault of the idiots in his party, his base, and those that preceded him.

I'm very much for "green energy", but it will take a long time. We can't burn more dirty coal for electricity. We need nuke plants powering every major city. We'll need newer/better technology. Windmills won't due. Algae is a joke.

In the meantime,
Canada is begging for us to buy its oil. They said since we don't allow the building of the Keystone pipeline, they will have to sell the oil to China. We invested billions in South America/Goerge Soros to produce oil that will be sold to China. Blame Obama? of course not, he's just THE President, nothing is his fault.

I'm also not a fan of the Republicans, but what you said is right on! 100% agree.
We don't need leaders that get on the air telling us about every problem (that we already know) we have. We need them to fix the problems! In private industry, they would be looking for another job/line of work....

I went to an info session for Exxon Mobil last year (bastards won't hire me :p) and they said that they had invested hundreds of millions of dollars into creating biofuel from algae.

I know how to get the gas price down - It's easy
 

It's a fact that we refine oil & make it into gasoline. It's a fact that we refine our oil & Canada's oil & sell it all over the world to the highest bidders. Since it's mined/drilled in the U.S.A & or off our shores, & it is refined in the U.S.A, we have 100% the right to tax it. Tax it high if they want to export it out of our country. If the oil companies lose money exporting our & Canada's oil/gasoline, then they'll find happyness selling it here in our country. We will have much, much more gasoline availible, & just like natural gas, the high sypplies will drop the gasoline price substantialy. Not long ago the oil companies were the big bad oil companies. What happened? What changed? What's wrong with my idea?

What's wrong with $2.00 gasoline? It was under $2 just 3&1/2 years ago.

where do you get the electricity for you Leaf? Let's invade and take over Canada, build a few hundred nuke reactors up there in the tundra, just in case they melt, design electric slots in all the roads, and we have a never ending supply for massivly torqy cars that are lightweight since they have no batterys.

Whatever, most of the newer hybrid batteries are NiMH (which are recyclable) and they last 8+ years. The lobbyists and propaganda groups from the oil companies are doing a great job in brainwashing people. :shakes head:

One long term one short term solution:
1)Build refineries. 2) Have a handful of boutique gas mixtures for states to pick from and let's move on.

It is relatively simple to hedge the price of gasoline if you really think it is going to go up. There are dozens of stocks and ETFs that track the price of gasoline fairly well.

I once thought of building a basic hedging strategy for the average american so that anyone could do this. What I found is that, as much as we complain about it, for the average American gas is dirt cheap. Even at 4 or 5 bucks a gallon, we just don't spend that much to make the hedging effort even worth it.

Why not, it was Bush's fault a couple years ago when gas prices spiked wasn't it? Or is it still his fault, like every other one of obama's problems?

Just unplug the whole god damn world and that will solve a lot of problems. It would Slow down pollution, the growing population, and depletion of natural resources. Intact without the unnatural means to aid in food production and distribution populations with even start to Shrink. Game populations will rebound once natural environments reclaim abandoned cities. Humans can go back to leaving as hunter/gathers. And we can all stop worrying about what one group of people do to another group half way around the world.

Blame
 

Thank you.
Bush went into Afghanistan because the people resposible were there. Obama tripled our troops because ???? He said it was the right war?????
We lost much more people in the last 3 years than in the 8 Bush years. Googled it!

Who gets the credit, or should I say the blame for our dead soldiers & the billions spent?????

My point is why shouldn't we blame our leader(s) ?????

Good point.
Since 1800 world population went from 1 billion to 7 billion. In the next 100 years, growth will go above 50 billion +++. All the green, oil & nuclear energy won't make a dent....

Yes, the nickel is recyclable but that is only a percent of the battery. Also, the production and mining of the materials for these newer NiMH batteries is far worse than previous generations. The main benefit, which is why it was pushed so fast, was the removal of the toxic material cadmium from batteries.
Also, the argument they last 8+ years is worthless, since every time you charge a battery still you lose x% off the top. So yes, the battery can last 8 years, but after 5 you only get 40-50% of the battery time which is horrible for the use in automobiles where people want to keep a car for 8-10 years.

Depending on how it is built, there are batteries that are renewable. You are right there are going to be some waste regardless, but it is no different than the production of oil.

The life of hybrid car batteries are way longer than what people perceive. Why do you think most hybrid batteries carry a 6-8 years warranty? I believe Hyundai's latest hybrid battery retain 90% of its original power even after 150K, the same goes to Toyota.