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Interesting article, Jim. The dollar losing value isn't helping either. Sure got my day off to a lousy start!
Irregardless, the cost of the fuel is still the least cost for us as we travel.
I try to keep reminding myself of that!
I was driving to Orlando yesterday to pickup my Bus. While driving there I was listening to CSpan. 2 hours of testimony from Oil executives by congress.Quote:
Originally Posted by phorner
The entire testimony, both questions and answers where carefully choreographed. Each Congress and The oil execs were self dealing, with no interest in getting at the truth, just public posturing to look good for their constituents.
As long as Congress turns a blind eye to these types of profits while taking $ from the oil companies and being hired by Lobbing firms that represent these companies there will no chance for a reversal of these sky high prices.
It is exactly like the CA. Enron deal, but on a larger scale. I am willing to bet that at some point congress will be forced to prosecute these guys, but not until they have been reelected or until they have gotten a big signing bonus from a lobbing firm and have passed legislation giving themselves immunity from prosecution.
Congress, the oil companies, the Arab oil producing countries are all in on it.
The thought is that unless we start drilling on every inch of American soil and the surrounding waters that we are screwed because we are forced to pay sky high prices to the middle east.
The oil executives where asked about how many oil leases they had on US government land. Over 50,000 leases. They were asked how many they are drilling on, less than 10%. They were asked how much it costs to produce oil from these basically "Free" leases, $30 to $40 P/Barrel. Asked why they were not drilling. Cost of materials, and available labor was one answer. Second was that there is not enough demand.
Oil executives where asked why they are only using 85% of refining capacity if there is a refining shortage. Answer: The others are off line for service.
The facts are there is no oil shortage, the fact are that the oil companies do not want to produce more oil in the US or North America unless they are guaranteed the same pricing as they are getting now.
The facts are that the US government doesn't care because they are racking in the profits as well from taxes.
We are pretty well screwed until something really serious happens and I predict it will be in the form of a real recession by the end of 2008. The next president a Dem will inherent one of the worst economic problems in history by the end of Jan. 2009.
There will be a collapse in the auto industry, the boating industry, the Rv industry, the independent trucker unless they can pass on the costs will be forced to rebel in a big way.
The average citizen who relies on these services will experience an overall increase in their costs by at least 25% overall. And worse many will be laid off due to the lack of business in every sector from restaurant, entertainment, travel, you name it.
And finally the republican party will has no choice but to let it happen in hopes of blaming the problems on the Dem. congress and white house, it may work.
We were willing to go to war without provocation why not allow the continuation of this oil scam in hopes of nailing on the back of the next president and congress?
If you look at the fundamentals of what is happening out there. You can only draw from it that with no real shortages in inventories that the driving factor behind the run up in valuation of crude is the pure unbridled speculation in the petro markets. I would suggest that we are seeing a bubble created, that is not completely different from the subprime credit market bubble that has received so much press. I fully expect that at some point in time the market will correct itself as it always does and we will see crude settle back out at around $75 bbl. I don't discount the falling dollar. That has a real depreciation attached to it and accounts for a measureable part of the pricing structure.
i believe that the reason this economic downturn is getting so much bad press is not due to the real economics behind the economy but rather everyone buys fuel and they see the resulting impact of their wallets, making it personal to them. When you couple that with the media's impact on public opinion they begin to create a self fulfilling prophecy of doom and gloom.
As for recession..........if I remember correctly there were two consecutive quarters of negative growth in 2000 under our last president which formally constitutes a recession. I don't remember the "sky is falling" attitude that we have today. Most of which is expressed by media outlets with certain biases. However, all must realize that in a "relatively" free market economy there will be economic cycles of expansion and contraction. At the end of the day, all markets will adjust, inflation will have it's impact, and we will all reflect with a sentence starting..........."well, I remember when..........."
This constant drone regarding fuel shortages , more demand, escalating prices is all too familiar to anyone who remembers the 70's.
When you think of it in terms of inflation, we have been getting by for years on cheap gas prices. Now the nation and the world are undergoing a re setting of costs based upon perception and reality.
Only time will allow the markets to play out this price adjustment.
The one or two questions which I believe are relevant are; how can the US keep using up so much of the worlds supply of oil, and when will we start paying what the Europeans and other Nations are paying for fuel.
Unless we can procure more from our own shores , the price will always be volatile.
US oil companies spend less money on renewable sources of energy than they spend on Advertising. Nothing will happen in North America until the oil companies get with the program.Quote:
Originally Posted by garyde
North America produces and uses a huge amount of oil. We could easily produce enough without the need for middle east oil (not including Canada) if we wanted to, but the problem is that if we started today we would not have the capacity online for another 20 years, we are too far behind the power curve.
The economics have to be there for every American to participate in renewable sources of energy, tax credits for personal generating capability with sell back to the grid etc. Europeans are doing now and with great success.
Get rid of Bio-Diesel from Corn and create it from Cellulose instead, making a less costly product and stop screwing up the food chain driving up the cost of feed and other related corn based products. Unfortunately you would have to get rid of the congressman who push this stuff on us at our expense.
Its nuts and it costs us all money, but for those who cannot afford these extra expenses it means the difference between eating or going without. That stinks and could be avoided.
Sorry but this really p----s me off.
I'm also a little self conscious as well. I'm starting to feel a little guilty running down the highway in my 45' Prevost while everyone else is wondering how they are going to pay for their next tank of gas.
Garyde - The Europeans do not pay any more for fuel than we do. They buy crude oil/refined products on the same open market. The difference in retail prices is TAXES. Is that what you want from our government? Their super slick trains are the beneficiary of those TAXES otherwise they would not be able to operate.
The price is the price here or anywhere else. Your correct the difference is the tax. At least the Europeans have actually reinvested the money into the train system and have much better roads than we do.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan__
If we actually spent the tax money where it was supposed to go it would have already made a difference. Amtrack gets only a few Billion to operate their entire ( crummy) system
Here in florida we passed a law several years ago by referendum that required the Florida's elected officials to fund, create a build a high speed rail system. Our Republican run government simply ignored the mandated requirement and have never funded it. We would have been able to benefit from the rail system by now, instead we have an over crowed poorly maintained road system and local and state employees who retire with 105% of their regular pay.
If we did not have lobbyist who really ran our government we would actually have done what is necessary and would probably not be repeating ourselves over and over again.
The lack of tax on fuel is essentially a subsidy, and the US has found it in their interest to keep gas prices low for many reasons, political and economic.
The question remains , how can we use so much of the worlds oil without paying a price.
In the late 70s and early 80s I owned an RV business that was impacted by a scenario much the same as we are currently experiencing. In 1979 gas prices soared to $1.40 (+- depending on location) from $.65 per gallon. Buyers of most RVs, especially motorhomes, stayed away in droves. In Dec. 1979 the prime rate went 21.5%. My flooring company, Borg-Warner Acceptance Corp., charged 5 1/2% over prime = 27%, just over 2% per month on a million dollars of inventory.Quote:
Originally Posted by aggies09
RV sales virtually came to a halt with the exception of few bargain hunters paying cash. Of course this eliminated the possibility of income from finance, insurance, and any added extras. By July of the next year, even though interest rates had declined by 10%, I determined I could not continue sustaining increasing losses and made the decision to close my business in November of 1980. Interest rates climbed again and I left the country to bask under the sun in Mexico.
What's the point? Well, while I was gone, Ronald Reagan took charge of the country and allowed market forces to function freely, unencumbered by the regulations put in place by the Carter administration. The RV business roared back as did virtually the entire US and world economy. The price of fuel has certainly spiked several times since 1981 and was not a problem until earlier this year when it exceeded the inflation-adjusted price of $3.17 per gallon in March. We are now far above this benchmark and diesel prices are probably close to double when adjusted for inflation. I could discuss the impact that the increased feed and grain prices have had on our economy as a result of their use in bio-fuels. The prices of milk, eggs, beef, pork, and chicken are much higher as alternative fuel demand has put price pressure on the products that constitute this fuel. The point is that I doubt that this dilemma will end without a lot of sacrifice from the USA or maybe even open warfare. (yes, again) Younger readers may not know the reason we ended up in a war with Japan. Apart from our interference with Japan's invasion of Manchuria we created an embargo that included scrap metal and OIL. In essence that is what is happening to us, albeit exorbitant prices instead of an embargo but with a critical impact nonetheless This time it is our country that is being crippled by the shortage (a doubtful explanation) of a vital product.
It isn't just oil prices but they have a tremendous impact on inflation which will cause the Fed to raise interest rates again. With that comes a further slow down in home and auto sales, increased bankruptcies, higher unemployment, and increased utility prices.
Now comes the Dems, with a veto-proof congress, raising taxes as they promised. We may even have a Dem for President. The only upside to that , as Bruce wrote, is it may be easy after 4 years Dem rule, to elect a Conservative congress and President. But what would it take to fix this mess? I doubt the liberals will concentrate on anything but increasing taxes and give-away programs. Oh yes, Obama will talk directly to the world worst dictators without conditions.
I'm generally one of the most optimistic people you could know but I don't even have an idea where this nation is going with this thing. Looking back we should have kicked the 'tree huggers' to the curb and developed Anwar, pumped oil off the coast of California and Florida, been a little wiser with conservation and the use of alternative fuels. We didn't and it is too late for most of these things. Please Lord, and fellow POG members, give me something to be optimistic about!
For me, I'm gonna "Keep on Busin'" and hope my Social Security check will buy enough fuel to watch the Indy 500 on my Gen-Powered TV.
Have a Great Memorial Day and God Bless our Troops!!
Darl
With all due respect I was under the impression, obviously mistaken, that business was in business to make money. If a business benefits society while it makes money, and lots of it I might add, then that is a plus.
Last time I heard numbers the oil companies made a profit of 8% on sales.
I have always used the sniff test when I explored business opportunities. Did I want to invest or put my money at risk if the return was to be 8%? The answer is no because even conservative returns in the stock market in some rather safe stocks or mutual funds averaged better than that.
As to oil companies investing in alternate fuels research or environmentally correct products that is just plain nuts. As a business they should focus on the cheapest product that makes the most money. Period. Then they should figure out how to get even more profits from the product they make and sell. To do otherwise would be unAmerican.
The market is a wonderful thing because it is always adjusting and in this case we who have the car keys can make that adjustment. We can opt for more fuel efficient transportation or we can just stop driving the little darlings to soccer and make them walk like we had to. We won't wait for some government weenie to build a railroad, we will get smaller cars, cars with better engines, or cars that use other power sources. In the meantime some chemists will be working to create alternative fuels that are actually cheaper to make and which produce more power per gallon.
And don't forget, those wizards we elected have seen fit through their policies to devalue the dollar. If the price we pay for fuel was adjusted to reflect the value of the dollar against the Euro before our very own wizards screwed around we would be looking at some very different and cheaper fuel prices today.
So let's let our oil companies make their modest margins and hope they can actually make even better margins in the future. In the meantime let the marketplace adjust and in a year or so our topic will be if there really were any hanging chads in the November elections.
Jon, I agree with most everything you wrote. I am a free market type of guy and don't believe profit is a dirty word. Ripping people off, lying, and manipulating the market is a whole different set of issues. Check this link that Jim Scoggins posted as an example. I thoroughly agree that the devaluation of the dollar is having a big impact on oil and the rest of our economy, some of it positive. That is certainly normal and market-driven. I invest in oil and oil related stocks and only regret that I sold XOM for $64 per share in 2006.
My frustration is with OPEC, called a cartel but really it is a monopoly, beating us up with quotas (prices are market driven without regard to what Bill O'Reilly thinks) from an industry that US companies were instrumental in developing. Mexico and Venezuela are 2 countries that nationalized an industry that was developed almost exclusively by American companies. Mexico nationalized the oil industry in 1938. Venezuela partially expropriated the oil companies in 1974 and completed the job under Hugo Chavez a couple of years ago.
Much of what they took was simply stolen from American companies. Of course they own the oil but they wouldn't have that industry if US companies hadn't risked gazillions of dollars in development. They had contracts with these companies but that didn't stop the theives from doing their dirty work.
Now we are paying these countries through the nose for this oil. Somehow this seem to me as akin to stealing your beautiful Liberty and then selling it back to you. I am sure you would feel like a fool for buying it but if it were your only form of transportation and you had to have it......
That is where we are today. We are receiving goods that were obtained with stolen equipment and technology. My question is what can we do about it? I'm afraid the answer is nothing, just bend over and grab our ankles.
It is going to take someone smarter than me to figure this out. When I posed the question in my post it wasn't rhetorical, I was looking for an answer.
I know many of the problems this oil situation is causing and think it is worse than most people realize. I would like to hear solutions from ordinary people, experts, scholars, and yes, even elected officials. Right now most people only are concerned about their individual impact and not the macro view.
And then this may not be as bad as I suspect. Give me a little help here and relieve my 'oil-stress.
Darl
You all gotta stop this. There is NOTHING any of us can do about the state of affairs we find ourselves in today. Oh yea, you can vote and write letters to whoever you want to, but in the end we are not in control and it's pay up and shut up when it comes to enjoying our buses. I ain't gonna jump and I sure hope no one else does either. As someone mentioned, it is the lower income folks who are in a real jam. We hate $5 diesel, they hate $5 milk. Oh but wait, those folks are getting the economic stimulus payment. Now theres a great idea. The tatoo shop owners and dope dealers are grinning ear to ear.
Saw diesel in my home town today $5.01 and the beat goes on.
Tully Lee Garrett
It was $5.05 in California today. I fill at about 150 gallons so it looks like $750 will be the tab.
We will still be rolling, maybe not as much.
Darl, I cannot disagree but you are mixing apples with the oranges.
The focus is on our oil companies and not OPEC. I am concerned about the folks who would willingly manipulate oil company profits because once we start doing something like that it is guaranteed we will spread that concept to other businesses and free enterprise as we know it is down the toilet.
Free markets are just fine, and should not be messed with, but speculation driven ones driven by the industry is another.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Wehrenberg
There is no oil shortage, demand is not up, and there is more oil than last year on the ground.
If oil should be $80 P/B and its closing in on $130 and the futures are going higher what is the reason, its greed.
The oil companies make 8%, on over $150 Billion a year in income. so what is 8% of an extra 65 billion, for doing the same thing as last year.
Oil companies can produce $30/$40 P/B oil from leased government land, but if they do 8% of that number does not produce the same end profit.
Oil executives can make and extra 50 or even 100 million in personal bonus checks if they exceed expectations on the same cost basis, its a simple game, copy the California electricity Enron scam and make as much as you can before the Dems cut your knees off.
Isn't speculation on oil prices free enterprise?
Why does it matter if a company employee, such as the oil execs get big bonuses?
We are treading on thin ice when we start legislating business activities. Doesn't anyone feel the tree huggers that oppose nuclear power plants or drilling offshore or in Alaska have some responsibility? How come we never hear about that.
As to the speculators and execs with big pay checks, we have total control over that. As a nation we can just stop using our vehicles as much as we do. If every one of us cut out 25% of our driving and fuel usage by a combination of less trips and more thrifty driving habits the fuel prices would likely collapse. But it is easier to bitch and point fingers.
In a short period of time this topic will be old news like Carter's interest rates, Wategate and Whitewater.
You enjoy your Prevost. What if Prevost car and Liberty and Marathon and the rest of the convertors got together lets say back in 1997 and decided that the best customer was the really wealthy ones, and decided to jack the price of the coaches up by an extra 100% back then. Produce fewer coaches and make the same money. And I could only dream about the ownership. I would be p....d about it but it would not change my life.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Wehrenberg
That would be Ok because the purchase is a luxury one, and in most cases is not a required investment to get you to work or heat your home.
Unfortunately when large companies are the stewards over a commodities that can change the way we live, how much we can earn, if we can continue to stay in business or even have a meal, then this stewardship requires a moral compass, and should not be in the hands of international speculators who are in bed with the oil companies who make the profit from artificial pricing.
We all like and agree that market forces should prevail over government involvement, but there will always be industries that with the help of government, (our elected officials ) take advantage of the fact that they are monopolies (at least they are in collusion with one another on this pricing) like other industries. Government will be forced to act at some point when the nation, the average man can no longer pay for the cost of goods, can no longer pay for gas to go to work, or clothes for their kids.
We are kidding ourselves if we believe the current pricing is simply market forces at work, it a bunch of fat cats who could care less about you and i or anyone in fact.
I have people who work for me who can no longer afford what they own. If you live in New England and drive 50 miles each way to work, heat your home with Oil, drive your kids to soccer or band practice, sell advertising on the road, and buy groceries you are in big trouble unless you were able to plan for this financial change of events at least 1 year or maybe 2 years ago, and we know that this does not happen.
What will happen is that credit card bills at 30% will drive folks into bankruptcy just about as fast as medical bills do. Most people can no longer take out a second on their homes at low rates to cover these events, so its credit cards.
I make money by being better, smarter, more efficient and with better service than my competition, not by manipulating the market for pure greed hurting average people.
I'm not going to respond Bruce because this is getting way too political. I clearly have different view than you so I will agree to disagree.
Sorry Ted but this is a discussion about fuel speculation. I agree that there is probably nothing we can do about it but I certainly would like to hear some answers and suggestions about where this is going and how it will affect all of us. Fuel prices are not the only issue but how those prices will impact other commodities is very important.
Jon, you are right about OPEC but they control the supply and when that is impaired and the demand is high speculation follows. This is all driven by the futures market and the traders, many which are OPEC members and US oil companies. This market is a way for them to have predictable prices. Note that some traders are betting on $130 bbl oil all the way to 2010. The benchmark is Brent Crude. A more worrisome futures price is other commodities that rely heavily on oil products for transportation to market or grain used for ethanol. This also impacts milk and lumber prices. Since I am not a commodities trader and know little about this market I will leave it to others who can interpret the meaning of these prices.
I don't think the US oil companies are manipulating the market and these prices are simply a product of supply and demand. (free market again) In spite of what Maxine Waters (Dem CA)threatens, WE NEED MORE OIL here in the USA for oil prices to stabilize. Jon, I agree that a big part of the problem is the extreme environmental movement and our elected officials response to them. I also agree that trying to regulate executive pay is an exercise in futility. Stockholders of these companies will vote out the officials if they are dissatisfied with their salaries. These salaries, in the end, come out of the earnings of the companies, not from an overcharge for the product. Maybe you are right, this whole sordid economic problem will be history soon. I hope so. Also, this is my last post on this subject. (Private mails and phone calls will be accepted)
Darl
I agree, We have all beaten this dead horse to Death. Thanks Jim for the thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by Darl-Wilson
PS> Who do you want for our next president?, Just kidding.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darl-Wilson
You are right, Darl, the thread is about fuel price speculation. But we all seem to get so worked up about the subject that before you know it we're stumbling around and getting worked up about lots of frustrating issues that are out of our direct control.
Fuel speculation? I spect we'll see $10 a gallon diesel in the next 18 months. We'll look back and think $5 wasn't so bad after all. But I'll tell you what, a lot of us have worked hard and done well and I for one am not going to park the bus because of high priced fuel.
We're gonna go and enjoy what we have worked for even if diesel is twenty bucks a gallon. And woe be unto any tree hugging SOB that thinks I need to be enlightened about my carbon footprint.
See, Darl, there I go getting all worked up. Just part of speculating I guess.
We read where some oil execs. say they have to be able to drill for more oil to bring prices down. Here in Canada we are producing more oil and paying higher gas prices than the USA. So what is the answer, let the oil companys
rob us until we stop buying and they lower price and we get hooked again
and start over again. We are not going to worry about fuel prices, we will worry about something we can control. (Our kids have mileage figured out to the inch )
JB