The money-grubbing oil companies just raised prices today. $3.19 here in St Cloud.
Their thought process: we lost some rigs in the hurricane so there's less oil being produced. Well that's peachy, but let's do some math.
The way I figure it:
$2.69 yesterday.
$3.19 today.
That's a jump of 118% in one day. How many rigs were lost again?
Price gouging liars -- personally, I hope they rot.
However, on a happier note, now that I work from home, I save all that money by not having to commute. So I should be thankful that the oil companies aren't bending me over a barrel quite like they are to the rest of the US.
So for giggles: what's the price of gas where you are today?
it hit $3.45 in Chanhassen today...
Hello,
If you are interested in a global perspective :
http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/
Food for thoughts ...
Wouldn't it be a jump of 18%? 18.5% tops!
~joe
That is interesting to note. What I don't get is this:
Oil Production by Country in 1992
We're #2 in oil production in the world (according to this, and I must admit that I've not researched my source at all and the data is old), so why have our oil prices gone up by 2 dollars/gallon in 15 years when it barely raised a dollar in almost 40 years? I remember buying gas for under a dollar in high school. Hell, dad remembers getting it for a nickel when he lived on the farm.
I know it's just senseless complaining on my part, and the situation could ALWAYS be worse. But this sort of thing bothers me simply because I don't understand why I'm having to pay so much more for the same amount of the same material.
$3.45 at some stations in west Omaha today. I saw it for $2.75 this morning at a station I passed on the way to work. It was still $2.75 when I went home. Most are at $2.99.
Local news report, however, saying this evening to prepare for $4.00/gallon by the end of next month, if not earlier. I don't know if it'll go that high. But the gas lines today were pretty long (although, nothing compared to what occurred in the 70s, from what I'm told).
I remember filling up my car once in high school for 79¢/gallon (this was just before Operation Desert Storm, if I recall correctly). Usually paid in the 80-90¢ range though. Never occurred to me that it would go up and that one day I'd be paying $3/gallon. Ah, the naiveté of youth!
3.69 and it's probably gonna rise even more. A locally owned small gas station didn't raise it's price and sold *all* of it's gas. The owner said he's not getting more gas for a month or so (he also does auto repair and stuff, so not a huge loss).
For all these stations that raised the price today it's a huge profit. They're still selling the gas they paid 2.xx for.
-- SirG3
Aaron,
These are complex questions, and I don't pretend that I really understand these things either, but :
"Last year's increase in global oil consumption was the biggest for almost 30 years"
"America remains the biggest consumer, using one-quarter (!) of the world's output of the black stuff"
Quotes from "The Economist", Aug. 27th issue
3.09 - 3.29 at most stations in Detroit metro area but I saw it as high as 3.89 at one station. I paid 2.65 two days ago.
@Laurent -- I'd believe that our consumption is at an all-time high. Even Dilbert's boss bought an SUV that runs on owls. ;-)
Umm, Aaron, I agree with Joe about you calculations, it's a jump of 18.5%, not 118%.
118% would come out as $5.86, you've got a couple of days before you hit that! :-)
Then you'd be approaching the UK, we're currently at approx £0.92 per litre, which works out at about $6.27 per gallon!
Your fuel prices are so cheap! When I filled up yesterday in the UK I think it works out as roughtly 6.46 in USD.
In holland now euro 6.18 = about $ 7.50 per gallon. Who's complaining? In 1960 about $ 0.57 per gallon
We'll here in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada,
the price is currently $1.08/Litre, it was $0.80/Litre just 2 weeks ago.
And it's expected to be $1.18/Litre by this afternoon.
For those on the old Imperial system that:
$0.80CAD/Litre = $2.544USD/Gallon
$1.08CAD/Litre = $3.434USD/Gallon
$1.18CAD/Litre = $3.752USD/Gallon
I'm actually thinking of buying a buspass and taking the 40min ride to work over having my car and taking 15min. And I *hate* riding buses!
I agree with Aaron. I believe that the oil companies are just using this as an excuse to raise the prices by huge amounts. In Manitoba, we have a government body that regulates price increases in our public utilities like natural gas and electricity. I wish our federal government would do something like that with the oil industry. There are no controls on them, and if they raise the price of gas like this is could devastate the economy.
@Ian -- you are absolutely correct, my math is off. :: hangs head ::
And you're right, at least I don't live in Europe!
@Scott -- I feel bad for farmers since this sort of thing is going to kill them. And what's worse, it's not just the gas in my truck that's going to cost me more -- everything is going to cost more because freight costs are going to go thru the roof.
I don't wonder if this sort of thing will stick us into a depression.
If the gas companies think it's tough now with "only" making profits in the $billions, wait until they have to deal with a depression!
Hmmm.... I think I want a Hydrogen fuel cell car. I know that chances are at the moment that if it got in an accident it would cause an explosion that could level a few city blocks, but at least I could afford to run it! After all, it uses water as fuel and it's main exhaust is water (which can be reclaimed and reused again). Eesh!
Lis and I were talking about it last night -- if they came out with an even remotely reasonably priced hydrogen vehicle, we'd both buy it on the spot.
Oh well, at least I'm not driving my '79 Caprice Classic (my very first vehicle)... it got a whopping 8 miles to the gallon on the highway. Wooooohee!
What? Oil companies gouging the public? Foreign policy based on oil? Why, this has never happened before. I'm shocked. Shocked!
A few thoughts:
1) To answer the question, gas is $2.65 here in sunny Snohomish, Washington. (About 40 miles north of Seattle.)
2) There's enough retrievable oil in Canada's oil sands to last us 50 years at $40 per barrel, once the technology to retrieve it is widely distributed.
3) Depending on where you live, hydrogen would pollute more than gas. If you get your power from a coal plant, hydrogen pollutes more than gasoline. If you get your power from natural gas, it's about the same. If you get your power from nuclear or hydroelectric, you're in luck.
(Incidentally, this is why environmentalists are shooting themselves in the foot right now. They have a President and administration that's all gung-ho about moving to a hydrogen economy, and everyone agrees hydrogen vehicles are better than gasoline ones in the long-term, but they won't support the building of any new nuclear power plants. You can't have one and not the other, environmentalists... for hydrogen to even remotely make sense, you need cheap and clean power, and nuclear is about the only way to get that right now.)
Hmmm, about $7 ... I think
@James -- not certain I understand why hydrogen is a bigger pollutant. I guess I've never heard that before, I've always heard it's much cleaner burning than petrol.
@jem -- holy crap!
@Aaron: I think James means in our to produce hydrogen itself you need to split up the water into hydrogen and oxygen and collect the hydrogen which you would need to use electricity for. Depending how your electricity is generated, it might result (indirectly) in more pollution.
I guess it depends how the hydrogen is created. If you buy a "hydrogen pack" and use it in the car then replace it (like recycling toner cartridges) then I can see there being problems. But if the car can take a split the purified water into hydrogen and oxygen internally, I think it would be significantly less polluting.
I'm not sure which method is going to be the "mainstream". I've heard that the buses in Canada they are trialing with hydrogen fuel cell tech take in water and split it internally. Isn't Seattle also trialing hydrogen fuel cell buses? What approach are they taking?
Ok, that makes sense. I was assuming the hyrdogen would be produced internally since that just seems to make the most logical sense from my point of view. But I forgot that some money-grubbers are going to want to keep people tied to going to them for their hydrogen instead of being able to just fill up with water. ;-)
Ballard Power Systems (I believe they are the leader in Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology) has information on their site. I'm reading up on it now.
For those interested: http://www.ballard.com
Actually... from what I'm reading, it takes significantly less power to refine water into hydrogen, than it does to refine oil into gasoline. Also there are significantly less byproducts from the hydrogen refinement than from oil refinement.
One article I've come across says that the demonstration site in Canada for the fuel cell cars actually has a hydrogen supply station that generates hydrogen from water *on-site*! :) So if that's the case, I don't even think these huge refineries would be necessary. You'd have the equivalent of a gas station, but instead of getting tanker trucks of gasoline, they'd tap into their waterlines, purify the water (this is done in even small grocery stores these days!), and then refine the water into hydrogen on site!.
If this is the case, it would be a great enterprise to get into. Instead of being a gas station owner who's forced to pay high prices from the wholesaler and only making a small profit, he could just use his existing water source to produce the fuel himself. Less middle men! :)
If this is the route that the industry would take, I'd strongly support it!
Even if hydrogen is generated internally, it'll take some kind of power. That means, either a gasoline, diesel, or electric engine. Since the entire purpose is to get rid of oil-based technologies, that leaves electric... which means the power's coming from power plants.
Now all this said, even a coal burning plant now-a-days is pretty damn efficient. But what you'd be doing is getting the pollution that's now decentralized and spread along all the cities and freeways of the country, and concentrate it around the powerplants... if every car ran on hydrogen, you can bet your coal plants would have to work harder because of it.
IMO, the only truly feasible option is nuclear. We know how to make them 100% safe, we can build them quickly without needing a lot of experimentation, and they aren't too unsightly, and you don't need a lot of them.
@James: I disagree, are you forgetting that oil refineries already require lots of power? And they can't power themselves as you can't burn unrefined oil with much of any efficiency.
As for internal hydrogen generation, a car's alternator already provides electricity. The car's battery is really just used to start the car and to offset any shortage when the engine is not turning the alternator enough to provide the required electricity. I'm sure they can adapt that technology as the alternator generates electricity from kinetic energy (not combustion). That's why a car battery usually lasts for 5-10 years. Otherwise if the battery was the only source of power for the car, your battery would be dead in a day.
And I gotta ask you, James. Do you happen to work for the oil industry? :P I've never seen anyone so opposed to hydrogen.
PS-Nuclear power might be able to produce lots of electrical energy but is far from environmentally sound. There are thousands of barrels of toxic waste produced by nuclear plants around the world every year. And, have you ever heard of Chernobyl? :P
I'm not opposed to hydrogen. I'm pro-nuclear and I think the hydrogen economy is the best way to get this nation to start producing power in a SANE manner. What I'm saying is that hydrogen won't be cost effective until the energy is dirt-cheap enough to allow for it, and that won't happen until all those creaking coal and oil plants are converted to nuclear.
Do nuclear plants produce waste? Of course. But it's nicely stored in barrels. Imagine if all the crap that escapes out the chimney of coal/oil plants were collected and put in barrels! You'd have MILLIONS of barrels, not thousands.
What I'm opposed to is moron "environmentalists" who want to solve pollution, but won't agree to any measure that would actually do it. "We don't like Bush, he's too conservative and we're liberal... therefore we're going to ignore his practical and sensible long-term energy plan and instead rally on about how atomic power makes your babies into mutants!" Those "environmentalists" are setting back progress in this country by decades.
BTW, an obvious question, I admit I'm no expect... you can't power refineries by using the raw oil, I agree, but why can't you power the refinery using its product, the refined oil?
Oh, I know you could use oil, and I'm sure some do. Here in Manitoba, we have an abundance of hydroelectric power. In fact, export a bunch of it to the US. Hydroelectric power is our only power source in Manitoba. In other words, we have no power plants operating on anything else in our province. I do know that Ontario has both hydroelectric and nuclear plants. I believe British Columbia is fully hydroelectric as well. Not sure what the other provinces use. It's my impression that Canada doesn't use coal plants anymore. I don't think we use natural gas either (except to heat our homes). But I'm no expert on what other provinces do :P
What will be interesting, will be what does the world do when the world oil supply finally does run dry? And for these oil platforms that have been destroyed in the Gulf of Mexico, does that mean that there's oil seeping into the ocean? (Actual question. I've been wondering if that's the case).
As for nuclear power, yes they do store it in barrels that they bury. But the problem is that those barrels do decay over time and even now toxic waste is leaking into the ground from toxic waste disposal sites.
I know there's no technology at the moment that is perfect and would end the energy crisis, be environmentally friendly and would be cost-effective, but I sure hope that we find something soon, whatever it might be.
I think out of all the forms of energy production, nuclear is the "cleanest" but also the scariest. When something goes wrong with a coal plant, you can see it. When toxic barrels filled with nuclear waste begin to decay underground, you don't know about it until everyone starts dying. I think coal plants, et al, force the companies to deal with hazards up-front because people can *see* when they're doing something wrong. However, with nuclear waste, no one sees anything, and so I think it's easier for power producers to cut corners, which is scary as hell.
@Scott -- that's an excellent question which I hope someone answers. Is there oil leaking into the ocean now because of the damaged rigs?
My WAG is that there is not much of an oil leakage because the rigs have automatic shutoff valves that close the shaft.
Aaron, read up on Pebble-Bed reactors. Entirely safe, producing easily-disposed-of fuel that will remain intact for ages in harsh conditions or can be reprocessed to keep the reactor going longer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor
If nothing else, get the Navy to run it... hell, they've been running hundreds, if not thousands, of reactors for over 40 years with only one accident. (And that accident was more due to the reactor being in a submarine than anything else.)
Oh, and I should mention that fuel pebbles can't be used to make nuclear weapons, unlike the fuel rods in use at older reactors.
@James -- Very interesting link, thanks for posting it!