What in the world just happened?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Boz Mon
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Boz Mon

Boz Mon

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I just filled up the Prelude with gas at my local Shell station, and the gas prices are the highest I have EVER seen! This seemed to have just happened overnight. Is this the case all over, or is my town weird? I'm kinda scared because we normally have the lowest prices around, and when I have to pay $3.68 per gallon, I know soemething fishy is going on, especially when it happens overnight.
 
Boz Mon
I just filled up the Prelude with gas at my local Shell station, and the gas prices are the highest I have EVER seen! This seemed to have just happened overnight. Is this the case all over, or is my town weird? I'm kinda scared because we normally have the lowest prices around, and when I have to pay $3.68 per gallon, I know soemething fishy is going on, especially when it happens overnight.
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I really think it's kind of funny when people on here complain about the price or anything else about where they live and you wonder where's that at. 5200-7400 rpm's can be anywhere.
 
opelgt1969
I really think it's kind of funny when people on here complain about the price or anything else about where they live and you wonder where's that at. 5200-7400 rpm's can be anywhere.
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Haha, that put a smile on my face. But seriously, I wasnt really complaining, I was just like, "holy crap!" Like I was in awe or something like that. 5200-7400rpm is central Illinois FYI. ;)
 
Robin.
We are nearly paying $10 per gallon so consider yourself lucky! :crazy:
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Actually, it's nearer $8. Those Yanks use funny gallons, with nowhere near as much gallon-ness as our Imperial Gallon. :)
 
The hybrid option keeps looking better and better. And I don't give a damn about the C02 output.
 
We need to create a real-life Jurassic Park, so future generations can have oil.

It doesn't sound so stupid now, does it?

Michael Crichton will be a God in 60-million-years-time.
 
Govt took away the oil company tax break. The industrys just passing the tax to the consumer.
 
Prices are climbing because oil is so damn expensive these days.
 

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Robin.
We are nearly paying $10 per gallon so consider yourself lucky! :crazy:
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So true, I know everywhere has it bad. I feel for you guys there :ouch: Its only a matter of time before we hit 4 bux, then 5....

Jerome
 
It's a whole bunch of bull crap that the prices have to be this high. Gas companies made a RECORD YEAR in profit last year, so it shouldn't be anywhere near where it is right now.

Who controls how expensive it is for oil in the first place? It cant be any harder to drill then it was back in the 90s when it was $1.00 a gallon, so why is there such an increase.
 
Seriously, what are the minimum and average wages there?
Here it's €426 and €746, respectively.
 
Diablo'
It's a whole bunch of bull crap that the prices have to be this high. Gas companies made a RECORD YEAR in profit last year, so it shouldn't be anywhere near where it is right now.

Who controls how expensive it is for oil in the first place? It cant be any harder to drill then it was back in the 90s when it was $1.00 a gallon, so why is there such an increase.
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I don't feel like going into supply and demand and the workings of a commodities market, but it boils down to more demand without the supply increasing and then the commodities traders ran the price up realizing this was happening.


And I heard one analyst discussing how as the dollar drops it causes the number of dollars per barrel to rise. Her thought was that if the Fed would quit lowering interest rates and printing more money, thus causing artificial inflation and the value of the dollar to drop, that the situation would balance itself out.

I don't know if she is on to something but I do think once the Fed stops giving us temporary fixes that just cause longer term problems that a lot of stuff will start to work itself out.


And I am sure the whole US housing market issue is not helping anything in the economy as a whole.
 
Beerz
Seriously, what are the minimum and average wages there?
Here it's €426 and €746, respectively.
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Minimum wage ranges from €881,22 to €1.309,01.

Average wage, excluding beneftis, in 2007 is €2.315,00.
 
Diablo'
It's a whole bunch of bull crap that the prices have to be this high. Gas companies made a RECORD YEAR in profit last year, so it shouldn't be anywhere near where it is right now.

Who controls how expensive it is for oil in the first place? It cant be any harder to drill then it was back in the 90s when it was $1.00 a gallon, so why is there such an increase.
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Huge leap in demand. Lots of people in India and China.
 
Oil shouldn't be something that someone can just change around the prices like that. We use it so much that it should be grouped in with electricity, town water, and things of that nature where there is a standard price.
 
There's a slight flaw on that logic: electricity can be produced anywhere, water IS everywhere, but only a few countries have oil, and it can't be done artificially (that I know of).
 
Petrol prices in New Zealand are getting closer to $2.00 a litre - for 98 octane anyway. But meh, if the car needs petrol, it gets it. Pretty much never take any notice of the prices.
 
What do you guys think of this?

Exxon Mobil, in fact, is owned mostly by ordinary Americans. Mutual funds, index funds and pension funds (including union pension funds) own about 52 percent of Exxon Mobil’s shares. Individual shareholders, about two million or so, own almost all the rest. The pooh-bahs who run Exxon own less than 1 percent of the company.

When Exxon Mobil earns almost $12 billion in a quarter, or $41 billion in a year, as it did in 2007, that money does not go into the coffers of a few billionaire executives quaffing Champagne in Texas. It goes into the pension and retirement accounts of ordinary citizens. When Exxon pays a dividend, that money goes to pay for the mortgages and oxygen tanks and in-home care of lots of elderly Americans.
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Linky
 
The situation with OPEC has a lot to do with the most recent spike, the preexisting demand notwithstanding.

Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, which is surprisingly one of our more significant oil suppliers, has been for the last while encouraging OPEC to artificially raise the price of oil as a political measure against the United States in retaliation to what they see as imperialist agression.

Just yesterday there was a heated exchange of sound-bites between Chavez and Bush - Bush is taking a fairly hardline position against Chavez's influence over OPEC. No matter what your opinion of US Foreign Policy may be, the fact remains that this is going to force prices to rise fairly significantly for the near future - Chavez doesn't seem to respond well to hardline diplomacy.

So hang onto your assets, Europeans, we Americans may be catching up to you at the pump fairly soon :indiff: :ouch:

I knew I'd be paying a premium fuel bill for the SVX, but even my daily driver, an Outback, needs at least 89 octane, ideally 93, to preserve the motor, but if things don't change, I'm gonna have to break down and run 87 for a few months. It won't knock, but it's not gonna turn out that great on a car with 130,000 miles on the clock if I have to do it for long.
 
Diablo'
It's a whole bunch of bull crap that the prices have to be this high. Gas companies made a RECORD YEAR in profit last year, so it shouldn't be anywhere near where it is right now.
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They don't really set the price of oil. It's set on the commodities exchange.

Diablo'
Who controls how expensive it is for oil in the first place? It cant be any harder to drill then it was back in the 90s when it was $1.00 a gallon, so why is there such an increase.
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It is. The more oil that gets consumed, the more difficult it is to tap the rest.

FoolKiller
And I heard one analyst discussing how as the dollar drops it causes the number of dollars per barrel to rise.
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That's because oil is a worldwide commodity. People with other currencies are still willing to pay what they used to for it, so if the dollar drops w.r.t. them, it takes more dollars to buy the same amount of oil.

fk
I don't know if she is on to something but I do think once the Fed stops giving us temporary fixes that just cause longer term problems that a lot of stuff will start to work itself out.
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The drop in the dollar is caused by interest rates, which, as you pointed out, is caused by the housing market. The fed is trying to stem the tide of a housing crash - which may not be the right answer.

Diablo'
Oil shouldn't be something that someone can just change around the prices like that. We use it so much that it should be grouped in with electricity, town water, and things of that nature where there is a standard price.
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Christ! Another socialist. Dude, nothing you purchase should be a fixed price. Nothing. I'm surprised I have to tell you this, but you live in a market economy - and it's the only way to go as far as economic systems go. If supply and demand aren't taken into account in prices, bad things happen (think shortage and rationing). I'm sure you're too young to know, but the US toyed with fixing the price of gas not all that long ago. The results were disastrous. Before you go criticizing our economic policy, you might bother to learn a little bit about economics.

CraftyLandShark
So hang onto your assets, Europeans, we Americans may be catching up to you at the pump fairly soon :indiff: :ouch:
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Maybe, but I doubt it. The reason they pay so much is because of the insane taxes they've levied on oil. In a fixed currency, the amount we pay is roughly the same amount they pay but without their tax. I say roughly because they get their oil from slightly different places and transportation and refinement costs are going to be different.

robin
We are nearly paying $10 per gallon so consider yourself lucky!
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You should try voting for a politician who will reduce your petrol taxes (or move to the states ;)).
 
Beerz
There's a slight flaw on that logic: electricity can be produced anywhere, water IS everywhere, but only a few countries have oil, and it can't be done artificially (that I know of).
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True but it can be made out of coal (even low grade coal).
But guess who owns the patent on this; yes the oil companies.
 
opelgt1969
True but it can be made out of coal (even low grade coal).
But guess who owns the patent on this; yes the oil companies.
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[sarcasm] I didn't know multiple companies could own the same patent.[/sarcasm] I'm also pretty darn sure you can't patent a chemical process. If it was a good process, whichever oil company owned whatever patent you're talking about would be manufacturing oil using it. There's simply way to much money to be made to ignore that.
 

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