gasoline for automobiles

le 21/04/2006 16:44, :

War on Iraq ?

China's insatiable demand. China was a net oil exporter until recently -- now they import alot.

China is driving up the price of everything that comes out of the earth -- copper, steel, zinc, oil ....

Andrew

The intersection of Supply and Demand

Supply and demand.(china and domestic overpopulation) Lack of new refineries. Lack of refineries that can refine the heavy crude. Lack of alternate fuels. Lack of electric cars. Lack of sufficient nuclear plant capacity to reduce dependence on natural gas. Lack of sufficient nuclear plant capacity to power electric cars if we had them. Auto companies that aren't innovatiog or otherwise don't care about gas mileage. I mean, why can't I buy a diesel hybrid that I can run off of vegetable oil? Why no hybrid that can run off ethanol?

mho vfe

Speculative crude oil futures (prices) as much as anything.

Iran.

Venezuela.

Nigeria.

etc....

In the immediate term there are several refineries that are off line for maintenance now. Ordinarily those refineries would have performed maintenance in the fall when demand is low, but Katrina took out refining capacity in the south so other refineries had to stay open. That is putting a lot of pressure on prices.

In the longer term we only have to much oil to pump from the ground and it is getting more difficult to find. At the same time we continue to burn increasing amounts of it in the form of gasoline. Look at all of the multi-car families and cars with big inefficient engines. Also consider all of the non-fuel products that consume petroleum.

We waste a lot and we do have to begin to look for more efficient ways to live. And yes we need to look for alternatives. But I suspect that since most of us try to defer financial pain for as long as possible, we will not make the hard decisions until there is a more or less permanent crisis.

It's not simply that. The Chinese government is also heavily subsidizing the cost of fuel at the pump. They don't want demand to go down as an inherent reaction to high crude oil prices, as they feel this will stunt economic growth. I hear that unleaded goes for well under $2/gallon compared to the typical $3 we're seeing in California.

Besides that, they've been willing to pay more than market prices to secure crude oil deliveries. It runs counter to what we might consider reasonable, but they want it that badly.

HLS says;

=3D=3D=3D=3D something, don't know what, but it appears to me that there is a bunch of "bastard" tricks being played on the American public.

mho v=83e

Generally, political unrest anywhere, that threatens to disrupt supply.

Oil is an extremely political commodity, especially considering that much of it comes from regions of the world that are saddled with extremely bad governments.

Those "bastard" tricks are being played upon the American public by its own government, which seems hell-bent on fomenting disaster everywhere.

Were it not for Rumsfeld's warmongering, and Bush's retarded acceptance of same, the world might be a different place today. And oil would be quite a lot cheaper.

It is difficult for a government to promote freedom when it does not itself understand what freedom is. If Americans continue to enjoy any sort of freedom at all, it is only because their government hasn't got round to taking it away yet.

spot market

Responding to...? War.

Many factors. According to an article I read recently (possibly in the Wall Street Journal?), one is something of a novelty: some analysts see the latest spike as being driven a lot more by futures markets than by more direct supply-and-demand factors. If memory further serves, the thrust of the article was that the market had therefore reached a certain threshold of maturity and was behaving like other commodities.

Anyway, one may wish to have a look at this (should stay up until the next issue, on April 26, at least):

--Joe

Responding to competitive bidders.

=3D=3D=3D=3D many sub-factors, one main factor.

mho v=83e

The greedy oil companies.

Don't forget demand! One industry analyst was quoted on national news as saying if public reduced their demand for gasoline 3% the price would drop sharply. The analyst did not expect people to do that, however.

Oil is a political commodity because it is in such a high demand. Whenever a scarce resource is in high demand there will be a lot of speculation and unstable prices.

Yeah, one would think this was a capitalist country or something. 'Course, the rest of us wanting to maximize our income- that is okay.

By the way, when the last oil crisis hit in the late 70s, a news association did an investigation, and found the largest single owner of the oil companies was union pension funds.

The idea that a few extremely rich men OWN the oil companies is a holdover from 19th century capitalism. Today, institutions representing millions of investors (including insurance and pension funds) own major american oil companies. I'll bet there are few people on this list that do not in some way or other own a small part of one or more oil companies. We all want lower insurance rates, and higher yields from our mutual funds, and best returns from our pensions, right?

Pogo (Walt Kelly) had it right so many years ago. "We has met the enemy and they is __"