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Fergy |
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Cruiser Posts: 153 Frisco, TX | Teach - 2008-06-09 10:50 AM Sorry gang I should let this one go by but after reading the replies I simply cannot. Americans have been and continue to be DUPED by the media and politicians. We don't have an oil SHORTAGE, we have a refining shortage. We use 22 billion barrels a day and only have a refining capability of 17 billion. That means demand out paces supply and we get high prices. We need 2 things: first we need our politicians to force the REOPENING of refineries shut down over the past two decades. Secondly we need the cost of speculation increase from the current 7% to 50%. The Senate has been holdng hearings for months and doing NOTHING, we need to lobby our elected reps to get off their butts and do these two things ASAP. Finally prices will fall by mid to late summer so hang in there. Pretty bad when oil closes at $150 a barrel when OPEC price projected $55-$57 a barrel for this year, speculators suck. First, I don't disagree with you about what you're saying except that your numbers are way wrong. Here they are:
14 and 15 tell part of the story. What we need to do is drill for more oil. We have it and the left wing nutball environmentalist wackos and a lazy congress won't let us. If you think we should drill, go sign Newt's petition here: http://www.americansolutions.com. We have lots of oil. We have lots of natural gas. We have even more coal. Wind power, solar and alternative fuels are great but we need to build nuclear power plants, more refineries, and recover more of our own oil and we can cut our dependence on foreign oil to 0% if we wanted to do so. If we don't do it, we will end up going to war for it because things will get so bad that the American people will demand it even if we have to destroy other nations to get it. To prevent that inevitability, we simply need to take care of our own and drill for the oil that's beneath our feet. Any other alternative is wasting time and harming our country. | ||
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| Fergy |
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Cruiser Posts: 153 Frisco, TX | Update: See this Fox News article: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,365627,00.html. This is about opening up discussion in congress about offshore drilling. Still, the left wing nutball environmentalist wacko socialists are against it saying: “It would take anywhere from seven to 10 years to bring those resources to shore — to have any measurable impact on supply,” Yeah, and if they had started 10, 15, or 20 years ago, we wouldn't be in this problem. Idiots...
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| space_cwboy |
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Cruiser Posts: 235 Evergreen, CO | Sorry, but giving a blank ticket to the oil companies is not the solution either. I agree, there needs to be more oil produced internally in this country, but it is all a matter of the all mighty dollar to the oil companies. Why do you think it is that Canada provides us with the most imported oil? IT'S CHEAPER (higher profit levels for the oil companies). Why do you think the oil companies import oil that someone else pumps, instead of drilling new wells in this country? IT'S EASIER. Why do you think that the U.S ships crude oil to Canada to refine for us, then ship it back to the U.S.? IT'S CHEAPER and EASIER. It's only those wells and refineries that are "easy" are the ones being utilized. Meanwhile Brazilians are drilling at the bottom of multi-thousand feet of ocean to extract oil. The U.S. is too lazy to do this. Our best bet is to reduce consumption in the U.S. - we are oil gluttons compared to other countries! Find a way to get oil companies to extract and use more of "our" oil, instead of importing it. That would be the trickier thing to pull off. Also, why is it when the oil "futures" spike like they did last week, do you see an immediate increase at the pump? That is what needs to be investigated. The oil company mergers in the past decade have reduced true competition to zero, which in my opinion has greatly driven up the prices we pay at the pump. It takes weeks or months for oil futures prices to truly affect the price at the pump. Someone is making a killing!! Maybe the oil monopolies need to be dissolved, and then maybe fuel prices will stabilize a bit. | ||
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| Fergy |
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Cruiser Posts: 153 Frisco, TX | space_cwboy - 2008-06-11 9:29 AM Sorry, but giving a blank ticket to the oil companies is not the solution either. I agree, there needs to be more oil produced internally in this country, but it is all a matter of the all mighty dollar to the oil companies. Why do you think it is that Canada provides us with the most imported oil? IT'S CHEAPER (higher profit levels for the oil companies). Why do you think the oil companies import oil that someone else pumps, instead of drilling new wells in this country? IT'S EASIER. Why do you think that the U.S ships crude oil to Canada to refine for us, then ship it back to the U.S.? IT'S CHEAPER and EASIER. It's only those wells and refineries that are "easy" are the ones being utilized. Meanwhile Brazilians are drilling at the bottom of multi-thousand feet of ocean to extract oil. The U.S. is too lazy to do this. Our best bet is to reduce consumption in the U.S. - we are oil gluttons compared to other countries! Find a way to get oil companies to extract and use more of "our" oil, instead of importing it. That would be the trickier thing to pull off. Also, why is it when the oil "futures" spike like they did last week, do you see an immediate increase at the pump? That is what needs to be investigated. The oil company mergers in the past decade have reduced true competition to zero, which in my opinion has greatly driven up the prices we pay at the pump. It takes weeks or months for oil futures prices to truly affect the price at the pump. Someone is making a killing!! Maybe the oil monopolies need to be dissolved, and then maybe fuel prices will stabilize a bit. Wow. You must get your news from CNN too. Oil is a commodity put on the open market. Oil companies don't dictate the price of oil. Like all commodities, oil is bought on the open market to the highest bidder. If the supply dimishes while the demand is high, the price goes up. It's that simple. It is true that the oil companies are benefiting from the high prices, but they would benefit more if they could produce more oil and build more refineries but they can't. I don't believe we should be giving $18 billion in subsidies to the oil companies but I also don't blame the oil companies for the current problem. It's naive to do so. For many years, oil companies were losing money (hence the subsidies) but they continued to explore and drill. Now, they've been banned from drilling in our own country since 1981. That's the problem. It's not the "greedy" oil companies like the liberals like to say. Liberals want us to live in communes without modern conveniences under their control because they believe they know more about how we should live our lives than we do. Liberals are ultimately the problem. | ||
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| Spock |
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Tourer Posts: 495 Carrollton, TX | Well said Fergy!!! | ||
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| Miles |
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Tourer Posts: 548 Mount Vernon, WA United States | I think the biggest problem are EXTREMISTS.. It's not that ALL liberals are a problem, just the misinformed ones. I'm as much an environmentalist as the next guy, but I also understand the I and a HUMAN am part of the ecology. I get a kick out of the arguments for NOT drillling in Alaska. Impact on the environement.... Sorry, but unless you lived there, and I have, that is such a non-issue. There are places in Alaska (and northern Canada) where they could put entire Oil fields and they'd still need a GPS to find them as they'd be such a small, tiny, dot in a vast vast wasteland where there aren't anything but micro-organisms that live. Do they really think an Oil well has more inpact than the HUGE diamond strip mining by Debeers and others. Watch Ice Road Truckers, take note of the surrounding, take note of the distances, and then realize that that show is in the POPULATED and DEVELOPED areas up north... LOL... I also find the whole anti-nuclear thing quite a joke too. While other countries are scrambling to build Nuclear Power Plants, we're shutting them down. I will admit we are as a country getting on the Solar, Wind and even Thermal, and bio-diesel bandwagons.... and it's nice to see.. Only about 15 years!!!! behind the rest of the developed world but at least we're trying... NOT!!!! But then again... our wired and wireless phone technology is only about 8 years behind the rest of the world, so I guess things are moving along. | ||
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| varyder |
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Visionary Posts: 8144 New Bohemia, VA | Now that we are all in agreement, let's go out and ride...  | ||
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| Fergy |
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Cruiser Posts: 153 Frisco, TX | Another update: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,365627,00.html. The dems just shot down the amendment to open up offshore drilling saying "we can't drill our way out of this problem." The dems simply want to break our economy because it makes it easier for their candidate to win in November and in the end it makes it easier to gain control over the people. Granted, Republicans didn't do what they needed to do 10 years ago and I blame them for that but at least we now see the current situation for what it is: our reliance on imported oil is a national security crisis. We have the oil but our own people are preventing us from drilling for it and it's shameful. We deserve whatever bad things happen to us because we continue to let Pelosi and others like her have say over us and what's best for us. That's what's so depressing; not the price of oil. | ||
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| Teach |
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Visionary Posts: 1436 | Fergy, thanks for catching the B that should have been an M. However I would point out it still doesn't change a thing in the larger picture. It boils down to lack of refining capability, not lack of supply. OPEC's pricing for oil was $55-$57 projection for this year. Its closing well over $100 every day, that is SPECULATION, scam called bump and dump. Last weeks closing of $150 a barrel was not based on market demands, it was based on one person saying oil could be as high as $200 by summers end and speculators jumping all over it. Yes Texas is the largest "producer" of oil within the USA, but they aren't the only state capable of producing those numbers of barrels each day. PA can meet and/or exceed those numbers but the majority of wells are capped. Many have opened in recent months with the high price oil is bringing. I'll be very surprised if PA doesn't have the highest number of NEW millionaires this fiscal year. Finally, you can blame liberals, eco-nuts, etc for fighting new drilling, but the bottom line is we don't need to drill in the places they are asking to drill, in fact we don't need to drill at all. What we need to do is start utilizing the resources we already have capped, the refineries we already have built, etc.... Its always big business pushing for new when they have the old shut down, so you have to ask why? My guess (and this is just a guess) is they see the writing on the wall and the tax dollars going somplace other than in their pockets. Lets face it they have used OUR money to their personal and corporate gain. They are trying to get in one last major investment on the taxpayers part before the plug gets pulled. To this ends they have made dozens of propaganda vids that they have on YouTube. Its a scam. Oh and for the record I am neither an eco-nut nor liberal by any stretch, just a hard working American sick and tired of my tax dollars going into some corporate pocket and then paying again for the product. | ||
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| VisionTex |
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Visionary Posts: 1484 LaPorte,Tx. | Damn all these companies that make "too" much money, that's not American. Let's make sure the politicians make them give it back to us. Let's make sure the government takes care of us. What about Walmart, Microsoft, Dell, Apple,.......and a lot of others, what about the Japan, Korea, & China companies. They are all making alot of money off of us, the hard working American, right! That is right, and that is the way it should be! They the companies (people-workers) provide products or a service, that we want, you buy it if you want or need it, this country was built on that principle. Damn those farmers, food prices are out of line, corn is ~$7.50/bu., how can that be! Just a few years ago, it was ~$2.50 - $3.00/ per bu. They are making too much money.........! You want cheap gas, don't drive so much. You want cheap corn flakes, don't eat breakfast. Supply and Demand. When I was in college in 1968, gas was ~$.30/gallon, in the mid-west, I know because I worked part time in a gas station to make ends meet when I was going to school. After that, I went to work and worked hard for 40 years, achieving better wages every year, that is what we are suppose to do, right? Today, gas is ~$4.00/gallon, there is no magic here, % wise, in relation to the price of gas, I'm better off now than in 1969 when I got my first real job. Anyone who thinks differently, you have not lived it yet. Stop being depressed, it is not that bad, we (Vison-Riders) are having the time of our lives right now by what I read here, and I'm not looking through rose colored glases. Get un-depressed, ride your Vision. Move on! | ||
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| cjnoho |
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Visionary Posts: 1324 So Cal | Both parties are so busy butting heads with each other they forgot who they are really working for. Its not about whats good for the people, but whats good for their party. Its the middle class paying for it all. If your rich theres no problem. If your poor the government has a program. Its our fault for getting up every day and trying to improve our standard of living, and the government knows it. They have us over a barrel, they know we will keep paying to keep what we worked so hard for. | ||
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| varyder |
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Visionary Posts: 8144 New Bohemia, VA | While we are on the subject.... | ||
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| Hippo |
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Cruiser Posts: 64 Warren, Vermont | I am amazed by the amount of wishful thinking and bad information contained here. I'm one of those left-wing wackos you guys seem to blame for common sense... 1) Nuclear energy is not the answer - it is way too expensive, there is no solution to the waste issue and no new nukes have been built for decades because of these issues - see:http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/02/nuclear_power_price/index.html 2) It is not ALL about us. Yes, we consume well over our share of fossil fuels and that is a real problem, however, the real pressure on oil is developing countries such as China and India where improving economies (all that stuff in Walmart) are driving up wealth, making autos and a better standard of living possible and therefore increasing demand for oil. Anyone that thinks that the war in Iraq is ultimately not about oil is smoking some good ganja. 3) Drilling is not the answer - not because there isn't some oil there and not because of environmental protection (although I would make that case, too) but because it is hardly worth the effort for the small amount of oil that is possibly there. That is literally a drop in the bucket. 4) We are well past "peak oil" in the USA - that means we have pumped out more than 1/2 of the oil we have and the rest is harder to get and more expensive. So if we want oil, then we have to deal with the MidEast, Venezuela and other foreign source. 5) Conservation and efficiency are the low-hanging fruit. Look at the trends towards smaller more efficient cars now that gas is priced higher. The waste will buy us a lot of time if we turn our efforts towards conservation and efficiency. 6) Prices are not likely to come down, ever. Hippo | ||
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| divesharc |
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Cruiser Posts: 297 VA | Hippo, I would have to disagree on at least one point of yours. Several studies have shown, and no I don't have them at hand to link to or I would, that Pennsylvania has one of the largest oil reserves in the U.S., possibly even equalling accessible known reserves in Alaska. However, the problem is there are all these people in the way of it. As for Alaska, the problem is that it would cost too much to setup not only the wells, but also the pipelines to get it back to the refineries. I agree that prices will likely never come down, at least not to what they were even a few years ago, but I also think that politicians are tryign to use the oil "crisis" to their advantage, and certainly the private market is trying to make as much money off of it as they can, because that's what they do. I won't even pretend to have the answer because the truth is if the answer were easy, someone would have done it by now. I will say this though, that because politicians are always wanting to be the ones in the greatest position of power, whoever is in position of least power is always going to oppose what the ruling party wants because it will weaken them even more. In this case, the dems are not wanting to solve the oil problem while republicans are in office. At least that's how I see it. Either way, my Vision gets the best gas mileage of any vehicle I own, so I'm just going to keep riding that. | ||
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| space_cwboy |
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Cruiser Posts: 235 Evergreen, CO | Hippo - While I'm in agreement with the majority of your post, I think you are a little off base with regard to the "China/India" info. If you look at how much those countries consume, it's a drop in the bucket compared to US consumption. I am in 100% agreement about the "conservation and efficiency" part of your post. If we could get those incredibly wasteful large SUVs off the road, that we see only one person inside, and more folks into more efficient vehicles, we would SAVE more than China and India consume! Latest meaning for "SUV"....Suddenly Undesireable Vehicles!! Most of us realize that we on this forum are the "good guys" (a point brought up by divesharc above), enjoying our miles ridden while simultaneously doing our part for "conservation and efficiency". Ride when you can, leave the less efficient vehicle sit in your driveway/garage as much as you can, and ENJOY!!! I for one would welcome a new generation Vision that runs on something other than fossil fuels. Assuming it would have similar power and comfort, I'd jump to that in a heartbeat. Same goes for a 4 wheeled vehicle that doesn't consume any fossil fuel. | ||
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| Miles |
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Tourer Posts: 548 Mount Vernon, WA United States | Hippo, I too agree with your sentiment, but check some of your information while others have said. While the US hasn't built any new plants in decades, and in fact is decommissioning them, other countries are embracing nuclear power, but.. BIG BUT, it IS the most capital intensive of power sources. That's just one example, again.. the sentiments is there. We need to do something other than try and find "quick fixes." There are no "fixes" there are just solutions. I think doing a little bit in ALL areas of power is probably the best solution. Use wind when that works, use oil that is available and cheaper, use coal that is available and cheaper, use nuclear when that is a good option, maybe in places like Alaska, and in remote parts of the US where the cost of the plant balances with the cost is would be over time to transport fuel to the same location. Common sense really. There's a pretty decent sized refinery right down the street from me. http://www.tsocorp.com/tsocorp/ProductsandServices/Refining/Anacort... Note that they certainly brag about all their numbers like being able to process 115,000 barrells of crude per day... but note they don't tell you where the gas goes... We do have Tesoro stations, but I do not believe the gas comes from this refinery. I have been told this refinery EXPORTS it's product outside the USA. I found that interesting, although I can't confirm it at this point. As others have said... this conversation is somewhat preaching to the choir. We own Victory motorcycles because we think a little different. We have common sense (at least sometimes). We seem to all be doing our part, and maybe that's all we can do.... and that's not depressing at all. | ||
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| cjnoho |
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Visionary Posts: 1324 So Cal | Doesnt matter what we think or how we feel, the people in power are calling the shots. We do have an allie over there though. Saudi Arabia IS concerned that higher prices will affect demand, and has decided to increase their exports. Refining is still an issue. | ||
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