Significant Reduction in Petroleum / Gasoline Prices, HOW?

What can you do to make these oil prices reasonable?

  • Take economic action?

    Votes: 12 28.6%

  • Take political action?

    Votes: 3 7.1%

  • Do both?

    Votes: 10 23.8%

  • Do nothing?

    Votes: 17 40.5%
  • Total voters
    42
  • Poll closed .
Excellent Commentary

And needless to say...a huge financial boost to terrorist sponsors..such as Iran....

And a huge financial boost to the new socialism movement in SA...namely Chavez...Morales ...etc..

It is very difficult to believe that the Bush Administration is this incompetent ....especially given Cheney´s involvement in Indonesia, Mexico,and Iraq prior to his being in office...

The Iraq War is increasing the numbers of people in terrorist organizations...and the financial support through higher oil prices is giving them more money...a lot more money....

And because of extraordinarily high prices ....other countries such as Peru..Equador...as well as others are nationalizing the energy industries....which in turn makes oil prices higher....

Furthermore...where are the highly funded energy alternative programs...and what is the amount of money spent on alternatives versus the failed Iraq war ?

There are just too many questions yet to be answered with regards to the true objectives of the OIL ADMINISTRATION...
 
Quote from limitdown:

Just to be objective it is good to restate this essential conclusion that Economic discussions sometimes overlap the very same discussion points that Political discussions have, just from the economic perspective, not from the party or political perspective.

That statement is meant to cover the areas of being non offensive to the defenders of the Republican Way, as well as to make this thread objective.

Frequently taking sides means paying the "at the pump prices" with pride instead of the natural revulsion that most normalized Americans feel.

CBS movie, The Unit had an expression from the armed services called bohica. Anyone know what that means? [/B]
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Bend Over Here It Comes Again
 
not having read all the comments, this might have already been mentioned - There Is A Commodity Price Bubble, Oil Included.

real economy fundamentals have not been such to justify anything close to the type of price runup.

sure, there's the 'China story' but this story almost always fails to take account of what has in fact been taking place, such as the YOY decline in oil consumption for 2005; such as that nation's new 5-yr plan which emphasizes more efficient energy; et cetera. The story has become a commonplace justification; so was the 'New Economy' story for what became dotbombs.

then there's been the 'peak oil' story lurking around the edges and promoted by some that have had the most to gain, including a number of hedgies. Number of specifically commodity funds has jumped over the last few years; large traders such as Goldman and Morgan Stanley; a few of the integrated oils; et cetera. All with interest in ramping the price, riding the mo. These dudes are Not hedging for commercial purpose and neither are some of the nominal commercials.

Way too often we get things backwards; we incorrectly take the market to be efficient, and from this imagine that a rising price Must result from a production cost-supply/demand imbalance, and then proceed to 'discover' just what we've already presupposed. If one starts from global economic fundamentals, moves to production-supply/demand there has been No shortage, not even that much tightness. Energy demand does in fact respond to price, is not inelastic. Production also responds, look at the development of reserves, the rise in rig counts.

Matt Simmons, Simmonsco Intl, had it right back in 1998 when he argued that WTI futures price was determining WTI spot was determining world oil price. See: http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/012798.pdf
and more recently, 2006, Dr Mark Cooper's testimony re. natgas that also applies to crude and gasoline: at http://www.doj.state.wi.us/docs/naturalgas.pdf

How to get prices down? Make the spec more difficult, hard to do when there's this very large, essentially unregulated, OTC trade...
Still more difficult when a large chunk of the petrodollar windfall recycles into UST-paper, supports our debt.
 
Quote from limitdown:

hmmmm,

good question.

let's see a overly simplistic reason....

100,000,000,000 gallons of gasoline (100 billion) lasts at least 1.3 months domestic consumption (dc)

DC is defined as:
1) Municipal and Other Governmental fleet usage
2) Maintenance of First Responder fleets (police, fire, Office Emergency Mgmt, etc.)
3) Municial Transportation fleet, both supervisory and passenger, both fleet and factory (power generating plants, for rail lines, etc.)
4) Quasi Governmental Fleets (hospitals, ambulances, support and supervisory vehicles, etc.)

5) General corporate delivery fleets, inclusive of Food Merchants, Grocery Chain and Distributor delivery fleets.

6) General Social Welfare programs (all kinds for all purposes by all kinds of groups, etc.)

7) General public consumers (commuter traffic, leisure traffic, taxi / limosine traffic, etc.)


OK,

100 billion gallons of gas / diesel + $1.79 (average prices during close of Clinton Administration) = baseline price (for arguement sake)

www.gasbuddy.com heat map prices ranging from California $3.45 to Iowa $2.59 times 100 billion gallons

profit estimate at high range = 100 billion dollars times $1.75 (for argument sakes)

$175 billion dollars in profits, not the $4 billion that Exxon Mobil alone reported, or the $10.1 billion that other oil companies reported for just one quarter

what a picture

I took great pains to point out that 6 of the 7 itemized DC's have no voice, so when they mock people on CNBC and say there's no outcry or the pain at the pump isn't so bad, I wonder what these others would say, if they could?

what do you think?

__________________
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now multiply that $175 billion dollars in profit by 8 equals $1,400 billion dollars or $1.4 Trillion dollars in 1 year alone

we have had 5 years of this oil terrorism

isn't this enough?
 
limitdown - apparent that you want to blame the oilcos for this price runup, and I've little doubt that they mind it, but taking advantage of a spec driven situation and creating that situation are not necessarily identical.

sure enough, from Ida Tarbell on, its been convenient to blame 'Big Oil', whether the Majors or OPEC or both. And sure enough there's been some basis for this, whether the Standard Monopoly, the Redline Agreement, the 'Seven Sisters', the failure of the DOJ to bring effective action, etc etc.
But this latest in the London Review of Books may get closer:
Retort: Blood for Oil?
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n08/reto01_.html
 
Well now...

Hank Paulson...

Smart choice.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Paulson

However it was the Goldman analyst that first came up with the $100 number for oil....they now would say $105 is conservative in a fuel interruption scenario.....

It is probably safe to say that as long as Bush Cheney is in office...there is little chance that oil prices will drop where they normally should be.....

It is interesting to see how it was either a $100 plus oil group or an oil crony that were finalists for the job...
 
Quote from limitdown:

now multiply that $175 billion dollars in profit by 8 equals $1,400 billion dollars or $1.4 Trillion dollars in 1 year alone

we have had 5 years of this oil terrorism

isn't this enough?
More...

oh, we're not done yet?

exactly what do these people want from us?
 
Hot Topic - CNBC 1:52pm Est

They have some guy supporting the windfall profits of the oil companies by throwing around the notion of Socialism in the US, if you try to windfall profit tax the outsized gains of the oil companies.

Wonder how much he was paid to continue to disseminate misinformation.

The other commentator sited the book: "How to Lie With Statistics", she also said that Democracy is a shared burden and is not socialism or communism.

This was one of the best commentaries that I have seen on CNBC in months!
 
wow, this is one of the best threads I have read in a long time.


I left my Senator(s) know my concerns, but who's to say what's really happening...

something is not right with all these excuses on oil prices and they're killing the infrastructure of this country...

so much for the first responders and so much for preparedness....

why doesn't the Oil Administration shift its considerable weight and collapse these oil prices instead of supporting them higher?

ohh, did I just answer my own question?
 
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