Cross your fingers $50 barrel of oil

[Stargazer]

Trust me Im not galvanized to the prices at all and I still think and feel whole heartedly that anything above $2.00 a gallon is excessive and milk above the same price is excessive. The thing with higher prices means that less money can go to research after a while as should be evident with our current bank system cascade failure and the $858B bailout where do you think some of or alot of this money is going to come from but the hamstringing of various projects and public services. Hell the goverment should have givin every adult American $1M to pay off their homes and they would have had to spend less than what they did on the bail out.

I agree! Anything at or above $2.00 for gas is too high. Even at $1.75 it is a little high but it would allow to make up for inflation. I pleasantly saw the gas at 50-60 cents cheaper per gallon than it was just a few weeks ago. I wouldn't doubt seeing below $3.00 per gallon this winter as demand will drop even further.

 

[tonyp56]

I've just got to say something. You can drill off our shores all day long and you will NEVER get enough oil to get us away from middle-east oil!!!! We don't have oil here not like the rest of the world, we do have natural gas but even that would be used up quickly.

My view is simple, listen to people talk about this, 10% increase in efficiency over 10 years??? NO, 50% increase in 5 years is what we should be demanding. Of course, it will be expensive, but no more expensive than alternative fuel sources or doing nothing. I'm signed up on Pickens plan, and I think he is right, but I think he is also wishing in fairy tales too much too. If CNG is cheaper than oil now, if everyone started using it over the next few years, you know it will go sky high.

Watch the show "Who Killed The Electric Car" it was on Showtime one night but also saw it for sell too. Anyways, I remember the commercials for Chevrolets electric car, what was it late 80's early 90's? That show talks about that, and how no one was allowed to own one, and when their lease was up, they couldn't re-lease, they had to give it up, to which ALL of the electric cars were destroyed. Those cars twenty-five or so years ago went 50 miles on a charge and could travel 55. My point, the "technology" has been around for years, and if they (car companies, oil companies, government(s), etc.) wanted to, we could end oil dependence NOW, not 10, 20, 30, or 40 years from now...

The reason oil is going down is because they (rich people on wall street) know that no one can afford their products because oil is so high so they are "speculating" on low "demand" for their liquid gold to give everyone a false sense of everything is ok and now we'll run out and buy TV's, cars, homes, etc. again, so of course they can make even more money on their stock shares.

 

[Dah-Henny]

The technology is just recently catching up with the process to make cellulosic ethanol, which I think is the answer to our energy needs. Making ethanol from grass, dead trees, corn stalks, inedible organic material.

I heard that recently, somewhere in the deep south, a company is going to produce cellulosic ethanol from kudzu, which if you are from the south, know that we have a million year supply.

Do a google search for the stuff and you'll see a lot of amazing stuff, especially the technological advances in enzymes needed to convert plant cellulose into sugar. The whole "using our food supply" to produce fuel has been a disaster IMO, only serving to drive up the price of everything we eat.

 

[navychop]

I swear there is only one Kudzu plant in the world. Little pieces of it get detached, root elsewhere, and grow roots to the center of the earth to rejoin the mother plant. That explains why we can't ever kill the damn thing off.

I've done my part- tried kudzu jelly, sauce, etc.

 

[StevenD]

Hell the goverment should have givin every adult American $1M to pay off their homes and they would have had to spend less than what they did on the bail out.

Maybe you should brush up on your math skills. Go ahead...put that to a calculator and see what number comes up. Even if the bailout runs $1 trillion, that's only $5000 for each (taxpaying) adult in the U.S.

 

[bhelms]

I hate to say it, but I think most people have already adjusted to the shock of where the prices are now. Therefore, even it gas prices stay unchanged, I think complacency is going to settle in...

I agree with this but with a slightly different twist. I have certainly "adjusted to the shock" of higher prices - by cutting my driving to essentials only, using my most fuel efficient vehicle for the job, and by cutting back on non-essential purchases of all other things, some of which can't be postponed forever. All that's not so easy to forget! Agreed some will just live and *not* learn. We'll eventually find a price where everone is called into action of some type, and hopefully it won't be too late to find the alternatives.

In general the conservation bit is good for everyone in terms of helping reduce the demand and hence ease the upward price pressure. I just wish everyone was participating! But in a global perspective the positive effects are only temporary...

 

[Tyralak]

I think the big mistake is the ending of tax incentives for hybrid vehicles

I posted this at the new pit, so I'm reposting it here with some modifications, because I'm too lazy to type it all out again.

I don't like hybrids. From what I can see, Hybrids are actually a net loss.
First, the savings in fuel is not particularly significant considering what has been claimed.
Second, the dual drive-train system is mind bogglingly inefficient, not to mention a really stupid idea. People think you are somehow getting more power out of it than you are putting into it. Sir Isaac Newton would disagree. The only additional power you're getting is KE re-captured from braking. That's it. It's just a bit more efficient than a regular gas car. It doesn't have some magical Zero Point Energy system that pulls power out of the Ether.
Third, Today's hybrids are hybrids in the wrong direction. They're essentially gasoline vehicles with an electric assist. Why they went this direction baffles me. It seems almost intentionally inefficient. The right way to make a hybrid is the way GM is doing it with their Volt. A fully electric vehicle with a gasoline backup, and the gas engine is ONLY for charging the battery, NOT for powering the drive-train. And don't give me this crap out battery technology not being advanced enough yet to handle it. That's nonsense. Tesla Motors proved it with a fully electric sports car that can go 220 miles without recharging.
Fourth, I feel they actually slow the progress of finding real petroleum replacements, and workable alternative fuel systems for vehicles. They're a Neanderthal technology. An evolutionary dead-end. A stop-gap measure, not a solution. Today's hybrids are basically a bone thrown to people to get them to shut up and stop demanding the auto companies come up with actual solutions. Everyone's happy. The yuppie who wants to feel that he's doing something good for the environment can drive around and smugly look down his nose at others, while the auto companies get to put off developing solutions.
What we really need are electric vehicles, possibly with a gas backup in case you get stuck. Or fuel cell vehicles. THAT will get us off foreign oil.

 

[vegassatellite]

You won't ever see the government get behind electric vehicles. $0.19/gallon times every gallon pumped annually is too much money to let go of since the government doesn't really have a way of taxing the electricity used on the road.

 

[Van]

Sure they do if it comes from a public utility, just add a per hour tax to electrical usage at the meter.

 

[snathanb]

Sure they do if it comes from a public utility, just add a per hour tax to electrical usage at the meter.

Time to buy a really long extension cord...

 

[Van]

Figure in the load required to recharge the batteries and that could be a tax rate there, Im not sure how they tax it now but soon as I get my next electric bill I'll look to see if and how they do it.

 

[kenny911]

I think gas at 2.50 is fair.

 

[vegassatellite]

Charge a per mile tax when vehicle registration comes due.

 

[hometheaterman]

Every time I see some teenager weaving in and out of traffic, "in a hurry" - I think the price of gas is too low. But I don't want to pay more, either.

You know I had kind of stopped seeing this stuff at least for the most part or I don't remember seeing it but now that gas has slightly gone down I've seen a few people in the last week or two doing it and just driving like retards.

 

[Van]

I see it every time Im out on the road living in a college town but its a mix between students and non students.

 

[Stargazer]

I think gas at 2.50 is fair.

I think that is still way too high. I think $1.50-$1.75 is about right which allows for inflation and $2.00 is really stretching it. Heck gasoline was only about $1.00-$1.19 a gallon around 10 years ago. It has quadripled in price!!! Imagine if it quadripled in price again over the next 10 years? That would be $16.00 a gallon!!!!!!! How about the next 10 years after that??? You have to draw the line somewhere!

 

[Cyclone]

I remember it was about 1.25 back in 1998 in NJ.

 

[BobMurdoch]

$1.99 gas, here we come.....

I wrote 18 months ago that these times would come..... Too much demand destruction from people ditching their Hummers and buying Priuses (or at least Hybrid SUVs)....

Did anyone notice that due to collapsing demand, China became a net EXPORTER of oil last month. The party is over, gas is coming back down in price.....

The problem is that a lot of these alternative fuel businesses need $80 a barrel oil to compete. They just became too expensive unless oil rebounds (don't hold your breath on that).

My guess is that oil is heading for $30-40 a barrel until the economy turns around... OPEC production curbs are a joke... Everyone knows that no one will cut output... They will have to try and produce as much as they can to replace the revenue drop and hope the OTHER countries are producing less to prop up the price.....

Sooooo, hopefully ethanol subsidies will go away in the new administration to try and bring food prices back to normal as well.....

Gas at off brand stations is already down to $2.40 here in NJ..... ALMOST there to $2 a gallon..... Lokking forward to sub $30 full tanks of gas again....

 

[Paul Wozniak]

I remember it was about 1.25 back in 1998 in NJ.

$.38 when I started driving!

 

[navychop]

You're awfully young. For years it was 32.9 with some places 28.9 (may Schwegmann's Grocery stores RIP).