$3/gallon gas and $75/barrel oil

As gas prices surge, liberals demand a windfall profit tax on oil companies. This should really help, since any taxes on corporations are simply passed on to consumers. The end result will be even MORE EXPENSIVE gas! Did any of these guys EVER take economics?

Why is gas more expensive? A massive increase in demand mostly in India and China. Meanwhile, liberals have done all they can to prevent measures that would actually help decrease prices. Namely, increasing the supply.

First we have ANWAR. Tons of oil in a desolate wasteland. Can't drill though, might upset the deer. Second, offshore drilling. Liberals have prevented any increases in offshore drilling despite the fact that by some estimates there is more oil of the coast off the US than in Saudi Arabia!

We also have different "blends" of gasoline required in practically every state.

If we want lower prices, let's do something to increase production and decrease regulations that make gasoline production more expensive. Also, decreasing taxes would help.

 

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It's ANWR, not ANWAR. And there's not tons of oil. There's not enough oil up there to last America a month. A drop in the bottomless tank. There is so little oil, the oil companies don't really want to develop it. Not worth the trouble.

 

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what happened to solar energy?
the major drawback of solar power was cost, it wasn't competitive with cheap oil.
oil is no longer cheap, but solar power is nowhere to be found. why?

 

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The cells are still too expensive and inefficient to be practical on a large scale, however many research groups are working on inexpensive solar film collectors which capture more energy through the infrared spectrum:
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200507/sargent.asp

 

I don't mean to sound contrary madanthonywayne, but more taxed/expensive gas may help us start taking the oil situation more seriously. SUV and truck sales have changed very little since prices have gone up (source)
if people don't care about the gas prices, then the companies will charge whatever they want. basic economics: price up, demand down. we could simply use the extra tax money to fight the problem.

I am no expert on what measures are most effective, but perhaps giving consumers tax breaks for buying higher gas millage cars, or perhaps directly to the automakers, or research of renewable energy sources. oil's only economically inelastic as long as the other sources are so underdeveloped.

 

We could also start by cutting the tax breaks given to small businesses when they purchase trucks and SUV's that run on regular gasoline. Instead, let's give them tax breaks for purchasing trucks that run on ethanol, hydrogen or electric power. Just an idea.

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IMHO, your position is the CAUSE of US’s problem, not the cure.

Even at $3/gal, US gasoline prices are less than half what ALL Europeans pay! Norway has no shortage of oil - is in fact a big supplier of that "black gold mineral." but that government and its people there are more intelligent and less short sighted than in the US, so their current price is above $7/gal, to encourage the development of the type of infrastructure that is necessary now, in the "post peak oil" era.

Saudi Arabia has been saying that it can increase production to meet demand, but fact it was slightly higher in 2004 than it is currently. They keep very tightly information about their capacity, but most experts think they have little except for low quality sour oil, which is already in global surplus and dropping in price as there are too few refineries that can accept this type of crude as feed stock. - I.e. Saudi Arabia is not likely to develop these deposits in a market already saturated with them.

If you want a better indicator of the probably of increased oil shipments from the gulf region, look at the price of long term rental /lease of oil tankers - it is dropping rapidly, in part no doubt due to the expectation that GWB is stupid enough to reduce oil export from Iran as he has already done for oil from Iraq (not yet back to pre-invasion levels).

The American suburban live style has been the envy of the world, but America’s neglect of the inter cities, neglect of public transport in cities that only the poor, usually blacks, use plus this general suburban sprawl developed by the richer part of US society and their big gas hogs, all those things US keeping gas at less than half the cost others have produced as “infrastructure“, will soon be the reason why the US collapses economically. - It is impossible to change this suburban infrastructure in less than a decade and gas can easily go to above $10/gal in half that time.

I.e. - It was a great dance, while it lasted, but paying the piper now that the dance is over, will be very painful for the US, much more so than for those countries that have sold gas at twice (or more) of the US price for years or for places like Brazil, that began to convert to alcohol fuel 30 years ago and now are energy self sufficient.

Little food is produce near where it is consumed in US. Was not necessary in the "cheap-gas" economy. What do you think will happen in the US when most of the local grocery shelves are bare or items on them are priced too high for the increasing out-of-work population to buy?

I bet only the army & police will have the gas when the collapsed US dollar can only import a little of it and that you will need guns (There are lots of them in the US.) to keep the hungry, angry, mob from taking what you wisely stored in your suburban basement when you began to realize that what I am suggesting might indeed happen.

I am in Brazil, building a refuge for my grand children. I hope I can get them out of the US before it gets too dangerous there. Where will you be then?

 

I think you are a bit too gloomy in your prediction. I doubt it will be that bad.

 

I am beggining to think that Peak Oil is a total scam by the people in the world who want to prematurly end the oil age.

Sure, if you simply rely on conventional oil sources, things are going to get hairy. I think the west should put a huge amount of capital investment into the Aberta Oil Sands as well as Colorado's Oil Shale.

There is over 1 trillion barrels of recoverable oil in these two deposits. With oil over $70/barrel, these previously expensive solutions have become economically viable.

 

And will be available to consumers when?

 

I dont know, maybe 10 years if we get started now.

 

Hope you are right and I am wrong.

 

Is that just your opinion, or can you give some reference or show that as the result of an analysis. I am under the impression that so much heat is required to free the oil from the sand that a considerable higher price is required.

I.e. if you need to burn 2 barrels of oil to free 3, you only get a net gain of one and that at the expense of making the CO2 release per unit of energy three times greater. These numbers are just illustrations, but in the ball park as I remember it.

Please support your statement quoted above.

 

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/articles/060424/24oil.htm


Actually the ratio is more like you get 3.5 usuable barrels of oil for every 1 used in production, much lower than the current 20:1 ratio of crude.

Alberta Oil Sands cost $10-30 more too produce than crude and oil shale is $30-50 more than crude.

As you can see, with oil prices below $50 this makes little sense. If oil stays above $70 there is incentive to use these unconventional sources.

That article is really good, check it out.

 

Do you really think you'll be safe in Brazil if the country with the most powerful military in the world, located not that far from Brazil, is in the dire state you describe? Many liberals are fond of calling Bush a Nazi, but if any of what you described comes to pass, I think we'd see the real thing. Including the foriegn policy.

Fortunately, I don't believe any of that will happen. Speaking of the Nazis, didn't they power their war machine with liquified coal due to a shortage of oil? If they could do it with WW2 technology, surely we could too. The US has TONS of coal.

 

That article I posted talks about liquified coal.

 

Increasing domestic oil reserves by fifty percent sounds significant. So does a suppy of oil greater than that in Saudi Arabia.

 

That was a good article. It points out some of the ways we will avoid the apocolyptic prophesies of Billy T. As oil becomes more expensive, all the hair brained ideas people have had over the years begin to make sense. If oil stays above fifty dollars a barrel for long, we'll see more and more of these new technologies.

 

$3 per gallon isnt that much. if you compare it to new zealand prices its about $0.60 NZD/litre cheaper that what im paying. and in britain its about 3 times as much with the amount of tax on it.

 

Of course it sounds significant. It's worded vaguely so as to give you the impression of an enormity of oil that isn't being used. Simply misleading. Do you know what America's domestic oil reserves are? Here, I'll look it up for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#United_States

Do you know how many barrels of oil the US consumes in a year?
7 billion.
Half of 21 billion divided by 7 billion gives us a little more than a years supply of oil in ANWR. I'd rather keep the wilderness for my kids than you take that extra car ride to the grocery store.