Gas shortage?

riverc0il said:

c'mon, allskiing, get with the times! you are supposed to pass those gas increases onto your customers!! :lol: big time inflation, here we go!

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Ha...this is how they would look at me:blink: :smash: after I told them that the price went up X amount of dollars. ;-)

heheh, i hear you. but we all better be getting used to it. i am surprised everyone hasn't seen higher increases due to transportations costs yet. i work in an industry that relies heavily on transportation, and i have seen some of the S&H cost increases this year... not pretty!!! when the prices of products do not go up, either expenses go down or profits go down. if the operation is already very efficient, it is usually profits

I think you'll see $4 a gallon by the fourth of July. The price always seems to jump around the middle of May. It's time to get all that extra weight out of the trunk, get new filters, check tire pressure. All the little things can add up to a lot.

Somebody is lining their pockets all right! It's such a shame that a lot of these increases will be passed on to the consumer, that already has to deal with the price hikes in their own personal use vehicles. Seems like a bad double-whammy to me.

riverc0il said:

heheh, i hear you. but we all better be getting used to it. i am surprised everyone hasn't seen higher increases due to transportations costs yet. i work in an industry that relies heavily on transportation, and i have seen some of the S&H cost increases this year... not pretty!!! when the prices of products do not go up, either expenses go down or profits go down. if the operation is already very efficient, it is usually profits

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We ship with Roadway Express and UPS at my company and both companies are adding on fuel surcharges big time, which we have now started to pass on to our customers who are less than thrilled, but understand.

Somebody is lining their pockets all right! It's such a shame that a lot of these increases will be passed on to the consumer, that already has to deal with the price hikes in their own personal use vehicles. Seems like a bad double-whammy to me.

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the american economy is driven by such things though. my cynical view lines up pretty well with the way it all works, companies will only do good things when they can financially benefit. fuel efficiency doesn't matter until it financially matters. it also matters when customers stop buying product because the price gets too high after fuel charges get passed on. smart consumers will stop buying products they don't truly need that receive massive fuel charge related price increases. like wise, smart consumers will also seek out more fuel efficient vehicles which may actually lead ot a decrease in monthly fuel costs despite increased price per gallon if the fuel economy of the vehicle is a significant upgrade from the older vehicle. a short sharp jump in price with cause smart people to think of new ideas and better ways of doing things. inevitably, we were eventually be sorely pressed with higher prices, but that will lead to new inovation and ideas which will bring about new technologies to help price, people, and ideally the environment as well once it is financially profitable to do so. when natural resources disappear, american capitolism works GREAT. it is just short sighted and doesn't have the means to prepare for such issues and maybe even disasters a head of time.

This seems to be getting political if you ask me. I'm going to stay out of this one.

I think people have done a great job staying on course in this thread!!

As the price goes up the demand does go down, already happening. Never go to $4, our economy couldn't handle that. Who's fault is it.....alot of it falls on our shoulders, you and me.
It's like bandwith, only so much can be pushed thru those pipes. Reduce consumption, stop feeding the beast.

ALLSKIING said:

I think people have done a great job staying on course in this thread!!

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indeed. economics and supply/demand issues and politics are completely unrelated.

dmc said:

We're pretty f'd...

We gotta figure out a way to get the countries that have oil to like us...

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:flag: First we got to convince folks that having other countries like us is important. Then and only then America might have a snowballs chance in hell of electing a President that the rest of the world doesn't hate or fear. I personally would like to see Republican Senator John McCain as the next president and a Democtratic controlled congress.

Ifs funny that a few years back you hear a lot of Americans say I don't give a $%^# what other countries think of us. Now Americans are paying $300 to $500 a month on gas with the reality that if those other Countries stop sending the United States oil we are in deep trouble.The realization that the United States is extremely dependent on the rest of the world is just now starting to sink in.

Maybe if there were incentives for companies to allow employees to telecommute 1 day a week that would help. I know that a significant amount of $$ I spend on gas is to drive 50 miles a day back and forth to work, and I don't think my commute is anywhere near as bad as it could be.

There are some companies that have people take alternating Fridays off...that's a start.

As far as hybrid cars are concerned, IMO the cost differential is still too great to justify buying one. That will hopefully change in a few years, though.

catskills said:

:flag: First we got to convince folks that having other countries like us is important. Then and only then America might have a snowballs chance in hell of electing a President that the rest of the world doesn't hate or fear. I personally would like to see Republican Senator John McCain as the next president and a Democtratic controlled congress.

.

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Lets keep this on track catskills. We are talking about gas..no politics please.

yea, i am with allskiing on that one. catskills, you just made me a liar in my previous defense of how the thread was faring :lol:

ALLSKIING said:

Lets keep this on track catskills. We are talking about gas..no politics please.

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Sorry about that I crossed the line. Difficult subject. Hey DMC started it. Just kidding.

BTW I just did a spread sheet on gas usage and MPG. I was real surpised how much I am spending on gas per month on my wife's Nissan Xtera at 16MPG. I figure the difference between 16 and 28 MPG is about $125 a month.

catskills said:

Sorry about that I crossed the line. Difficult subject. Hey DMC started it. Just kidding.

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I'm having tough time chiming in on this... Some forces I believe are out of our cotrol but others... ?!?!?!.... whatever... it is what it is....

BUT....

Right now my gas consumption is relatively low...

I work from home 2 days a week and stay in Stamford CT 3. So really only have the "to and from to Stamford" one a week mileage..

I tend to drive fast coming home... I miss being in the Skillz...

Although I blew through a tank of gas on a rental last week in North Carolina... Racing to meetings and stuff...

Drove 70mph to Stowe and 55-60 on the way home today to save gas. Slowing down DOES make a difference.

I doubt we will see prices dip much below $3.00 a gallon again. We have almost zero control over global demand(China/India) and zilch on supply(not going there). Demand will only increase and it is just a matter of how fast. The supply of petroleum has peaked, and very shortly(24-36 months) we will see the decline begin. There are no dinosaurs left to make any more. That leaves us with a choice of what we switch to. Do we go with the easy but messy(coal/nuclear) or the hard but clean (solar/wind/hydro/bio). Either way, we will still have to practice conservation like our great grand parents used to. It is just not logistically possible to replace the terrawatts of power we currently consume with any of the available options.

Tom
Scion xB Owner
(30-40 MPG)

There are three options that are available in North America for obtaining usable oil and gasoline besides the conventional oil wells:

1) Sand tar oil extraction, this is where oil and synthetic oil is removed from sand. Canada holds about 1.7 trillion barrels in Alberta. This is a horribly messy way to get at the petroleum and it takes two tons of sand to yield one barrel of oil. This process costs about $20-40 dollars a barrel to produce.

2) Oil shale, where the U.S has 1.0 - 1.2 trillion barrels of reserve, also a messy and expensive process where each barrel would cost about $40-50 dollars to produce.

3) Fischer-Tropsch process where coal is converted into synthetic petroleum products. This is how Germany got by through World War Two. This process is exteremly expensive and costs about $60-70 a barrel to produce. The U.S has 26% of the worlds coal reserves, so that supply could last for quite some time.


After the conventional oil reserves run out, these unconventional methods would be our last resort a sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel so to speak.

YardSaleDad said:

I doubt we will see prices dip much below $3.00 a gallon again. We have almost zero control over global demand(China/India) and zilch on supply(not going there). Demand will only increase and it is just a matter of how fast. The supply of petroleum has peaked, and very shortly(24-36 months) we will see the decline begin. There are no dinosaurs left to make any more.

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I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this... obviously, we've always had a finite supply, so it technically "peaked" before we started consuming any of it. If you meant, that the world's production output has peaked, well that would require knowing not only the history of crude oil production and exploration but also predicting not only the future political climate but the future of new exploration, technology and output capacity, which, from where I stand, is next to impossible.

YardSaleDad said:

That leaves us with a choice of what we switch to. Do we go with the easy but messy(coal/nuclear) or the hard but clean (solar/wind/hydro/bio). Either way, we will still have to practice conservation like our great grand parents used to. It is just not logistically possible to replace the terrawatts of power we currently consume with any of the available options.

Tom
Scion xB Owner
(30-40 MPG)

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Currently available options are limited, yes. However, nuclear (fission) power is far, far less "messy" than coal is when all is said and done. We don't build any new fission plants currently for safety concerns, which are at present, rediculous at best.

As for the others you mentioned, solar is still far to expensive, hydro power has too much environmental impact for widewpread use, and so far, too many of our environmentally minded citizens have found wind power too "ugly" for their tastes.

Within the next 60 years I predict the advent and widespread use of sustainable fusion reactions at which time will be able to produce as much electrical energy as we need.

It's also too bad that while you observe fuel consumption rates of 30-40 mpg with your xB, you would be seeing much more if Toyota had gone with a style more conducive to an efficient aerodynamic profile. The drag coefficient is around 0.35 for the xB, I believe, which is the high end of passenger cars and approaching the range of the quite large SUV's.

The point of that rant being, while everyone else worries about this sort of issue, and therefore all feel better by thinking of solutions that can be enacted proactively (read: forcing them upon other people) I place far more faith in free market economics (without getting politcal).

The economy as a whole will suffer with increasing scarcity of crude, yes, but at a point where alternatives become economically feasible, consumers will seek out what is cheaper and entrepreneurs will see opportunity for weatlh produciton.

The more we try to proactively change undesirable price in supply/demand chains, the more imbalance and resulting problems we create.

The point of that rant being, while everyone else worries about this sort of issue, and therefore all feel better by thinking of solutions that can be enacted proactively (read: forcing them upon other people) I place far more faith in free market economics (without getting politcal).

The economy as a whole will suffer with increasing scarcity of crude, yes, but at a point where alternatives become economically feasible, consumers will seek out what is cheaper and entrepreneurs will see opportunity for weatlh produciton.

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precisely. though i disagree that we should not be proactive. free market economics relies on businesses investing in proactive R&D to create solutions to what the market sees as problems. this is part of the reason i look forward to increased gas prices despite concern for my pocket book, it will spur viable and cost efficient alternatives into wide spread use.

also good point in reference to the xB. 30-40 MPG is standard for fuel efficient compart vehicles these days. we need to be looking towards 40-50 as a standard for a very fuel efficient gas powered car now and higher for the hybrids. no one has any right to complain about gas at the pump, there are alternatives.