Gas Rage In Staten Island

We haven't heard a lot of talk about rationing as of yet...That would solve a lot of the panic buying.

The Alaska National Wildlife Refuge won't help to any significant degree, but the governor of Montana has an interesting idea: convert coal to gasoline and fuel oil. He says the process becomes cost effective with oil at $32/barrel, and that Montana has enough coal to supply all US oil-derived energy needs for 40 years. Don't know what that will do to Montana's ecology, but at least there won't be any supertankers sinking, and I like to think that a Democratic governor is not proposing to destroy his state with strip mining. Supposedly this kind of conversion produces relatively clean fuel as sulphur in coal is removed by the process. Still, it dumps just as much carbon into the air.

If this process is cost effective at $32/barrel and oil is selling at ~$70/barrel, what is the incentive for oil companies to make an investment in the technology? It seems like it would have the effect of suddenly cutting the value of their reserves in half.

The plants are expensive but there is a shortage of refining capacity now. Maybe, instead of building new oil refineries, it makes more sense to build coal conversion plants. BTW, the US has huge coal deposits- it's the Saudi Arabia of coal- which would certainly put the shoe on the other foot in a few decades, assuming we didn't incinerate the Earth with all that CO2.

Yeah I remember seeing that on t.v. yesterday. And yeah and the people that run out and buy one are the same people that will be complaining when gas hits $5.00 a gallon and doesn't go down!

Ken

Do you seriously consider a Camry an econobox? Around here, a Camry is an overly large, unpopular sedan, and a Corolla (one size down) is a popular midsize one. Econoboxes are things like Daihatsu Cuore and other Geo Metro sized vehicles.

Jasper

Well the coal in the ground, and getting it out largely depends on how deep it is I think. Strip mining absolutely destroys the envronment. And shaft mining is not very good for the workers, mines flood, fires and explosions are pretty common.

Ken

One man's floor is another man's ceiling.

Where I live is still, and will remain, the land of pick-em-up trux. Whatever gas costs, people will drive the pick-em-ups. It's a matter of relative scale. If I drove one of your wunderkars, I would soon have to look up the past tense of Daihatsu.

Where I live, it snows up to our asses. I often must get out before the plow has come in. A Camry is about the smallest car I will drive. Even ignoring my 37" inseam, a Camry is where the curves (luxury, comfort, practicality, economy) cross for many boomers like me. I've never been stuck in the snow with a Camry. I did have to give them up for several years because Toyota redesigned the dashboard to keep my foot off the pedal, but they came to their senses in recent years.

Why is the Toyota Camry one of the most frequently-stolen cars?

I just checked my dealer, and, sure enough, the used Camrys are mostly spoken for, at a rate unprecedented in recent history. He does have some Corollas, though.

What we're going through is actually a pretty predictable cycle - every 20 years or so we outrun the supply, the price goes up, a bunch more supply comes on line, and the price goes back down. We're in the midst of a bit of a "perfect storm" with the hurricane in the Gulf... hopefully it'll be enough to get people out of their land yachts. My wife tells me that people are actually driving the speed limit here in the Phoenix, Arizona area these days (hard to imagine). The good news is her replacement ACL is almost fully functional so she'll be riding the bike to work again soon.

Ouch. I've lived in places with gas prices like that - fortunately, I didn't drive much then either. I put $50 in my Jeep a couple days ago (but it was REALLY bone dry). The good news is that it gets about

Mark Hickey Habanero Cycles

I'm a pragmatist.

Mark Hickey Habanero Cycles

Exactly. OPEC's been saying the same thing for a long time - they can increase production but it won't help anything.

I hope those who criticized GWB for filling up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are having second thoughts at least (though I doubt it...).

Mark Hickey Habanero Cycles

Reducing consumption won't do anything to lower the price of gas, just the opposite. If the oil companies sell less gas they make less profit so they will raise the price to make up the difference.

Skip

Well, pragmatism is good in theory ...

What are you, some kind of idiot? If Mark's a communist, then we need more of 'em in the US!

Put another way, come up with a way to make a decent living selling top-quality Ti frames for under $800 ($700 until quite recently), offering excellent service to boot (or, alternatively, an SUV that gets 40+ mpg), and I'll gladly call you a capitalist pig.

Oh yeah, I forgot, it's you...

Kovie snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.netizen

The point is that low fuel prices and the tradition of using the car for everything have made you design cities that simply require a lot of driving.

In Europe, the high fuel taxes have at least hampered designing spread-out dysfunctional suburbs. They do exist, but not to the ridiculous extent of U.S.

Since housing price inflation drive your economy right now I see no other option than going to hell in first class.

Jan

Whoosh.

Apparently some people don't listen. Because if they did they wouldn't get all excited about tapping the reserves, it's not going to help, the only thing that will help short term is a reduction in demand.

Ken

Your doubt is well-founded given that many critics of GWB have yet to have their first.

Well, something's gotta give.

Titanium frames for the proletariat!

Now if only the government would subsidize my bicycling budget.

Well, we've got suburban sprawl in Europe too, it's just that it's scaled by just about the factor of 2-4 that the fuel prices have been skewed by. Well, and of course here in .nl there's damn little room for anything but tightly-packed rows of housing developments.

Oh, and energy costs *also* impact house design in general. Free-standing houses have something like 50-70% more surface area to lose heat (or cold, in AC-using countries) to. Which means people around here tend to avoid them.

Jasper