Well after 9 months working in Illinois I am back in South Dakota for good. The company I work for decided to park and try to sell 50 of the 100 trucks we were running because of slow freight. They are going to run the remaining trucks out of the West Chicago and the Sioux Falls office with existing personel and I am going to be back on weekends and holidays. Thank goodness I still have my job and same salary, minus some of the perks (company car, expense account, etc). Also I am thankful that I didn't sell my home and move the family. We are not alone feeling the pinch of slow freight, Werner Enterprises parked 800 trucks because of slow freight demand and high fuel prices.
I had a bad feeling when I went to Illinois and that is why we were not in a hurry to move. There are somethings I can't understand, one is why every economist in this country ignores the main problem which is high oil prices and what it is costing the American consumer. The other thing is the fact main stream media has almost totally ignored the fact that there is a major new oil discovery in North Dakota that is supposed to hold more oil than Saudi Arabia. Is this because these clowns are buying up oil futures making the price go up so they can make millions and they don't want it to end or what. Say what you will I know where my pocket book hurts the most and that is everywhere excpet my house payment. Gas is up, groceries are up , utillities are up, along with all comsumable items we buy to get on with our daily lives. This is not because of the housing crisis but because of higher fuel prices. The main reason people can't pay there mortgage is because it is either eat or pay the mortgage and most people will eat.

The high price of energy is driving the price of everything up since it takes energy to produce almost anything. People like the low cost of goods produced in China but the hidden cost is the rise of energy costs driven by competition for that energy to produce those low cost goods. Meanwhile the leaders of this country are dithering about trying to to be politically correct. In effect fiddleing while Rome burns.
They kowtow to the far left environuts by refusing to use the untapped oil in the Arctic preserve and allow offshore drilling in huge swaths of the coast. Meanwhile pushing ethanol which results in little or no net energy savings but merely shifts the cost from oil to foodstuffs, and gives huge windfalls to agrabusiness entities. Or wind turbines which will never be a big enough factor. The energy savings that could be realized by expanded nuclear energy plants are being sacrificed on the alter of "Green".
So the next time you pay $100 to fill up your tank or $5000 to heat/cool your home take comfort that some caribou in the middle of nowhere, that will never be seen by 99.999% of anyone, is not being inconvienced by an oil rig.
Conservation and wise USE of our energy reserves is vitally important to our future well being. But so also is our need to wisely exploit our reserves and options to maximize our return........Bob

Bob, you have it correct.

Paid $4.41 per gallon for Diesel the other day. Looks like the truck is going to sit until I figure out how to make my own Biodiesel. My heat, hot water and cooking gas are propane. Filling up that 1,000 gallon tank is also a nightmare.

Wonder how much it costs to fill up a jet to fly around and protect some country that hates us??

Gary

Gas or Milk ??

Gas yesterday 3.32 @ gallon

Milk today 3.99 @ gallon

Still cheaper then Beer....

Time to protest beer prices...I'm sure Lamar is with me...anyone else

All kidding aside, it is an interesting conundrum we find ourselves in generally. I have seen more and more chatter lately about buying locally made products / food stuffs. It has always amazed me in the middle of summer that vegetables from California can be less expensive than locally grown vegetables, even when the cost of transportation is figured in. Of course, the grocery chains are always trying to get the lowest cost, so, similar to the products from southeast Asia, low labour costs really offset transportation costs.

I certainly don't have the answers. Happily the positions my wife and I are in are extremely unlikely to be affected. When I sit and think it through, I really am saddened by the ordinary folks sacrificed at the altar of corporate profits.

The vast majority of corporations are publicly owned through stocks and bonds. The profits the corporation makes are distributed, through dividends, to the "public". The corporation also provides jobs, generally the more profitable a corporation is the more they are able to support their workers. The public traded corporation is the absolute backbone of the best system for the betterment of man ever devised, free enterprise. Screw with it at your peril........Bob

With all due respect, gentlemen, the price of gas won't be affected by one cent if we drill in our own country for several reasons:

One, yes, it is the guys buying oil futures. When the price of a barrel of oil goes up, so does the price of gas. It doesn't matter where the oil comes from. That's why it's call oil FUTURES. They aren't setting today's price, they're setting tomorrow's price. It's just like the price at the local pump going up twenty cents, even though they're selling the same gas in the tank that they had that morning. The price you pay isn't what it cost them to buy it last week, it's what it will cost to buy it next week.

Second, demand is up. Supply vs. demand. We all know how that works. China and India are gobbling up all the natural resources they can get their hands on. If we start pulling oil out of the ground domestically, it'll still end up on the futures market being bought by the entire world. Prices won't change.

Third, the real reason your gas costs so much is not because of the price of oil or that there is less of it on the market (there is the roughly same amount there has always been, but China's taking a much bigger piece of pie), but because of the cost of making gasoline out of it. It isn't the wacko environmentalists preventing the oil companies from building more refineries. Consider this:

You're an oil company enjoying record profits because of this "artificial" shortage. Do you A) spend several billions of dollars building a new refinery that will drive the price of your product down, or B) save your money, do nothing and continue to earn record profits because of short supplies?

That's a no-brainer, guys. Follow the money, not the politics. It isn't the environmentalists or the liberals or any politicians making it expensive, it's economics.

The reserves up in Alaska aren't our savior. We use 19,000,000 barrels of oil a day. A DAY! There's enough oil in Alaska to last about 280 days at that rate. Again, it isn't necessarily the environmentalists (do you really think they have more power in Washington than the oil companies, especially since the country is being run by oil company owners?!?), but because the investment:profit ratio is all out of whack. There isn't enough oil there to justify the investment it would take to get it. Now, when oil gets more expensive, it'll become more economically viable. Same with the tar sands in Canada and the fields in Siberia. Right now, it's much cheaper to just buy the stuff from the Arabs.

It's economics, not politics, that is driving this. The one upside to getting our own oil domestically is that money won't go overseas to people who hate us. But I'd rather buy their oil and use up their resources and conserve our own for when we REALLY need them, not when we're pinched by gas prices that are still half of what most of the world pays. Just wait until those guys run out of oil and need to buy water from us.

Finally, what do we really expect the politicans to do about it? The dopes in Washington can't regulate the world market for oil, they can't force companies to slash prices, they can't subsidize the gas in some guy's Hummer. What, exactly, do we expect them to do? I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have a free market rather than have it regulated by the same morons who manage Social Security or public education.

Call me a wacko environmentalist, but I'm not so interested in tearing up the landscape and screwing with wildlife just so I can save a few bucks when I fill my tank. Yeah, I know it hurts poor people disproportionately, but I'm confident that economics will drive changes in the way we live so that society won't collapse when gas hits $4/gallon. If you can afford a "hobby" car, the rising price of gas shouldn't threaten your lifestyle.

PS: McCain's idea of repealing the gas tax will save me just $6.30 when I fill up the 35-gallon tank in my truck. However, it will take more than $60 billion out of our economy. If you think times are tough now, wait until that hole shows up on the market.

It's summer! Go out and enjoy your cars and think of the price of gas as the price of admission to the amusement park. I only wish I could dump $1000 worth of fuel into the Buick this year driving it around. I'm dying without it!

Regards.

My continuing .02 Cents. Bob, as usual, you got it right! It's go nothing to do with greedy corporations. And Matt, you're correct, although I'm not sure getting "our" oil is going to tear up the landscape. Surely, we're more technically advanced than that, aren't we? But the real point is the more self reliant we are, the less $100,000 a fill up Bombers we have to send somewhere else under the guise that we're building Democracies, when in reality we're protecting the oil. High prices are here to stay, and they're going to get higher! So, go drive your Buick's now (and Chrysler's and Vette's, and whatever else is in the stable), 'cause it'll cost more next week.

Gary

PS. Found some interesting equipment to make your own Biodiesel. Since I love freedom fries, it might be kinda cool for "Hulk" (my Truck) to smell like McDonald's wherever he goes?!* I wonder what they do with the used fries oil anyway??

Good point, Gary. Think of what we could do here at home with the $5000/minute we're spending in Iraq...

[quote] [/quoThat's why it's call oil FUTURES.te]

The futures market is driven by perceived supply. More supply will lower futures prices. It's true that China et.al. are increasing demand. With increased demand comes higher prices. That's why more supply will help in the short term. There is also a growing scool of thought that the crude run up is being driven by a speculative bubble. If true, nothing would poke a hole in that bubble faster than increased, non opec, supply. It's true the oil companies provide money to our polititions but they can't directly provide votes. But pandering to environmental sentimentality has so far provided votes. We'll see how far that goes when fuel reaches $5-6 a gallon.
To refuse to responsibly exploit the reserves in Alaska and off shore is just non sense. With proper oversight the overall environmental damage would be negligable.
Fossil derived energy will never be "cheap" again. The competition from second and third World countries will see to that.
And yes this Country will adjust to the higher prices, but at the cost of lower standards of living. Since it is a Global economy as others rise ours will be lowered.

Do you want to know just how screwed up our prioities are? That figure (19,000,000 barrels a day) is from 2 years ago. Today we use 20,500,000 barrels a day.

Yup. The price goes up 50% and we buy more.

Pick whoever you want to to blame that one on.

They sell or give it to folks like you that want their truck or VW to smell like fries! Check on it, you see I'm correct.

Gary,

In your home town there is a guy that owns the Silo restaurant who is using french fry oil to run his car. Every once in a while he has a little blurb in the paper or on the news.

Stevo

It's all very depressing.

We need to dive into development of Nitrogen as our next fuel source and save the gasoline for Bob's cars, and Matt's cars, and my cars, and all the rest of us here!!

Gary

What you're talking about is the recent re-assessment of the Bakken Formation, which is partially located in North Dakota but mostly in south-central Canada. The vast majority of this formation is in dilute oil shales which require more energy to recover than is available in the shale.

I found this worldnetdaily.com "news" feature extolling the "great find" there. Even if you read this heavily biased and overblown feature (On the internet?--Nah! ) and analyse the math in it you'll see that the added amount to "estimated" reserves of oil amounts to a whopping 206 day supply of oil for the U.S. (4.2 billion barrels). Of course that's only if you accept the comically stretchable term "recoverable" as they define it. Proven Saudi oil reserves (not hypothetically "estimated" as in this Bakken Formation calculation) are 62 times bigger.

And this is the overblown optimistic positive story on this oil formation?

There is no more oil. We've found it all. New oil finds over the last 50 years amount to less than 1 year's worth of oil demand, and fewer finds are being reported all the time despite the immense financial incentive to find more.

It's gone. Face it.

That's why the BIG 3 and the others are spending all their money on Hybrids, Fuel Cells and all the rest of the technology to get us to not rely on fossil fuels!

Actually there's a far less insidious reason for the lack of refinery development in recent years. It's very simple really.

A refinery has to be amortized over 20-30 years in order to pay for itself. NOBODY thinks we'll be using as much oil in 20-30 years as we are now. The most accurate estimates put it at at least 90% delpetion by then even with tailing demand due to price and competitive pressures from alternatives.

When I bought my Prius in 2005, it was in part because I read many different estimates of fuel price futures that all independently agreed. Gasoline would soon be $3.00/gal (it was then barely $2), and would be over $5.00/gal before the decade was out.

We're right on schedule.

My point exactly!

Rather than get all excited about how economies work, my comment was directed at those who wind up being downsized and facing financial hardship through no fault of their own, simply by being in the wrong position at the time.

If there is no disposable income in the hands of the populace, that too will wreak havoc on the economy overall.

Well, with any luck, when all the oil is used up under the arab countries a giant vacuum will form in the cavern that is left and the whole region will be sucked into a black hole.

A few more quibbles:


American wind turbines currently generate enough electricity to power 1.5 million homes, and 30% of all new electrical generating capacity constructed in 2007 was from wind turbines. Can you imagine what it'll be like when the coal and oil industries don't own the White House? ( U.S. Wind Power Generation Grows by 45 Percent in 2007 )


Yes, they are. However the "green" you refer to isn't the correct green. Think more in terms of green ink. The storage of exponentially increasing amounts of nuclear waste (There is no "disposal" of something that stays deadly for periods longer than mountains exist.) is pricing nuclear out of the market. Has been for decades, however some places (i.e. France) have governmental structures that allow for those costs to be ignorred.


While the agrabusiness aspects of ethanol are obvious (ADM or Exxon, pick your poisen!), the idea that ethanol production is a waste of energy is simply false*. Even more than 10 years ago the best estimates of energy efficiency for ethanol was a 24% gain ( Estimating the Net Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol--1995 USDA ), and current best estimates peg the gain at 34% using more modern methods. However it's the future of ethanol, especially cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass and other non-food crops (here--other plants will be used in other climes of course), that have the greatest potential.

*These falsehoods can largely be traced to two professors: Cornell University Prof. David Pimentel who's training is in entomolgy (insects) and Prof. Tad Patzek (originally from Poland) of Berkeley who's training is in Civil and Chemical Engineering (mainly the design of reserviors and fluid dynamics). Both moonlight for the oil industry. It's been the bane of the Fox Newsing of America that people with only peripheral or tenuous authority are given influential platforms in order to shift public opinion for profit. These people, like the so-called climate change doubters--another incredibly small minority in academia, are brought in under the insidious notion that every issue has two sides and therefore both must be heard. Some people doubt that the earth is round, or that the Holocaust occured as well.


Matt nailed this one pretty good already.

=======================

The bottom line is that fuel prices are only calling attention to the bigger problem: we use too much. It's hurting us, our planet, our economy, and our country. Even modest conservation efforts on most people's parts will lower energy consumption by half if people are willing to try. There are any number of places you can find information on how.

30% of how much? There were damn few new power plants built last year.



Have you ever flown over or visited Nevada? Who cares if a mountain there is stuffed with waste. There is NOTHING there. It is a useless wasteland. Waste storage is actually the BEST use of the land. Why not use use a tiny portion of it for the betterment of the people?





Yeah well, you listen your "experts" and I'll listen to mine. Figures don't lie but liars can figure.






Saying we shouldn't tap the Artic preserve oil because there isn't enough there is like saying you should'nt give a starving person a ham sandwich because he would rather have a steak dinner.

Bottom line is we will be stuck with an energy shortfall for the foreseeable future. The only logical course is to conserve while using all rational alternate sourses. There is no magic bullet. Wind turbines can provide energy but they are unreliable, ugly, noisy, kill birds, and tear up large swaths of prime mountain top habitat. I know, they are here almost in my back yard. We HATE them. Nuclear has it's problems but they pale compared to the benifits provided. Alcohol, so far, is more a political feel good measure with tons of minuses. Solar is just inadequate. Hydroelectric is probably the MOST environmentally unfriendly source of energy.
I do my part by busting my ass every year to cut and split fire wood, turning out the lights, and using ceiling fans instead of A/C. Do I care if a caribou
is insulted by the sight of an oil rig in some mosquito infested muskeg wilderness. Sure, but only till it means my family will have to do without or be cold...........Bob

I too think they should suck Alaska dry and if it is all consumed by the USA it probably won't last a year at our current oil intake. Make a condition that they remove the equipment and repair the land. That would certain end a lot of arguments on this topic.

Since it is the last of our huge oil reserves maybe they would want to keep it for military use, just in case we have issues with those middle eastern countries shutting us off when we may need it the most.

Just for knowing:

1 gallon is 3,78 Liter.

In the Netherlands 1 Liter Diesel costs 1,20 euro = $2
1 gallon diesel will cost us $7.56 in the Netherlands.

Other example: gasoline:

price of gasoline = 1,55 euro = $2.60
So, 1 gallon will do $9.76 in the Netherlands.

Taco.

Yes Taco your fuel costs are astronomical. My understanding is that most of the cost is due to taxation, along with very high sales, VAT and other taxes. With your country's social system the taxes are very high to provide social services that are not provided for here. Some think your system is better others think our system is more fair (better).........Bob