1. Home
  2. General Toyota Forum
  3. OT: Hey, what about the Dim promise to lower gas prices?

OT: Hey, what about the Dim promise to lower gas prices?

Isn't that one of the promises the Dims made was to lower gas prices?

Well, it's gone from 2.09 to 3.59 here in the suburbs since January, and I don't see ANYONE from either party doing anything. Crude oil hasn't gone up that much.

Instead, we seem to be being distracted by the immigration issue. OK, let's get one thing straight: They just about hermetically sealed the border of West Berlin from 1961-1989. People still got through because there were opportunities on the West side of the wall. We could hermetically seal the US border and as long as there aren't many opportunities on the other side of that border, and there ARE opportunities on our side, they're going to come across the border. America has always been the land of opportunity. Any fix on the "Illegal immigrant" issue has to deal with that reality.

Now let's get back to gas prices. We're now near the historic high (adjusted for inflation) Driving miles actually came close to dropping last year, the first time since they kept records. The rate of increase was the smallest since then. And there's no one to stop the oil companies from raising it to 4.00 or 5.00 right now. They've passed the breakover point. Many people are already cutting back on trips as much as they can. They can't just not buy gas. And there's other force to make the gas companies lower prices.

Johnny Rockefeller must be laughing his sides off down in Hell while his Standard Oil Company is making RECORD PROFITS, even better than it did when he was a real monopoly. Now we call it Exxon/Mobil, but they're still pulling the same old thing they did 100 years ago. Now they have do do it by some sort of wink and nod type agreement between Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon), Standard Oil of New York(Mobil), Standard Oil of California(Chevron), ConocoPhillips(Continental Oil, also bought out Atlantic) Standard Oil of Indiana(Amoco, now part of BP) Standard Oil of Ohio(bought out by BP) The Ohio Oil Company(Marathon) and a few independents. All of the above listed companies were part of Standard Oil prior to 1911.

Charles of Schaumburg

Reply to
n5hsr
Loading thread data ...

Well, the thing is that we're coming into the High Use period for gasoline. There are only so many refineries, and they're pumping as fast as they can.

What gets me is, with a $40B profit, they can't build ONE $4B refinery?

Reply to
Hachiroku

$4B might be the cost of a refinery, but it will take $4B more in lawyer fees to get it built. No one wants a refinery in their back yard. And unless I am wrong, the oil companies do not set prices. It is a commodity and prices are set by the buyers and how bad they need the oil to satisfy their customers. Kinda like a billion dollar e-bay! Sell it to the highest bidder!

Reply to
Jim in South Florida

So, you're saying that the oil companies have nothing to do with the price that we pay at the pumps? Better take a look at the money trail and think again.

Reply to
Leythos

A lot of the price variations are determined by futures traders, many of whom are in the game just to gamble, and are in no way connected professionally with the oil companies. Bidding is connected with fear, just as in the stock market. So, prices are often disconnected from the physical realities of supply. Radio headline: "Oil jumped $2.00 a barrel today on fears of renewed violence in Salamibad".

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

That was a fairy tale created for your consumption. The Democrats figure that if people will believe Bush's goals for Iraq, they'll believe pretty much anything.

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

He'd better take a LONG look at the money trail. A good number of the current major US oil companies have either parts of Standard Oil in them or are parts of Standard Oil themselves.

Standard Oil of NJ = Exxon Stardard Oil of NY = Mobil Stardard Oil of Indiana = Amoco Standard Oil of California = Chevron Continental Oil Company = Conoco Phillips

etc.

You don't think they work together to get the prices they want? It may be illegal, but who's going to prosecute them? Their buddies in Congress?

Gung hoy, Fat Chance.

Charles of Schaumburg

Reply to
n5hsr

In message news:mM2dnbix2vB8ftPbnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com, n5hsr sprach forth the following:

  1. Eliminate ANY government assistance for illegals.
  2. Prosecute, fine, jail and shut down employers and landlords who employ or house illegals.
  3. Fast-track a court challenge that results in the application of the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" clause to "anchor babies".

Problem solved.

Reply to
Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute

In message news:TuE3i.456$hw.358@trndny08, =?iso-2022- jp?q?Hachiroku_=1B$B%O%A%m%=2F=1B=28B?= sprach forth the following:

Environuts around here are petitioning against a nuclear plant. What makes you think they wouldn't f*ck up any attempt to build a refinery too?

Reply to
Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute

In message news:1179588862 snipped-for-privacy@sp6iad.superfeed.net, Leythos sprach forth the following:

Government steals more in taxes per gallon than the oil company and the station owner make in profit COMBINED. There's your money trail, d*****ad.

Reply to
Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute

In message news:mM2dnbix2vB8ftPbnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com, n5hsr sprach forth the following:

I'm still waiting for Billary's middle-class tax cut.

Reply to
Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute

Dear Gigolo,

But it's not the Government that's raising the prices. Except for Sales Tax, they're actually getting LESS revenue because gas sales are now declining! Taxes are a FIXED sum per gallon.

Reply to
n5hsr

The oil companies keep crying that they're pumping it as fast as they can, and that the problem isn't the supply of crude, but the refining capability.

They already have LOTS of land, and refineries. So, build it where you already have a refinery. Let's face it, a NEW refinery of the same size as one built in the 70's would be MUCH more efficient, so for the same size you get higher output.

That solves the problem, eh?

Reply to
Hachiroku

Or a camel farted in Saudi Arabia...

Reply to
Hachiroku

--------------------------------------------------------------- Or their buddy in the White House

---------------------------------------------------------------

Reply to
tak

Reply to
tom418

The problem is that you failed to see that CISCO DID NOT RAISE the price of their product at that time. The Oil Companies raise the price of their product, driven by speculators or not, the price raises on a basic product of transportation - if you notice, the cost of tolls, cost of a cab ride, cost of a bus token, etc... they don't go up with the cost of gas, except for yearly adjustments....

So, we need to remove the GREED from the equation, ban pricing on speculators, and allow the Oil companies to make a reasonable profit.

What makes you think that the Oil Companies are not part of the speculator pool that drives the cost of gas?

Reply to
Leythos

I guess we can assume you skipped economics 101, right? Ask yourself this question, if you could set the price for the car you wanted to sell, would you sell it for less? If you could sell anything at all for whatever price you chose, would you sell it for less? The fact is the oil companies do not set the price at the pump, the marketplace sets the price. That is why you drive by the station with a higher price. If the oil companies actually could set the price at the pump why would they EVER lower the price?

Every time the Congress holds hearing on the price of gasoline, the result of the investigation is ALWAYS the same, supply and demand. That is why you never see the result of those investigations on the front page. If the government really wanted do to something to lower the price at the pump they could lower the gas tax or remove some of the goofy restriction placed by environmental laws that regulate oil.

They could make us independent of foreign oil, except from Canada and Mexico, by simply letting the oil companies drill for the billions of barrels of oil that are available off our own shores and under our own land.

mike

Reply to
Mike Hunter

Mike,

I know you like Fords, so you're not very bright. But the per-driver miles driven has DROPPED for the first time since they've kept records. Why isn't the price dropping? Because they don't have to drop it. The Seven Sisters of long ago still work together today to keep prices up even though the usage is going down.

If true supply and demand was working here, the price would be going down. Instead it's gone up 24 cents in the last week here.

And if people would stop driving big fat SUVs that didn't need to, and the big LTD-sized sedans, personal gas usage would start to drop quite a bit.

Charles of Schaumburg

Reply to
n5hsr

All you have to do is stand by the Dan Ryan Expressway every morning and look at the volume of vehicles at rush hour. This is happening in every major city, on every major freeway in America. We are burning gas in unbelivable amounts even with the fuel efficient cars we have today. Just think what it would be like if we had the cars of the 1970"s. The demand is there, but I wonder about the supply. This cannot go on forever. We as consumers seem to think there is an unlimited supply of cheap gas. At $3 bucks a gal. I don't think it has set in yet, but it will when it gets to $5, $6 and higher. It's coming.

Reply to
dbu.,

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.