Jump to content
SASS Wire Forum

Gas prices


Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, El Chapo said:

 

I don't know where you got the idea that I ever said that the President couldn't "influence" the price of oil.  The President's broad powers under the commander in chief clause alone could cause drastic changes in oil prices.  But that doesn't support your claim that the "Biden criminal cartel hopes to cripple the American petroleum industry for its own self serving interests."  The point is that you give the President way too much credit.  The amount of oil bought and sold on a daily basis is such that no single person, not even the President of the United States, has the kind of control over the world oil market you're suggesting, unless that person initiates a worldwide war or something.  The oil market is just too big and too competitive for that to be the case.  Even the oil reserves we keep can only influence the world oil price so much and for so long.  It's not a perfectly competitive market, but it is a very large market, and so any deliberate manipulation eventually is just a drop in the ocean.

 

It is a myth that the US was somehow "independent" of the international oil market.  Even if we didn't import vast amounts of oil, there are billions of people buying and selling oil on a daily basis in our world.  We would still be subject to market forces even if we didn't import anything.  That said, there's an additional problem with that point of view that most people don't realize--we import oil because much of our oil is actually better than our refineries need, and it's more economical for us to import cheap crude and sell our high quality crude on the world market.  This is a good thing in that we get to extract profit by buying cheaper oil and selling the more expensive product.  But it also undermines your position that we are or even would want to become independent of the world market for oil.  We'd be leaving $$$ on the table to do that (which is pretty much true for all areas of international trade anyway).

 

It is also absolutely wrong that there are no substitutes that compete with oil.  Even putting aside the electric car debate (much of which comes from burning something to create electricity anyway, among other serious technological disadvantages that will not soon be solved), natural gas, ethanol, biodiesel, and propane alone are obvious examples that compete with gasoline and diesel.  Things need not be "perfect" substitutes to have significant effects on the market price for fuels.  Biodiesel is superior to petro diesel in a lot of ways.  I would love to have vast stockpiles of it at $2 a gallon.  There's also a market dynamics thing you must not be considering here.  If diesel was $1 a gallon, I'm not sure that anyone would seriously consider making biodiesel (other than for the lubricity benefits it provides).  But at $6 a gallon, there is a ton of incentive to produce biodiesel, and you can bet that entrepreneurs will be doing it.  The viability of substitutes fluctuates with market prices.  We should all want there to be more of these things--everything that competes with oil makes it harder for oil producing nations to manipulate markets with their stunts.

 

In your world, energy policy might be "simple."  But back in reality, international energy policy is a giant three dimensional chess game with so many players that any of us could never be more than one or two moves ahead.  If I really knew what all of them were going to do tomorrow or next week, I could use that information to become the richest man on earth inside of the next 30 days.  It's far from that simple.  It is incredibly sophisticated and difficult.  It's far more difficult than just spouting off at the mouth about how the President did this or that.  Every time one piece moves, others respond and make their moves, too.  And it is never guaranteed that other players will move in the way that might seem like the easy or obvious move, either.  It's a challenge with no solution, only arguments.  I also think it's a huge mistake to give any President the kind of credit you seem to think he deserves--for good or bad.


You seem to want to make things far more complicated than they really are.  Biodiesel, natural gas, propane, and especially ethanol are not in any way large enough industries to offer the kind of supply and availability needed to keep the nation, much less the world, moving!

 

The technology and hardware essential to using the compressed gasses is not user friendly to the average consumer and requires infrastructure that doesn’t exist in size and geography to handle the traffic!

 

The only way that ethanol survives in the marketplace is through government subsidies.  It is NOT efficient as a motor fuel. It takes twice a much to produce the same amount of energy and it is corrosive to engine parts and contaminates lubricants, requiring much more maintenance and parts replacement.  People think that because alcohols are often used in racing that they are some panacea!  THEY ARE NOT!!! Then you have to consider that the grains used in producing fuel are removed from your food source!! Double penalty!!

 

The biodiesel fuels are not useable in cold climates unless provision is made to keep them heated. Fuel systems are not capable of delivery of congealed fluids. It’s difficult to evenly deliver fuel the consistency of Crisco!!  If you have to supply heat in order to use it, it becomes even less efficient and more energy consuming!  Regular diesel fuels are capable of doing work at lower, (much lower) temperatures and can also be stored, transported, and delivered at those lower temperatures without the extra expense of keeping them heated. Biodiesel is still closer to a boutique industry than a nationwide, mush less a worldwide answer to fuel needs.

 

Because the same people and organizations that want petroleum and other fossil fuels eliminated or severely restricted are also the ones that want hydroelectric and nuclear power eliminated, we haven’t built a new nuclear powered electric generating plant or a hydroelectric plant in decades!!  They want us to accept unreliable energy sources like wind generators and solar energy!!  These sources depend on weather!!  They also require large areas be set aside to facilitate their construction and maintenance.  This impacts farmland and land that otherwise could be used for residential, industrial, or agricultural/livestock production.  Shortsighted to say the least!  
 

SO!  We’re back to fossil fuels for the foreseeable future and back to dealing with an administration that wants to cripple that industry!  They have openly said as much!!

 

As far as incentives, this administration has eschewed any opportunity to positively influence foreign markets in favor of touting electric alternatives that lack the infrastructure and real technology to be viable in the immediate future while creating problems with environment and the economy that they have no real answers for.  They haven’t even made the slightest effort to make the situation better!  

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just last week, Vermont's capitol city's electric company was posting ads on TV to NOT charge electric cars due to the heat to help keep their grid up. But let's Get more people into them! :ph34r:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

57 minutes ago, Blackwater 53393 said:


You seem to want to make things far more complicated than they really are.  Biodiesel, natural gas, propane, and especially ethanol are not in any way large enough industries to offer the kind of supply and availability needed to keep the nation, much less the world, moving!

 

The technology and hardware essential to using the compressed gasses is not user friendly to the average consumer and requires infrastructure that doesn’t exist in size and geography to handle the traffic!

 

The only way that ethanol survives in the marketplace is through government subsidies.  It is NOT efficient as a motor fuel. It takes twice a much to produce the same amount of energy and it is corrosive to engine parts and contaminates lubricants, requiring much more maintenance and parts replacement.  People think that because alcohols are often used in racing that they are some panacea!  THEY ARE NOT!!! Then you have to consider that the grains used in producing fuel are removed from your food source!! Double penalty!!

 

The biodiesel fuels are not useable in cold climates unless provision is made to keep them heated. Fuel systems are not capable of delivery of congealed fluids. It’s difficult to evenly deliver fuel the consistency of Crisco!!  If you have to supply heat in order to use it, it becomes even less efficient and more energy consuming!  Regular diesel fuels are capable of doing work at lower, (much lower) temperatures and can also be stored, transported, and delivered at those lower temperatures without the extra expense of keeping them heated. Biodiesel is still closer to a boutique industry than a nationwide, mush less a worldwide answer to fuel needs.

 

Because the same people and organizations that want petroleum and other fossil fuels eliminated or severely restricted are also the ones that want hydroelectric and nuclear power eliminated, we haven’t built a new nuclear powered electric generating plant or a hydroelectric plant in decades!!  They want us to accept unreliable energy sources like wind generators and solar energy!!  These sources depend on weather!!  They also require large areas be set aside to facilitate their construction and maintenance.  This impacts farmland and land that otherwise could be used for residential, industrial, or agricultural/livestock production.  Shortsighted to say the least!  
 

SO!  We’re back to fossil fuels for the foreseeable future and back to dealing with an administration that wants to cripple that industry!  They have openly said as much!!

 

As far as incentives, this administration has eschewed any opportunity to positively influence foreign markets in favor of touting electric alternatives that lack the infrastructure and real technology to be viable in the immediate future while creating problems with environment and the economy that they have no real answers for.  They haven’t even made the slightest effort to make the situation better!  

 

 

 

So which is it.  Are they substitutes or are they just not big enough for you to acknowledge?  I think we know the answer, but you just don't want to admit that you are wrong.

 

I also don't know where you got the idea that biodiesel is not usable in cold climates.  I'm sure they cut it with thinner diesel fuels just like petro diesel.  Biodiesel is awesome.  I buy it every chance I get.  Not because I care about how it's produced but because it lubricates the fuel system and my truck runs better with some biodiesel in it.  Biodiesel has the same consistency as petro diesel and if I put them next to each other and gave you all the time in the world to examine them with your senses, I guarantee you couldn't tell the difference between them.  I don't know where you got the idea that biodiesel had the properties you say it has.  You are just flat out factually wrong about what you think biodiesel is versus what it actually is.

 

Ethanol requires subsidies to survive today because of present market conditions.  Prices are what determine its viability tomorrow.  Prices are the market's way of telling us what resources should go to what.  Even if you were right today, you have no reason to believe that'll be true tomorrow.  And it is a fact that every single vehicle that currently runs on gasoline could also be made to run on ethanol or propane.  Therefore, by definition, they are substitutes and compete with each other, even if they are not perfect substitutes.  Again, another instance where you simply don't want to admit that you're wrong.  No economist is saying that substitutes have to take over the entire market to have an influence.

 

Other than that, you're just beating the table.  Substitutes do not need to replace oil to influence the market price of oil.  The commercial viability of substitutes changes as prices flucuate.  Like I said, it's a 3D chess game with a lot of available moves.

 

You give the President way too much credit.  He can talk about electric cars all he wants, the fact is that there is no way to store enough energy in batteries for them to be viable for what most Americans use their cars for.  Electric cars are substitutes for gasoline cars, just poor substitutes.  Again, they influence the demand for oil by giving us one more option (admittedly one that I probably won't be exercising anytime soon, and it's clear you won't, but it's still there for you if you want).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I got the ideas about biodiesel from over fifty years in the automotive and power equipment repair and manufacturing industry, as a student, user, and as a professional line mechanic and a professional truck and heavy equipment operator.

 

 I didn’t say that these suggested substitutes won’t work!  I said that they are not viable as worldwide substitutes at this time and that some of them are not now and possibly never will be efficient or feasible! I have the scars, the bad back, and the documented experience to draw my knowledge from!!

 

As to this or any other president, the facts are incontrovertible! HE HAS shut down a critical pipeline project!  HE HAS canceled and shut down major exploration and recovery of resources in the Arctic region AND offshore as well!  Furthermore, HE HAS mandated replacement of whole fleets of vehicles with, what you already acknowledge as flawed, electric vehicles that don’t have the infrastructure in place to maintain and operate them.

 

ALL THIS BY PRESIDENTIAL DECREE!!

 

 

It’s already out there for EVERYONE to see!!

 

I know what I have seen and done and others can vouch for me!  It’s pointless for me to carry on further with this discussion. I have made my observations and I’m done. I won’t change your mind and it is certain that you won’t change mine.

 

You may agree to disagree or you can argue with my absence!

 

 I’ll spring for drinks if we ever encounter one another.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gotta say I hope Bio has improved. When I worked at Chevy, one of my customers had a Suburban that "sorta" ran on French fry oil from the local restaurants. Had no where near the power of diesel, but hey, it's free. The apparatus took up half the area behind the driver and most of the truck was covered in greasy grime, in and out. Had a heat exchanger to warm the bio before you could switch over from diesel. In the winter that took an hour or so. Didn't get quite like Crisco, but whiteish and thick as heck. We finally refused him service as the techs all refused to work on the dirty slimy rig. That was back in 2010.

Just my experience with only one example.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I worked for the Illinois  Transportation of Transportation. As  you know the Winters can be brutal at times. 

When they changed over to Biodiesel we were not told.

When it started to snow and got cold. The trucks started to gel up. Some had to be towed in Fuel Filters changed. 

Turned out Biediesel has to have twice as much antigel.

Also fuel milage is half of what we were getting.

I use it when i half too. Don't like Biodiesel.

Neither dies my Chevy Duromax Diesel.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, El Chapo said:

 

I don't know where you got the idea that I ever said that the President couldn't "influence" the price of oil.  The President's broad powers under the commander in chief clause alone could cause drastic changes in oil prices.  But that doesn't support your claim that the "Biden criminal cartel hopes to cripple the American petroleum industry for its own self serving interests."  The point is that you give the President way too much credit.  The amount of oil bought and sold on a daily basis is such that no single person, not even the President of the United States, has the kind of control over the world oil market you're suggesting, unless that person initiates a worldwide war or something.  The oil market is just too big and too competitive for that to be the case.  Even the oil reserves we keep can only influence the world oil price so much and for so long.  It's not a perfectly competitive market, but it is a very large market, and so any deliberate manipulation eventually is just a drop in the ocean.

 

It is a myth that the US was somehow "independent" of the international oil market.  Even if we didn't import vast amounts of oil, there are billions of people buying and selling oil on a daily basis in our world.  We would still be subject to market forces even if we didn't import anything.  That said, there's an additional problem with that point of view that most people don't realize--we import oil because much of our oil is actually better than our refineries need, and it's more economical for us to import cheap crude and sell our high quality crude on the world market.  This is a good thing in that we get to extract profit by buying cheaper oil and selling the more expensive product.  But it also undermines your position that we are or even would want to become independent of the world market for oil.  We'd be leaving $$$ on the table to do that (which is pretty much true for all areas of international trade anyway).

 

It is also absolutely wrong that there are no substitutes that compete with oil.  Even putting aside the electric car debate (much of which comes from burning something to create electricity anyway, among other serious technological disadvantages that will not soon be solved), natural gas, ethanol, biodiesel, and propane alone are obvious examples that compete with gasoline and diesel.  Things need not be "perfect" substitutes to have significant effects on the market price for fuels.  Biodiesel is superior to petro diesel in a lot of ways.  I would love to have vast stockpiles of it at $2 a gallon.  There's also a market dynamics thing you must not be considering here.  If diesel was $1 a gallon, I'm not sure that anyone would seriously consider making biodiesel (other than for the lubricity benefits it provides).  But at $6 a gallon, there is a ton of incentive to produce biodiesel, and you can bet that entrepreneurs will be doing it.  The viability of substitutes fluctuates with market prices.  We should all want there to be more of these things--everything that competes with oil makes it harder for oil producing nations to manipulate markets with their stunts.

 

In your world, energy policy might be "simple."  But back in reality, international energy policy is a giant three dimensional chess game with so many players that any of us could never be more than one or two moves ahead.  If I really knew what all of them were going to do tomorrow or next week, I could use that information to become the richest man on earth inside of the next 30 days.  It's far from that simple.  It is incredibly sophisticated and difficult.  It's far more difficult than just spouting off at the mouth about how the President did this or that.  Every time one piece moves, others respond and make their moves, too.  And it is never guaranteed that other players will move in the way that might seem like the easy or obvious move, either.  It's a challenge with no solution, only arguments.  I also think it's a huge mistake to give any President the kind of credit you seem to think he deserves--for good or bad.

But for the Biden quote that won’t escape our memory , "I want you to look at my eyes. I guarantee you. I guarantee you. We're going to end fossil fuel” 

 

Hell, even the liberals in Canada got P O over the Keystone executive order.

 

 

I believe the biggest culprit to the cost of anything right now is supply and demand economics due to the shutdown of the world economy over the last few years and production of anything not being able to come to previous capacity to meet demand. The dynamics are a bit nuanced though. But the cost of everything is up and that’s all anyone cares about. Frankly that’s enough.

 

From oil to plastics to glass to electrical apparatus to ac units to microchips, nothing is as readily available as it once was. I’m waiting 120 days or more for parts that used to be in the shelf. Service companies order trucks 18 months or more out. The idiots in energy and transportation aren’t interested in energy and transportation but bs like DEI measures and optics. The economy is not doing well. Most work now is being done by less people and they are hard pressed to get anything done waiting on goods to come in from overseas. If inventories of any goods were back to Trump era levels, and job participation were the same, most all work would be caught up and not so behind like now. Labor cost also would consequently be less. But I believe it will stay like this for a while. 
 

At the end of the day, things were better than before and no reasonable measures, or measures anyone can conceivably understand, are being made to get things back right.
 

Just wait to see food prices this fall……

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/11/2022 at 12:24 PM, Sixgun Sheridan said:

There was a news article recently that revealed Big Oil's profits absolutely soared this year, so they can't say they were simply passing higher production costs along to the consumer.

The soaring profits is only from production.  Refining profits change very little unless the refining & or refined products imports change relative to supply.  US refinery capacity has been dropping for years.  This is reason diesel fuel prices are typically higher than 85 octane gas.  The crude oil market is a world wide futures market where the buyers bid for oil to be delivered by the seller on a specific date.  Like market for corn, wheat, pork bellies, beef, etc. there are market markers who are buying & selling the commodity prevent wild swings in prices by functioning as a market shock absorber.  Also, not all the market participators are producers & refiners some are speculators.  Ideally these investors never have to take delivery when the futures contract expires.  The speculators had to take delivery or default which means they have to find another occupation.  During the Trump administration when the US became a next exporter of crude there was for a time the supply far exceeded the demand.  Crude futures prices went negative when there was no place to store the excess capacity in oil tankers or tank farms.  There were hundreds & hundreds of full tankers floating around the oceans.  The oil cartel countries had production floors determined by their country's budget so, they couldn't cut production to levels that balanced the market.  Russia & Saudi Arabia had a crude oil price war that only ended when other cartel members negociated a truce.  The independent producers in the US that had drilled during the Obama administration when crude prices were $90 & higher were loosing money on paper.  However they continued to pump as long as they had a positive case flow.  When they could no longer cover debt service they had to fill for bankruptcy.  There were a lot of these shale boom producers that went Tango Uniform.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.