I had a vision today of many pool rooms, and bars closing soon

[conetip]

Guys, ethanol is a fraud. It is more costly than fossil fuel and gains us nothing but a good feeling.

In New Zealand , alcohol is a by product from the casein factory.They sell it on the international market. They used to also make methanol from natural gas. It used to cost about cents per gallon, until the govt sold it and the private company sold it on the international market. 20 liters about 5 gal went from retail 8 dollars including the drum, to over 45 dollars. Same source and plant. Greed was the motive. A 200 liter drum used to be 50 bucks if you supplied the drum to be filled.
Neil

 

[charlieb]

Besides no new refineries in decades one the major forces driving up the price of gas today is rampant speculation by commodity people. No regulation and competetion is supposed to balance everything out but nothing controls greed! A game of limited players but a great game if you can afford the buy in and don't give a s--t about anything but $.

 

[JoeyA]

I don't think anyone is stopping the oil companies from building new refineries. It's economics. Right now an expansion at Motiva (used to be a Texaco refinery) in Port Arthur, TX, will make it the largest refinery in the country, and provide a lot of new jobs for about a three year period.

Wasn't Port ARthur, TX where just about 10 years ago there used to be some gargantuan Calcuttas and big tournaments?
JoeyA

 

[punter]

Wasn't Port ARthur, TX where just about 10 years ago there used to be some gargantuan Calcuttas and big tournaments?
JoeyA

Probably so. There's a guy called Action Jackson whose son was part owner of the pool room there. Action usually pumped the calcuttas up pretty good. He's a smart gambler and they all know him at the Louisiana casinos. The Strickland brothers and others from Houston used to come too.

 

[desert1pocket]

I get over 40mpg in town running biodiesel made from yellow oil.

Other than replacing my fuel filter, my car needed no modifications in order to be able to do this.

It makes use of a product that would otherwise be waste, costs me significantly less than gas per gallon, is not dependent on foriegn oil (steady price), extends the life of my engine, and my non-toxic exhaust smells like french fries instead of the toxic fumes of greenhouse gasses.

There are millions of gallons of yellow oil discarded in the US every year that could cheaply and easily be made into clean burning fuel for diesel vehicles. Unfortunately, there are powerful lobbies trying to prevent this from happening. Just my $0.02

 

[catpool9]

Stopped to buy Gas, that was $2.87.9/Gal. last week, and it is now $3.05.9./Gal. News media is saying gas will go to $4.00/Gal by summer.

Guess I will be staying home this weekend, and not making the planned trip to Tempe Sunday for a tournament.

I will point the blame finger at the environmentalists who will not allow, have blocked exploration for oil in the U.S., and have not allowed needed new refineries to be built in the U.S.

I went to the Horse Races in Hot Springs, Ark. saturday, it cost $10.00 just to park vehicle, beer was $4.00, mixed drinks $5.00 each, hamburger $5.00, and on , and on.

Everything was high!.....went out to two of my favorite "night clubs" to play some pool, they were both closed due to inflation........YEA theirs gonna be lots of poolrooms, bars and night clubs close down,...you just waite!


David Harcrow

 

[chefjeff]

Here is something I look at. Tires are made out of oil too. The price of a tire has risen four or five times in the same span that the price of gasoline has risen ten times or more. Both are more expensive to make, both have a great deal of R&D involved, but the increase in the price of gasoline far outstrips the price of a tire.

The reason is simple. There are only a handful of major gasoline suppliers in the US and getting fewer all the time as they are allowed to swallow up smaller competition and merge with each other into mega-corporations. Meanwhile it is very possible to make tires with a far smaller investment and distribute them anywhere in the world. The lack of competition let's gasoline prices run wild, competition keeps the price of tires down. Letting a few huge entities control the market has never been a good thing. We see new record profits being announced every quarter above and beyond the windfall profits of yesteryear or last year. Record prices and record profits aren't caused by trouble in the mideast or lack of refinery capacity here in the US, they are caused by gouging on a national scale.

Note that at the same time as the latest price increases, the US had a glut of refined gasoline on hand. Why did the prices jump when the gasoline was already sitting there ready to market?

Hu

Complicated question, for sure and a good observation.

The prices of gas would have, in a free market, come down much like the prices of tires have come down....IF the control-freaks would let go a little.

Once the Department of Energy was created, pricing became much more politcal, and not so much market driven. Add in military actions in oil producing countries, environmentalist whackos in this country, taxation, regulation, etc. and prices tend to stay higher for gas than they would in a freer market.

My point about the quarter gas was to demonstrate the negative effects of the government creating fiat money, vs. using real money (silver and gold and paper backed by those). Had we kept real money, the price would be the same, 25 cents.

Jeff Livingston

 

[Snapshot9]

Lol

When I was 15, on a restricted license, Gas was 14.9 a gallon (that's cents).
I was driving a VW beetle, and ran out of gas. My buddy, Bill, and I pushed it about 2 blocks to a station, and got .04 worth of gas, and it got both of us home that night across town.

I shared it with my Mom. She got up the next morning, got a block and a half from home and ran out of gas!!! Boy, did I catch it! .....

All I can say, I am glad my little car gets 31 mpg around town.

 

[Andrew Manning]

I can't believe nobody's mentioned hydrogen yet in this thread. A completely sustainable energy supply, which produces only water as waste when burned. All it needs are the vehicles to run on it, and the gas companies to start producing and selling it at their filling stations. Hydrogen is the solution to the fossil fuels problem.

Bio-diesel is not scalable, although those who run vehicles on what would normally be waste oil are definitely doing us all a service, since fossil fuels are used in large quantities to harvest and process the vegetables to produce that oil, and bio-diesel vehicles help make more use of that energy investment.

Ethanol is not scalable, since it costs more fuel to harvest and process the grain than it provides in the form of ethanol.

Hydrogen is the answer, at least if the current progress in bacterial hydrogen production from water continues to move forward at its currently very promising rate.

-Andrew

 

[desert1pocket]

I can't believe nobody's mentioned hydrogen yet in this thread. A completely sustainable energy supply, which produces only water as waste when burned. All it needs are the vehicles to run on it, and the gas companies to start producing and selling it at their filling stations. Hydrogen is the solution to the fossil fuels problem.

Bio-diesel is not scalable, although those who run vehicles on what would normally be waste oil are definitely doing us all a service, since fossil fuels are used in large quantities to harvest and process the vegetables to produce that oil, and bio-diesel vehicles help make more use of that energy investment.

Ethanol is not scalable, since it costs more fuel to harvest and process the grain than it provides in the form of ethanol.

Hydrogen is the answer, at least if the current progress in bacterial hydrogen production from water continues to move forward at its currently very promising rate.

-Andrew

I agree that biodiesel is not scalable, but no one thing currently is. IMHO, the only solution is a combination of several alternative energies and technologies.

I like the idea of hydrogen, and agree that developments in bacterial hydrogen production look very promising, but it's not there yet. Even if the problem of hydrogen production were solved today, there's still the issue of the slow conversion of the driving force over to new vehicles. I really do hope that hydrogen vehicles can become part of the solution soon.

Biodiesel is currently the only efficiently produced alternative fuel, which can fuel vehicles currently in use, without modifications. It takes hardly any energy to produce, and much of the fuel stock can come from what is currently a waste product. It can also make efficient use of many different fuel stocks that are easily grown here in the US. It's not THE solution, but IMO it needs to be part of it.

I also agree that ethanol is not viable in the US, although it can be with the right fuel stock. Corn is just not one of those fuel stocks.

 

[chefjeff]

Gas Went Down Again....

When I was 15, on a restricted license, Gas was 14.9 a gallon (that's cents).
I was driving a VW beetle, and ran out of gas. My buddy, Bill, and I pushed it about 2 blocks to a station, and got .04 worth of gas, and it got both of us home that night across town.

I shared it with my Mom. She got up the next morning, got a block and a half from home and ran out of gas!!! Boy, did I catch it! .....

All I can say, I am glad my little car gets 31 mpg around town.

GAS WENT DOWN AGAIN....

Those holding real money (silver coins made before 1965, .e.g.) can now buy a gallon of gas for two dimes.

This is how it is supposed to work in a free market....prices naturally come down over time as production becomes more effecient and money holds value. Interferring with either (by govt initiating force) raises prices and reduces productive capacity.

Fill 'er up and check the oil...here's a dime for your trouble,

Jeff Livingston