Higher prices for gasoline are inevitable because of what's called "Peak Oil". Basically, because the amount of oil under the ground is finite, eventually our ability to pump it out of the ground will "peak" at which point less and less will be available. In the meantime, worldwide demand for oil has increased dramatically (China, India). You only need to do the economic math to figure out where the price point is headed.

Unfortunately this does mean that our standard of living will have to decrease until we find alternatives that are as inexpensive as oil is now. I don't see any way around that problem. It's going to hit the poor and the lower-middle and solid-middle classes hard. It's not just the price of gas; but the price of everything else is going up, too. Been to the grocery store lately (some of which is also the result of worldwide and American population explosion).

It's pretty sad that people who don't need heavy pickup trucks and SUVs are still purchasing new ones. When you go to buy a vehicle today, the question is not, "What vehicle do I want to be driving when gas is at $4/gallon?", rather the question is, "What vehicle do I want to be driving in five years when it's at $8/gallon and when the prices for everything else have also increased?"

I fear that life in the United States is going to be very different in the near future and that it won't be good, and high oil prices and the lack of good viable alternatives is merely one of our many problems.

Typically a symptom of that kind of trading issue is that inventories go up (I.e., the supply is artificially kept down by keeping stock off the market).

Inventories are not increasing anywhere on the books, and the input of oil into refineries and the output from those refineries are at the same balance points they've stayed at for years, so there are no indications that there are well hidden stockpiles somewhere.

Off hand, I want an electric car. Sure, at the moment they need to be recharged overnight, but heck - I'm paying $50 a week for gas now, and I typically only drive to work and back - get me enough range that I can do my day to day driving and I will *rent* a gasoline vehicle when I go on vacation.

Jonnan

Its completly ridiculous. I can't even fill my truck up all the way because the pumps don't go over $75 worth of gas. Gas prices will go down some after November but not all the way to good ol' day prices, jeez I remember my parents complaining about $1.50 a gallon, lol.

With apologies - oh, that's funny. Pumps won't go over $75? That makes no sense!

Surely Semi's have to use more than $75 worth of diesel on a fill up?

"Good news today - Gas prices plunged when the rate went over $256 dollars a barrel, but the markets only allowed for 8 bits in the pricing, causing prices to loop over to $1.00 a barrel, dropping Gasoline to $.03 a Gallon . . ."

Jonnan

Here is what I've read .. I do not know if it is true or not.. but anyway. Oil companies are receiving more profits for their product but the profit margin remains the same. They're still getting rich to be sure but no more than they already were.

Demand impacts the price. Two countries: China and India. Notwithstanding, Venezuela and Mexico have decreased production to the U.S as well. Slap in the face you say? I think so. Saudi Arabia increased production by 300,000 barrels to ease prices but it is a drop in the bucket.

Environmentalist are against domestic exploration and drilling. Alaska could be drilled if the project is properly managed/undertaken. The Gulf of Mexico still has much to be harvested. Canada has billions of barrels of potential oil; however it is very hard to get out of the ground.

Hydrogen fuel cells and ethanol are the worst alternative in terms of efficiency. Look into it and let me know if you agree or not.

So let's have a look at the future. Soaring energy prices on a global scale. The global demand for food has surpassed the global supply for the first time in history. What's going to happen?

There was actually a recent study done by a couple of scientists (don't remember the specifics) but one guy went from Chicago to New York on less than 9 gallons of gas, which averaged out to 70+ mpg. He said the trick is to coast whenever you can instead of keeping your foot on the gas, and again coast to a stop if at all possible instead of tapping on the breaks. I personally think it's a phenomenal idea.

@Lord Arkham

W's buddies
Canada has 21% of our oil imports(the majority) last time I checked
@Environmentalists, get used to it, we're going to have to do it eventually
Hydrogen fuel cells cost 120K last time I checked
America is going to have to turn to large scale public transportation like foreign countries and GM foods

Scary and stupid at the same time, isn't it?

Ethanol might be useful - despite being from Indiana, corn based ethanol really doesn't work all that well, but Brazil shows pretty obviously that a good ethanol supply mechanism can work well. It also has the advantage that it's basically compatible with our current infrastructure, which lowers the short term investment.

Hydrogen is actually workable now - the issue there is more infrastructure than technology, because it's completely incompatible as it stands now.

Personally, there is work being done on super-capacitors that combine the energy reserves of batteries with the fast charging capabilities of capacitors - if it pans out, I think the best thing would be to skip right over hydrogen to fully electric cars. Right now the big problem with electric cars is the time it takes to charge them, if the Government is smart and sets policy so they can skip recouping the R&D cost and just start mass production, a lot of this mess could be cleared up PDQ.

Jonnan

Nice info all. Thanks.

I imagine gas stations don't want to handle large sums of cash such as $100 bills or $50 bills in case of robbery. It gets exponentially more unlikely customers will be able to pay in $20s the higher it goes, so they cut it off there.

If they would start drilling off the coast, in Alaska, in Brazil, and now in North Dakota we could be out of this mess and prevent oil from going that high. If they had simply started drilling 10 years ago when Alaska came up and it was defeated by 1 vote, then we wouldn't have the problem we have today. Yes, oil is finite, but we keep finding new deposits of it all the time. They found a bunch down in Antarctica (the Russians are eagerly going after it) and over in Greenland. Recently there was a discovery in Brazil and North Dakota. Just because oil runs out in some places does not mean there's no more to be captured and utilized.

We have the technology today to use vehicles that run exclusively on water. Unfortunately, this technology has been trampled on by the powers that run energy markets. There was a motorcycle, dune buggy, and a few other vehicles in Europe over the past couple years which ran on tap water. Unfortunately, they've either disappeared or their owners wound up slumped over in their own driveways. The USA is getting raped by the big oil companies who are making tons and tons of profit and not reinvesting it or lowering prices. Just because Europe has decided to quietly go along with that scheme does not mean the USA won't. We have the capability to make gas come down to about a dollar again if we'd simply relax environmental regulation and force the oil companies to do something productive with those profits (not via taxes--we need some sort of oversight or control over how they distribute their profits).

Two bad assumptions there:
A) Most of these deposits are relatively small. Best Estimates (Not the largest estimates, but the most likely, according to studies) of the Anwar reserve are six months of oil usage - at our current rates of using oil, it will either be gone quickly, or be a small percentage of the market. Sure, there *could* be more, but investing heavily there is like betting your house on drawing on an inside straight. Sure - *maybe* you end up filthy rich, more likely you end up in the street.

The heavy deposits that *are* found (like it looks like the Brazilian Deposit is) are not easy to get to. When you get to deposits like that, or shale, or oil sands, it takes so much money to get them properly that those doing so can't *afford* for oil prices to drop, or they'll never recoup the initial investments. They can act as a stopgap to keep prices from rising, but it is actually stupid for those getting to them to drain the reserves at a rate sufficient to drop prices, because they've invested so much to get the oil in the first place.


Honestly - that's a great fantasy, but it doesn't make sense really. You get energy out of chemical reactions by breaking chemicals from high, complicated energy states to smaller, simple ones, you store energy chemically by using energy to drive things from low energy, simple states to high energy, complicated, unstable ones - Our petrochemical industry only survives because so many eons of organisms used sunlight to help make bigger, complicated, unstable chemicals and died before they got a chance to use that energy the way they planned to. Oil is canned sunlight, more or less.

But water is one of the most stable chemicals in existence - that's why there's so much of it, it takes huge amounts of energy to break it down. It's a great chemical to aim for as an end product - it's so stable itself that anything that has it as an end product has probably released a fair amount of energy, but as a fuel? You'd have to find something that's an even lower energy configuration of Oxygen and Hydrogen to aim for, and frankly, there just ain't any many energy states to shoot for. Plant's use it, in conjunction with Sunlight, and we get free oxygen out of the deal as a side effect of they're chemically storing more energy than they can use safely (They don't move around a lot, and don't feel like wasting time storing the equivalent of raw jet fuel when they're not going to use it.)

But as a fuel, in and of itself? Third rule of thermodynamics, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Jonnan

As gas prices will rise, new technologies will be used to power cars. People use oil now, because it is still relatively cheap in comparison with other propulsion systems. If the price changes many people will seek some workaround - electro mobiles, hydrogen cars etc. We have those technologies already, but we don't use them yet. But it will change.

Probably none. In the Fairytale-Land where that would happen, the NEXT week everyone would be buying gas at the same time...and getting pissed at the long wait.



Looking at a stock price to compare profitability of a company doesn't do much good. Stock price rise and fall on too many other factors, such as what the Street "THINKS" a stock will do, or a hint of a buyout/merger that may happen, or the furture success of a company because of a new tech or invention. I think what people freak out about is the actual number of what the profit is. They see some huge figure and think the oil tycoons are getting all that cash. But that cash is split among investors as well as being taxed at some ridiculously high tax rate. Someone who knows more about it can correct me, but I think oil companies are taxed on profits gained at like 48%. Thats crazy.

Oil stocks haven't gone through the roof. They've dug their way back out of the hole they spent 20 years in. American oil companies were losing money for years, 10-12% profit margins now are just respectable, not stellar. There is no justification for picking on the oil companies.

Margins on sale of crude are absolutely insane right now, but that's purely supply and demand, and as previously stated, a small fraction of the American oil industry's activities, they eat their profits from what little production they're allowed to have with the refining costs and purchasing needs to fuel our industry. They might be making $120 off every barrel of crude, but they have to pay that market price for the several barrels they buy in return to turn into gas. Just imagine how slim your profits are going to be when your base ingredients quadruple in price.

Ethanol isn't even a pipe dream. It's a self destructive butchery. Making ethanol requires massive fertilization, massive fertilization requires massive energy. Massive energy requires oil. See the problem? We've already doubled the cost of food around the world with our idiotic ethanol push, and we can't even supply 10% of our gasoline needs. The Brazilians that have supposedly made it work, what a farce. They're burning through the rain forest, getting a couple crops off the land, and moving over. When they run out, they're fucked. To supply enough ethanol to meet even half our own needs, we'll have to starve. To actually replace our oil requirements, we'll have to wipe out a large chunk of the worlds population to secure enough farm land.

Ethanol from *corn* is a pipe dream. Brazil does quite well on ethanol from sugar cane.

Jonnan

ethanol could be a great alternative, if you have the right land to produce it,and the infastructure to support it. here in australia its just not an option. over here petrol prices are $1.60 per litre and expected to rise to $2 by the end of the year. the aussie dollar is near on parity with the US so when you consider that it could be around $8 per gallon by the end of the year (over here) it sounds like you guys are getting ripped off. that said we are quite annoyed at the price. renewable energy is the only way to go solar cell technology has come a long way and wind turbines are become a huge part of power grids around the world. if we used this electricity to power our cars or produce hydrogen we could tackle the huge demand for oil based fuels and significantly reduce carbon emmisions around the globe

There's one thing that a lot of people don't realize about this issue, and that is that even if we find reasonable energy alternatives to slow or even halt our gasoline consumption, we will still be a long way off from oil independence. Ever heard of petroleum products? We use so much oil to make the things that build our vehicles, buildings, tools, the list goes on forever, and those are things that are even harder to replace than our energy source.

Also, about using water as a fuel source: it's not true. What was discovered was that water, when exposed to high frequency microwaves, explosively decomposes into hydrogen, oxygen, and some hydrogen peroxide too I think. This was then used as a power converter, to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy to propel some vehicles, but the actual energy source was electricity, via a battery. Therefore this made for a neat science trick, but not even close to a new energy source.

Thomas where are you located (in general)I just fil my
minivan for 83 USD which was almost 21 gallons and get 380 miles a tank you talk about OUCH !!!

Nasty

Consider this, It may be ridiculous but we are still paying. Economics 101 oil has a price elasticity of .05.

Ohio. Its about $3.77/gallon USD (changing by the minute) where I'm at and I'm getting about 28 miles/gallon.

where you at?????
its 4$ in and all around columbus, OHIO.

ima gettin 33 mpg avg right now   

Lorain County, Avon, right off I-90

Let's look at the positive side of exploding oil prices, in that it forces an inevitable change, that should have happened long ago. Oil is so vital, that without it our economy and society stops to a halt - a fact every child knows. Why then are we so foolish to let the oil take us hostage? Why do our governments trust in guessed, supposed, extrapolated or faked numbers about remaining oil reserves and production capacity?

Everybody talks about the post-industrial information age, but we still drive around by bruning fossil fuels like 200 years ago. The problem is not technology, but the political incentive and effort. Oil has been an economically viable path and has filled the pockets of many people. Furthermore, there is no immediate monetary cost associated with depleting and damaging the natural ressources of future generations.

Look, the nuclear bomb was built 1945 and the landing on the moon occured in 1969. Today our economy has grown to a multiple of the size it was then. Technological progress has accelerated at an exponential rate.

I am firmly convinced, that developed nations could have been completely independent of fossil fuels for electricity production as well as for ground transportation by the year 2000!

What went wrong? Politics is generally short-sighted. Imagine the effort and ressources of an international "Manhatten Project" put into a major energy paradigm shift. In the same time eliminating the main source of polultion in large cities and halving greenhouse gas emissions and making transportation cheaper.

As I read this thred I had one thing come to mind... every thing said in here is the same as what was said the last time this happened...

I am now suffereing a major flashback to 1979

Only this time I don't have all the teenage girls offering me sex for a ride in my van..