Topic: Anyone worried about the price of gas?

[overtakeyouintheleftlane]

People who wait in line for a 4 cent difference are foolish. In a 55 litre tank that's only $2.20 difference. Hardly worth the wait as those waiting for it burn away those savings anyway as they usually idle the car.

We can't control gas prices. I only do what I can to control it such as doing the speed limit, travel during off peak hours, make sure car is maintained and check/adjust the tire pressure regularly.

There are other things that are more pressing in life besides the price of gas.

[johngenx]

We can't control gas prices.

In the long run we sure can.  Prices are a function of supply and demand, and if we dramatically reduce our consumption, then prices will fall.

[Ex-airbalancer]

Worried about the price of gas? Not so much. Last fillup was Jan 17 and the gas light only came on yesterday so I'm not consuming enough for it to matter.

why have a car?

[ArticSteve]

Wow!
I know what bucket this thread is headed.
Railton

 

Higher oil price no cause for alarm: Flaherty

What an idiot.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/higher-oil-price-no-cause-for-alarm-flaherty/article1921338/

[my2cents]

On Jan 4th this year I posted a blurb from BNN "Gas prices could hit $1.70 liter or more this year."

This was before any of the middle east turmoil.

Wall street is doing the same thing they always do - use any excuse to drive the price up. Gulf of Mexico hurricanes? Refinery shutdowns? Anything in any oil producing country? Any unrest anywhere?

When the economy collapsed in the U.S. - oil prices were cut in half or more down to $32 a barrel (I think). There was no decrease in demand. Nobody anywhere was using less.

This is all manipulation.

But to answer the question - around 1998 Arco had too much gas for some reason and had to unload it in a hurry.

So they bought up the Super-Save stations in the lower mainland and opened them as Arco one at a time with prices at 32 cents/liter as opposed to around 49 cents regular price as far as I can remember.

Nearby stations immediately matched the price which lasted for a few weeks until the prices rose.

By then another station opened with the same results. This went on for months.

I would normally support the new guy - but I didn't. My logic was the sooner they use up the quota - the sooner they will raise the prices. So I bought from the competitors to prolong it as much as possible.

All the stations are now Husky.

And ethanol from corn is an absolute disaster and causing worldwide starvation.

I don't have any facts - these are my opinions.

[ArticSteve]

I don't have any facts - these are my opinions.

Factual enough.

[my2cents]

I think it was $147 a barrel down to $74. and the tar sands need $85 to be profitable now that I give it some thought.

But that was the start of the meltdown in the U.S.

[Guy]

My main concern is not that filling up will cost me $60 instead of $50. My main concern is what this sudden raise will do a the weak economy.

[Guy]

We can't control gas prices.

In the long run we sure can.  Prices are a function of supply and demand, and if we dramatically reduce our consumption, then prices will fall.

That's the only way!

[johngenx]

We can't control gas prices.

In the long run we sure can.  Prices are a function of supply and demand, and if we dramatically reduce our consumption, then prices will fall.

That's the only way!

Of course, people are morons, and as soon as prices fall they race to trade their hybrids in on Escalades and then scratch their heads when prices rise again.  It's like everyone in North America is Homer Simpson.

[Leviathan]

Worried about the price of gas? Not so much. Last fillup was Jan 17 and the gas light only came on yesterday so I'm not consuming enough for it to matter.

why have a car?

Because it is too difficult to take the golf clubs on the bike silly 

[Triple Bob]

We can't control gas prices.

In the long run we sure can.  Prices are a function of supply and demand, and if we dramatically reduce our consumption, then prices will fall.

That's the only way!

Of course, people are morons, and as soon as prices fall they race to trade their hybrids in on Escalades and then scratch their heads when prices rise again.  It's like everyone in North America is Homer Simpson.

Me lose brain? Uh-oh.

[mmret]

When the economy collapsed in the U.S. - oil prices were cut in half or more down to $32 a barrel (I think). There was no decrease in demand. Nobody anywhere was using less.

I need some of what you're smoking.

[johngenx]

No drop in demand?  Huh?  Massive drops in manufacturing and other economic activity worldwide caused a huge drop in the demand for oil.  People might have kept their SUVs in the US, but unemployed people drive less.

[PJungnitsch]

Dyer's take on it, that demand may indeed go down:

    There is an extraordinary disconnect between what the experts write about oil prices, and what is likely to happen out in the real world. The pundits inhabit an economist’s perfect dream-world, where oil prices respond to changes in supply and demand that are driven mainly by production costs and economic conditions. In the real world, it’s a lot more complex.

    The question of price is back on the table, because oil just broke through the $100-per-barrel level for the second time in history. (The first time was July, 2008, when it briefly reached $147 per barrel before falling back to a low of $33 the following December.) But the experts have concluded that this time, cheap oil is never coming back.

    A typical offering was a document published by the oil industry giant BP a couple of weeks ago. “BP Energy Outlook 2030" forecast that fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal – will still account for 80 percent of primary energy worldwide in 2030.

    Moreover, total world energy consumption will grow very fast. Demand in the developed countries will not grow by much, if at all, in the next twenty years, but it will rise by almost two-thirds in the larger economies of the developing world, notably China’s and India’s.

    If 80 percent of the energy mix is still fossil fuels in twenty years’ time, then the amount that the world burns will have to rise, too. Oil currently accounts for 35 percent of primary energy in the world, and if that ratio persists then the we’re going to need a lot more of the stuff. That means the price will go up and stay up.

    Finding new oil will get more expensive, for the cheap, “sweet” oil in easy-to-reach places was developed first. Most of the new oil will be found under the sea, or in the Arctic, or trapped in tar sands in Canada and Venezuela, or it will be “sour” oil with a high sulphur content. The price per barrel has to be high to make it worthwhile to develop those resources – but it WILL stay high, because the demand for oil is going to rise so steeply.

    Or so it says in “BP Energy Outlook 2030.” Well, you didn’t expect an oil company to publish a report saying that demand for its product is going to dwindle and prices are going to fall, did you? But BP’s analysis leaves out politics, technology and even fashion.

    The politics first. One major implication of a rising demand for oil is that the importance of Middle Eastern oil will grow, for this is the one place where relatively modest investments can increase production rapidly. However, the Middle East is unpredictable politically, and getting more so by the moment. The consumers hate uncertainty, and this gives them a strong incentive to move to alternative sources of energy.

    Concerns about global warming are pushing them in the same direction. The key to stopping the warming is to cut the amount of fossil fuels we are burning, and ultimately to stop using them entirely.

    Government programmes to do that already exist in most countries, and even in the United States, where Congress blocks direct action, the Obama administration has used the Environmental Protection Agency to raise the fuel efficiency standard for American-built vehicles to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. (The current average is 25 mpg.) That alone will result in a 29 percent cut in American oil usage.

    Now the technology. The hunt for a substitute fuel for vehicles is already underway. ExxonMobil, for example, is investing $600 million in research into producing a cost-effective alternative from biomass – specifically, from algae that require no agricultural land and use only waste or salt water.

    A rival process would combine hydrogen with carbon dioxide drawn directly from the air (by “artificial trees,” a technology that is developing very fast), to create an octane-type fuel for cars. Like its algae-based rival, this fuel would be carbon-neutral, and could be delivered through existing distribution systems and used in current vehicle engines. Either solution would be a real challenger to $100-per-barrel oil.

    And finally, fashion. In the 1934 movie “It Happened One Night,” Clark Gable, the leading male movie idol of the day, undressed to get into bed with Claudette Colbert (they were married, of course), and under his shirt was...a bare chest! He wasn’t wearing an undershirt! Shock, horror – and then the treacherous thought: why ARE we all wearing undershirts?  In less than a year, the market for undershirts collapsed.

    So here we have a world where almost all the cars are oil-fuelled or at best “hybrid,” although electric-powered alternatives are beginning to appear on the market. The electrics are still not satisfactory for long-distance driving, but mass-produced cars burning carbon-neutral oil substitutes in internal combustion engines are probably only five to ten years away.

    And in ten or fifteen years' time, after we have had a couple of really big environmental disasters or a new oil embargo by Middle Eastern oil producers, might the motorised masses ask themselves: why ARE we all driving petroleum-fuelled cars? And act on their conclusions.

    The BP study is a soothing bedtime story for worried oil industry execs. In the real world, the long-term future of oil prices may be down, not up.


http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20Oil,%20CO2%20and%20Undershirts.txt

[tpl]

Government programmes to do that already exist in most countries, and even in the United States, where Congress blocks direct action, the Obama administration has used the Environmental Protection Agency to raise the fuel efficiency standard for American-built vehicles to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. (The current average is 25 mpg.) That alone will result in a 29 percent cut in American oil usage.

The cut in usage if it happens will take 10 years as the fleet has to turn over to get all the advantage of the more economical vehicles.
Another effect will be more old clunkers, especially I bet, more old 2 ton SUV clunkers as Americans who insist on their big cars keep the ones they have and not buy  a new one.

I will be happy to be proven wrong on that last. I think that Ford making smaller turbo's engines available in full size trucks may tip the balance there. I hope.

[Guy]

No drop in demand?  Huh?  Massive drops in manufacturing and other economic activity worldwide caused a huge drop in the demand for oil.  People might have kept their SUVs in the US, but unemployed people drive less.

Yes, and far less semi trailers on the road to transport goods that nobody was buying.

[Seafoam]

The higher the price of fossil fuels ,the more we may divert back to local again. Maybe shipping  something from China by boat will become too expensive. We could produce it here like we did in the past. Who knows.

[safristi]

 Gwynne Dyer  is suddenly an expert on the future of transport..... ....stick to Middle east History your supposed FORTE (Non Turbo).......

[saint_satan]

Some great points made here.  I can't help but think we missed a huge opportunity with the last gas shock/recession.  In the 1930's the US "stimulus" package included building infrastructure like the Hoover Dam. 

Fast forward to 2008 - instead of building a Gazeebo in Tony Clemnt's riding or fix a bunch of rural culverts in my riding that didn't need to be fixed, why didn't we build some kick-ass high-speed rail?  I feel much better going into hock over a strategic asset than some pork-barrel project in a minister's riding.

Canada has lacked leadership (from all parties) for far too long now.  $2.00 a litre gasoline is a "when" not an "if".  We should be preparing.