Oil Prices

jlzimmerman

kaspera79

Price increases are never a welcome thing, but for the luxury of enjoying a great cigar I will be willing to pay the price. Buy your cigars online and avoid sales tax, stock up now, or cut back a little. We will get through this too. Hey, aren't the economic stimulis checks in the mail !

kuzi16

j0z3r

kuzi16

pilot711

Kuzi16 I totally agree with your line of thought on this. Good post. Unfortunately there are environmental groups fighting tooth and nail to keep any progress on these issues from happening. They will let us burn first. A group of Duke scientists just came out with a long study that found humans are contributing 2% to global warming. They said we would have to cut world wide pollution in half to decrease global warming by 1%! I am all for working to leave a clean beautiful environment for our kids but our priorities are a little out of wack these days.

jlzimmerman

kuzi16

jlzimmerman

^ I wasn't serious about that last point. We need emoticons.

kuzi16

jihiggs

hydrogen would not be hard to do right now, it would take almost no modification to service stations. dont make cars with built in tanks, make them to accept tanks that can be exchanged, just like they do for propane. you drop off your empty tank and get a full one. all they would need is a bit more storage area, or locked cages outside the stores. this could even be done at home depot type stores, hell, some guy could set up a coffee stand and sell these tanks at the same time. trying to make a refilling system that will pressurize tanks as they are needed in hydrogen cells is foolish.

kuzi16

vankleekkw

Ok, I'll toss my 2 cents into this subject since it is a sore spot for me. The issue that we are running into right now is NOT, I repeat NOT due to a shortage in supply. OPEC sets their production rates based on the price point that they want to see, not capacity. I feel that the issue with the price increase is due to the futures trading on the open market. The open market is a representation on what the analysts think will happen over the course of a set time frame. So if you think about the details you can see that it is a viscous cycle. The market thinks that OPEC will cut back production because they can sell for higher pricing, futures increase, cut production, futures increase. WHEN WILL THE MADDNESS STOP???? My suggestion is that all commodities (i.e. oil, soy, corn, copper, alluminum, etc...) should be taken off of the futures market to stop the maket swings and actually have true market pricing. True supply and true demand should set pricing, not investors on wall street. Again, just my 2 cents.

kuzi16

vankleekkw

One thing that I disagree with on this statement is the fact that we should deregulate to increase the production capacity in the US. There are 2 major reasons for me to disagree with this statement 1. A new production facility would take ~ 3 years to start up if started on today. From design, core samples, construction, and so forth... This is just not that feasable for a market that is not in a shortage due to realistic reasons. If there truly was a shortage, more companies would be trying to start up new production to take advantage of the super high prices that people are willing to spend. 2. Pricing is currently being set by a speculative market. No changes in supply would cause a dent in a market that people are already paying a price that is higher than the market demands. If you were a company and people were willing to spend 3.50/gallon, would you lower your price just because you felt like it? 3. The only way to shock the market in the opposite direction would be to lower your personal demand for oil? If everyone were to reduce their consumption by making slight changes in your lifestyle, it would be enough to shock the market into reality. Think about the ramifications if everyone in the states reduced their consumption by 10%. 1 million barrels a day at $120 per barrel. $120 Million dollars every day. That might wake everyone up.

kuzi16