Gas price whiners

want to save gas. slow down. Gas companies are setting the price and fools are paying at stock market. Even OPEC says the price is too high.

Because they want all those nice "free" givernment social programs. Ya know like the liberals here keep pushing for.

For some reason I just can't wrap my pea brain around why a refinery being shutdown would cause the product they consume to go up. Logic would dictate that it would go down as it is not being consumed while the refinery is shut down. Also, refineries have a finite capacity to convert oil to gas. Once that capacity is reached they can't consume any more oil to convert. If the wells are still pumping it out and the refineries are at maximum, where the hell is all the crude going to go (yes I know other markets), but it is our refinery capacity more then anything else that impacts supply & demand for refined fuel.

KEEPING THE PRICE OF GAS DOWN I hear we are going to hit close to $3.00 a gallon by the end of summer. Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action. Read to the end. Phillip Hollsworth, offered this good idea: This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has! come up with a plan that can really work. Please read it and join with us! By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at under $2.00 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $2.75 for regular unleaded in my town. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50-$1.95, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace.... not sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How? Since we all rely on our cars,! we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON"T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do!! Now, don't whimp (sic) out on me at this point... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)...and those

300 send it to at least ten! More (300 x 10 =3,000) ... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it.... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!! Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people and DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from EXXON and MOBIL. That's all.

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we an make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. EXXON AND MOBIL gas isn't any better than the other brands out there. PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.50 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK!

Yeah, it's not a percentage tax. It's flat.

Following that idea, the other companies will have increased sales. They will need to get fuel to cover those increases. So they buy from the ones who have fuels that are not moving. Besides, no movement of this sort has really ever attracted enough people to make it work.

People need fuel and the oil companies know it. Just like the food companies know people need to eat.

The higher prices suck, and hurt, but, we have maintained the cheapest fuels in the western world for decades. Ask anyone who lives in Japan, Portugal, Finland, etc, what they pay per LITER.

Be very thankful they have not found a way to charge you for every breath of air you take.

Spike

1965 Ford Mustang fastback 2+2 A Code 289 C4 Trac-Lok Vintage Burgundy w/Black Standard Interior; Vintage 40 16" rims w/BF Goodrich Comp T/A gForce Radial 225/50ZR16 KDWS skins; surround sound audio-video.

Gad what fools these morons be.... Children are obscene but should not be heard Give me a peperoni pizza... or give me a calzone!

Spike

1965 Ford Mustang fastback 2+2 A Code 289 C4 Trac-Lok Vintage Burgundy w/Black Standard Interior; Vintage 40 16" rims w/BF Goodrich Comp T/A gForce Radial 225/50ZR16 KDWS skins; surround sound audio-video.

Gad what fools these morons be.... Children are obscene but should not be heard Give me a peperoni pizza... or give me a calzone!

Spike

1965 Ford Mustang fastback 2+2 A Code 289 C4 Trac-Lok Vintage Burgundy w/Black Standard Interior; Vintage 40 16" rims w/BF Goodrich Comp T/A gForce Radial 225/50ZR16 KDWS skins; surround sound audio-video.

Gad what fools these morons be.... Children are obscene but should not be heard Give me a peperoni pizza... or give me a calzone!

Well yes and no. My Master's thesis (The structural determinates of gasoline shortages in the US by PAD's) in 1974 following the supply crisis of 1972/3 examined a multitude of variables. Interestingly, the only statistically significant variable that explained price changes in the study was market share. This may not be true today and may explain why there is little if any difference in price between the majors in any given market area. Attempts to buy market share by lowering the price is immediately matched by the competition. Market share today is probably driven by marketing hype ( my additives are better than yours).

Another thing about gasoline production. IIRC when you refine that barrel of crude about 60% of the distillate will be gasoline leaving the balance for all the other distillates and the crud (bunker and asphalt). I'm not sure but that may mean that the internal combustion engine will always be needed unless another viable use for gasoline is found.

In California, when a refinery goes down, the law of supply and demand continues. So, if one less refinery is providing product, this would tend to indicate less supply, with continued stable to increasing demand. The price rises. I have heard that refineries tend to process at maximum prior to shutting down in order to stockpile while off line. Seems like here (Calif) the refineries don't plan to shut down. They have fires, and other breakdowns which are "unexpected".

The crude produced in the Gulf of Mexico right now is facing similar circumstance. Many of the rigs were damaged and output to refineries is greatly reduced. According to differing reports, this could account for between 17 and 24% of US usage. And it is estimated that is may take several months before everything is back to full capacity. That is going to decrease supply, even if demand remains stable, so prices will rise.

One of the oil company heads stated that he does not believe that the price per barrel can be sustained at $70, or $60, or even $50 per barrel. That the price must come down or the world faces a major change in societal structure. Then he said that he has been wrong before.

Spike

1965 Ford Mustang fastback 2+2 A Code 289 C4 Trac-Lok Vintage Burgundy w/Black Standard Interior; Vintage 40 16" rims w/BF Goodrich Comp T/A gForce Radial 225/50ZR16 KDWS skins; surround sound audio-video.

Gad what fools these morons be.... Children are obscene but should not be heard Give me a peperoni pizza... or give me a calzone!

Maybe they are stockpiling it. Part of the Great Plan. Force the enemy to spend more than it can afford, until it's system collapses under it's own weight. Sounds a bit like what happened to the USSR.

I dunno about that. Those space aliens out at Area 51 might be doing something sneaky....

One of the cable news shows interviewed one of the oil company heads, and he didn't go as low as $20-30, but he did say he didn't believe it could be sustained at even $50.

Spike

1965 Ford Mustang fastback 2+2 A Code 289 C4 Trac-Lok Vintage Burgundy w/Black Standard Interior; Vintage 40 16" rims w/BF Goodrich Comp T/A gForce Radial 225/50ZR16 KDWS skins; surround sound audio-video.

Gad what fools these morons be.... Children are obscene but should not be heard Give me a peperoni pizza... or give me a calzone!

Futures markets react when someone in Ulan Bator sneezes. Go figure.

Personally, I think part (not nearly all) of the problem is the

4,423,452 different "blends" of gas that are all over the country. You drive up to a pump these days, and you will see 87, 89, 91, 92 octane. Unless your owners manual says so, 99.9% of the vehicles produced today run perfectly (and are designed) to run on 87 octane. That, and the blended fuels that the enviromentalist, and EPA have forced on consumers in different parts of the country have effectively screwed up the supply delivery of fuels across the country. If there is a "surplus" of gas in the upper midwest, and a shortage of fuel say in southern California, the excess cannot be piped through the nationwide pipeline distrubution system because it isn't "compatible" with their blend. THANKFULLY, the head of the EPA wednesday, put a temporary stop to that and mandated that the fuel blends won't matter until the current "crisis" is over (it's set to expire on Sept 15th). Yes, I think part of the "suv" craze might be coming to an end. Heck the bulk of these vehicles are never driven in 4WD, or off road anyway. part of this has to be the "keep up with the Jones" mentality of the population. Do I think SUV's should be outlawed...nope...I just think it's silly to have one, but I won't stop someone from owning one if that is their choice. I'm sure that europe is laughing that we are finally paying "our fare share" since our gas has been cheap, compared to europe. I think that we as a nation missed our chance in the 70's to become independent of the mideast oil, but rampant enviromentalism wacko mentality stopped it. Maybe we can tell the tree huggers and snail darter idiots out there that we should come first. Heck, even if and when we have (as they like to put it) an enviromental "disaster", we clean it up better than anyone in the rest of the world. We are sitting on tons upon tons of oil...but we can't pump it out of the ground. We haven' built a refinery plant in almost 30 years in this country because of the "not in my back yard" mentality of the public. Maybe that can end to. Too much political correctness and wacko envromentalism are mostly, but not all of where the blame should be.