Re: OT Gas Prices

queenie wrote:

OMG, now we have a gas shortage. Has anybody else had difficulty
finding gas. Some of the gas stations around here are out of gas.
This is getting very scary--I keep feeling that things are spinning
out of control. Of course this could all be a part of a ploy to keep
the status quo in the House and Senate come elections. Nothing
prevents change like fear, it seems.

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
Lord Acton



It's a fake gas shortage.


Well, okay. Let me qualify that.

There *is* a finite amount of naturally occurring (as opposed to synthetic) oil on the planet.
Much of the remaining crude isn't in large pools that they just need to dig down to, but is trapped
'as part of' (being somewhat inexact here) rock strata which would have to be mined out like coal and the
oil extracted. Extracting oil from rock is an expensive process (can you say 'blood from a stone'?),
however virtually none of the oil companies are engaged in it (yet) although the (rough) technology is there
to do so (a crude method of extracting crude...so to speak).

So we *are* running out.

Just not this week.

Anyone who is saying they cannot get gas to your area is doing so in order to justify the high prices
at the pump in the face of several states beginning to consider price caps.
OTOH (WRT prices at the pump) the price futures for sweet crude (the stuff that comes out of
the middle east for example) just hit $75 per barrel on Friday and is expected to go up again today.

What's basically going on is:
the price of unrefined oil (crude) has gone up significantly recently and will likely go up again.
however, the cost of the gas and heating oil now in your area is from when crude was below $70/barrel.
The gas companies are gouging the customers now because they believe we don't know this.
The government *should* step in, because this just ain't right, but the Republicans have (for decades!)
firmly believed in market forces regulating commerce, so they're probably not going to lift a finger
on the federal level. Now it's up to the states (see above about price caps). However it is too little too
late, I think. They won't be able to get the gas companies to roll back the prices, and even if they
were able to, the price would shoot up again once the products from the $75/bbl. stuff hit the market.

As has been discussed elsewhere in this thread, the US is currently paying about half what the rest of the
world pays for gas (and still we're crying in our cornflakes about $3/gallon....). However what has not been
discussed is *why* the rest of the world is paying so much, except obliquely. And the reason is generally
that the rest of the world either has limited access to gas/oil (developing countries) or is heavily taxing gasoline
at the pumps in order to pay for their mass transit.

It has also been discussed how the US does not have the mass-transit infrasctructure and we're just too
damned lazy to walk/bike everywhere for short trips and horses are impractical for the most part now.
We've also discussed alternative fuel (including electric) vehicles, but they're a)expensive and b)still in the
'Model A' stage of development in a lot of ways.

So we're sort of stuck at the moment.

Actually I think I'd pay $5/gal. at the pump IF (and this is a big IF) all the money above 2.50/gal. went into
building up mass transit in my state. But then I am only taking the car out to do errands (I'm taking care
of my husband's grandmother) and my husband *could* bike to work if he had to (it's about 2 miles), except
that he doesn't have a bike (we've been talking about it, but he hasn't found one he likes, yet, and he'd have
to get them to put in a bike rack at work so he could lock his up out of the way). If we were still living 35 (highway) miles from Joe's work I'd probably feel otherwise.

--Leigh

.

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