In the unlikely but possible event where there is an interruption in civilian access to motor gasoline, are there any substitute fuels that can be purchased for emergency, temporary use?
I am referring to fuels not normally pumped at service stations. A possible source might be aviation fuel pumped at almost any airport, but it contains lead, which makes it unsuitable for cars built in the last 30 years or so. They might not pump it into cars anyways even if its legal to do so, which I doubt. How about Coleman fuel sold in hardware stores? Is it just a low octane non leaded gasoline which might work in an emergency if you baby the engine? Denatured alcohol is also sold in hardware stores, but I doubt you could run it in your tank. Anything else, or should I expect to pedal from place to place if there is a total boycott and service stations refuse to sell their gas at any price?
As a Coleman user and collector, I know that certain Coleman appliances are designed to run white gas (Coleman Fuel) and also unleaded fuel.
The primary difference between Coleman Fuel and Unleaded is the additives. Some of us have tried using unleaded in Coleman appliances, but when we do, there is usually a bad smell, and a greenish tinge to the flame - no doubt from the additives in the gasoline.
So, Coleman Fuel is, essentially, more "pure". However, I would make no guarantee as to how long your engine might last without the anti-knock compounds and various additives that are put in to keep fuel lines clean, etc.... I also have no idea what "octane" rating Coleman Fuel would have.
And it is not like the old days where you could tweak the carb to get the engine to run better. If you have a computer controlled car, then it is likely to have at least some misgivings about trying to run a fuel which will likely send very strange readings through the sensors, and cause the computer to erroneously adjust the fuel volume and mixutre - the algorhytem was simply not designed for that.
And in the US, Coleman Fuel is running between $4 to $5 per US Gallon. Here in Canada, it is more like $12 per US Gallon, and then you get dinged with an "eco fee" (another government tax-grab). So unless you had a BIG bank roll, you would not be going far. Also, look at your local wallymart. How many cans do they have on the shelf at any given moment? 10? 12? 16? Not even enough for a full tank in a car. Even if you could aford it, you would have to horde it quickly since anyone with a coleman stove or lantern might want some in an emergency as well.
Stay away from Jet Fuel. Jet Fuel is, essentially, a very pure grade of Kerosene. It wont work worth beans in your car.
As to others, I don't know.
Best make sure your bike has air >In the unlikely but possible event where there is an interruption in
I'd like to respectfully suggest that when things do finally get that bad it might be a better idea to keep whatever energy you have for more important things than driving...
How about boiling water, heating and refrigerating food, and keeping as warm as you need to?
Think the very last thing you want to do is drive around advertising the fact that you posess energy to waste :)
Why is it that every time the price of gas goes up some people think it's the end of civilization? Unlike the 70s we don't have any gas lines, all we have is more expensive gas. The market will work it out one way or another. People will buy fewer SUVs and more small cars, the higher price of oil will bring marginal wells on line, new oil supplies will be discovered, alternative fuels will become more economical. We've seen it before. The 70s oil shock caused people to switch to smaller cars and the oil companies to find huge new reserves of oil. By the 90s there was such a glut of oil that the price of gas dropped to near historic lows, which caused people to switch from small cars back to giant gas guzzling SUVs. Now we have a shortage, caused by those SUVs plus the fact that India and China have developed huge oil demands, and the price of gas is up (although it's still only half of what the Europeans pay). It will take a while but things will work themselves out again.
You have GOT to be joking! Here in Canada, just before we went metric, early 1980s, gasoline was getting close to $1.00 per Canadian Gallon (4.54 Litres). That is about 22 cents per litre.
Everyone was getting all set to bitch like crazy when gasoline reached $1.00 per gallon. THEN we went metric! So when we went metric, the oil companies proved, once and for all, that we are MORONS! The "Metric" price was 25.4 cents per litre or about $1.153 per Canadian Gallon.
So much for social demonstration. We were suckered into the metric system by the government, and by corporations who saw a chance to hoodwink us out of a great sum of cash. Slick marketing.
As for "near historic lows", I don't know where you live, but I recall gas being more like 25 cents per GALLON when I was young! About 5 years go, gas was running between 45 and 55 cents per litre. Now it is going between $1.06 and $1.18 per litre. That is about a 135% price increase. How much of a wage increase have YOU gotten in the last 5 years? 2%? 5%? 10%????
Even at 45 cents per litre, gas was about 400% higher than it should have been. Oil companies make HUGE profits with all this supply and demand crap. Problem is they LIE about the supply, and they also control the rate at which oil is refined and distributed, so they can easily create an artificial shortage - just like they did in the 70s.
Look at what you said MAN!
"Unlike the 70s we don't have any gas lines, all we have is more expensive gas."
THINK ABOUT THAT! Yes, long lineups at the pump get in the way of the oil companys ability to make MAXIMUM PROFIT. If there are no lineups at the pump, then that means there is NO PROBLEM WITH SUPPLY OR DEMAND! We are victims of the most elaborate con-game in recent history. Oil companies are reaping record profits, and all at our expense.
Did it ever ocurr to anyone that the Oil Companies problably already have the technology for the next generation of energy supply??? What they need to do to profiteer from it is drive the price of oil up so high that they can charge a fortune for a simple solution, and people will go for it! Like litte sheep who now believe that 80 cents per litre for gas is "cheap", we will also believe that we MUST pay more for an alternative energy source.
The bible was correct. Money is NOT the root of all evil - THE LOVE OF MONEY IS! And the oil companies of the world have proven their love of money without question.
Of course business has to make money, but OBSCENE AMOUNTS??? What, exactly, are they doing with all that money?? Seriously, once you get to a certain point, what does it matter is you make "more"??? If you have TRILLIONS of dollars in the bank, what does $500,000,000 mean to you? Not much. But to the rest of us who toil day in and day out, it means PLENTY.
But all this is no surprize. Corporate America had had a loss of conscience in the last 70 or so years. Outsourcing jobs off-shore to maximize profit without thinking far enough ahead that there wont be enough people left here with jobs to buy our product - so ultimately our companies will fail. VERY short sighted. Oil companies are just the latest sector to show their brazen disregard for the consumers that put them on the map in the first place.
How many people will have to suffer for the sake of obscene profit before the very fabric of society is weakend so badly that there is societal collapse???
You live in Canada which has always had higher taxes gas then the US. I paid US$3.19 a gallon for premium at my last fill up which is about 60 cents more then it was a month ago. A few years ago the price of gas was $1.50 a gallon or less which in inflation adjusted terms is about as low as it's ever been, see this graph
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In 1969 my father paid around $2800 for a new Impala, last year I paid $40,000 for a new 300C AWD. The C is much more of a car then a 69 Impala so a one to one comparison isn't quite fair. But the regular 300 with a V6 and RWD is pretty close, it goes for around $30K or 10x the price of the
69 Impala. So in inflation adjusted terms, $3/gallon gas is about 20% of the price that people were paying just before the Arab oil empbargo of the early 70s.
Not being an accounting type, I was not looking at inflatino adjusted figures, but thinking more of the absolute price.
Interesting information as well. It would seem to indicate that once things stablize in the middle-east, that we should expect gas prices to "fall" again.
But this simply isn't how most businesses and industries work.
In a shrinking market - and make no mistake, the gasoline market is going to be a shrinking market one of these days when the supply of oil gets constricted and the price skyrockets - most of the industry players DO NOT and NEVER HAVE successfully made the transition to a new or replacement market. Instead the weak industry players get bought out by the strong ones as an orgy of consolidation sets in and every year there's fewer and fewer major players.
The idea that Exxon or some other large oil company is going to stop supplying products made from oil some day and start selling some replacement fuel - like hydrogen - is rediculous. The hydrogen market right now is not large enough to interest companies like Exxon and if we ever do see wide use of hydrogen cars, the companies that are selling hydrogen -right now- will become the dominent market leaders and the size of Exxon, and Exxon will enter a long long period of shrinking - but they will hold onto what they have and what they already know, and will just use their muscle to try to get rid of their other competitors in the oil products industry.
Look what happened with IBM. When the PC revolution started IBM as a company was never able to shake that big iron philosophy and that is why IBM is not the market leader in PC gear, Dell is.
While I agree that the big oil companies don't have the next technology under wraps and hidden away, I am told that Shell and BP (British Petroleum) are big into solar energy. Supposedly Shell is a major producer of photovoltaic cells. The CEO of BP is supposedly rather evanlgelical about being green. I dunno about Exxon.
I would think that the cost of establishing retail point of sale locations aka gas stations costs more that the backend production side. So actually I think some of the big oil companies stand a good chance of supplying the "next" fuel. I would speculate that consumer backlash or even government backlash represent bigger threats to big oil than so called "free market" forces.
Isn't Shell already making/selling alternative fuels both here and in Iceland. Probably elsewhere. Before you laugh, I think Iceland is regarded as a model future new energy economy.
As demand for new fuels increases, existing retail locations can have one or two "pumps" installed and just take out old fuel and replace with new as it makes sense. Kind of like how some gas stations have a LPG tank and pump.
On the industrial production side, I would imagine many areas would be glad to see older refineries replaced with newer, cleaner facilities.
Big oil has the bucks, the real estate and the politicians and so I think many/most of them will be able to make the transition. I really doubt though that they have it all clearly mapped out and already decided.
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