Gas Prices

[Ben]

I don't even want to go out today and see how bad the gas prices are.

[proudfather2]

Central Lower Michigan.

Monday: $2.65 per gallon for Regular.
Tuesday: $2.99
Wednesday (today): $3.39 per gallon.

SEVENTY THREE CENTS IN LESS THAN TWO DAYS!!!

It's gonna be a long cold winter.

[Rob]

You can expect $4.00 per gallonn soon.

[CHEWIE]

Unreal... we need to build some more refineries.  There's not a shortage of gas/oil available, it's a lack of production/distribution.

 

[Rob]

Refinery capacity is a fraction of the problem.  The problem is that we are at or are approaching Peak Oil and supplies are going to get smaller and smaller - even if we had all the refineries in the world - as demand continues to grow (China, SUV's, India etc...).

What we need to do, is not build more refineries, but develop alternative fuels as soon as humanly possible.  I'm betting that oil runs out in my lifetime - and if there is nothing in place to power the world we're building, we'll be looking at a world-wide diaster of unbounded proportions.

Oh, and with alternative fuels - we could instantly remove any clout or power that these no good middle eastern governments have.

[Tracy]

Just saw on CNN that Atlanta area gas stations are running out of fuel and the ones that still have gas are charging as much as $4.99/gallon.  The lines here are awful.  My husband has been gone over an hour trying to find a gas station that still has gas -- all of the ones in our area are either out or are nearly out and still have 75-100 cars waiting -- what a mess -- still better off than those who lost everything 

[john todd]

do you have any stats on that zod.   its been years since i heard it, but in the late 90's they were saying that there was oil enough for over 100 more years, but the price and scarcity were artificially increased by opec limiting production.

i understand the china and india effect, but realistically, those guys did not increase their production that much in just the past couple of years.  someone is screwing with us.

i agree that we should be looking for alternatives, but even if they came out with some super car tomorrow, i would not be able to dump the car i am in and jump on it.  there needs to be a more realistic time frame for doing something.

i would be ok if they stopped selling gas only powered cars tomorrow, but for the next 4-5 years until we are able to rotate out of what we are driving there needs to be some kind of action taken slow the rise of gas costs.

btw i drive a sentra that gets nearly 40mpg.   simply offering me the solution of buying a hybrid is not enough.

[Rob]

Check out the link in my post above (www.peakoil.org) - it seems legit and suggests mainly that no one knows when oil will run out and that the days of finding vast new cheap reserves are dwindling.   Just hitting the peak means that we've consumed half of the world's oil supply - and since we consume oil much much faster than say 50 years ago, it's fair to say that the trip down the hill will take a lot less time than the trip up it.

[Famine]

Today I go into town, and the gas station is loaded, bumper to bumped. Gas is 2.81. I look across the street, and it's 3.15, and then I look further down the road, and it's 3.31! I almost threw up in my mouth, I was so revolted. I'm going to have to cut back on my collecting, I think. It's bad when my job is working to pay for gas to drive for work.

Kevin

[proudfather2]

You can expect $4.00 per gallonn soon.

Yeah, I thought my town being at $3.39 was bad, I just learned from my local news network (out of Lansing) that some folks in Northern Lower Michigan and in the Upper Peninsula have already reached $4.00 a gallon . Ain't that a bitch!!!

[Jediknight760071]

Went up to $2.99 here today. Used to cost me $25.40 to fill up, but today, $30 even. I'm gonna go update my post in the gas prices thread over in the ROTS section.

[Vator]

Unreal... we need to build some more refineries.  There's not a shortage of gas/oil available, it's a lack of production/distribution.

 

Surley you didn't listen to Limbaugh this afternoon, eh Chewie? 

[Morgbug]

A couple of questions:

as demand continues to grow (China, SUV's, India etc...).

Why does everyone crap on SUVs all the time?  Yeah, they're big and largely pointless.  They're also a fraction of the market that is called Minivan.  They're large, often the same size or even heavier than many SUVs.  There are few, if any, four cylinders.  And they are a huge segment of the market relative to SUVs.  Did kids get bigger?  We had two kids and a dog and did fine with two or four door cars. 

Oh, and with alternative fuels - we could instantly remove any clout or power that these no good middle eastern governments have.

And replace it with any clout or power in what nation specifically that won't exploit it in exactly the same manner?  I frankly don't believe governments anywhere (US, Canada, any Euro nation) are altruistic.  So we'll end up with an alternative fuel source, but will it be cheaper?  Probably not.  Will it be free?  Definitely not.  Will it be cleaner burning?  Maybe, but maybe not. 

My point, aside from my nature of being contrarian, is that there are real issues with alternate fuel sources as well.  Much of our research is hampered by overt environmental concern.  I'm not at all suggesting there should be no consideration but we need to be pragmatic and realistic. 

The problem with peakoil is that it's extremely reminiscent of what we (well, those of us old enough) saw in the 1970s.  Oil reserves were running out then too and a great many people made the same prognostication that Rob did.  Did we find more oil back then?  Nope, we just got better at taking it out.  Improvements will continue to be made, but yes, it is a finite resource.  Rob's statements that we need alternatives are accurate.  Maybe if we stopped wasting all the money on Kyoto (which by the way if all targets are met will reduce warming by 0.6 C - less than the error in the measurement - by 2050 at the cost of billions of dollars to each nation) and plowed it into research for alternate fuel sources, we'd be better off.

Gas here is 1.085 per liter.  Four liters per gallon.

[Ben]

[Jesse James]

It spiked here and I got to watch some hillbillies fight it out at a pump on the hill above my house where it was still $2.49/gal. while others in the area had jumped to $2.79-$2.85/gal. or so.

The line was out onto the highway to get that gas...  The irony was a station had it for $2.55 the next hill over and no real lines.