Oil Price Inconsistency

Phoenix

Bird of Fire

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Oil Price Inconsistency

« on: 2008-03-05, 20:38 »

Looking at the talk over oil and gasoline prices, here's an interesting news bit:

Quote

Bush's assessment was at odds with that from the 13-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which said before he spoke that it would not put more oil on the global market because crude supplies are plentiful.

OPEC President Chakib Khelil told reporters in Vienna, Austria, that the problems in the U.S. economy were a key factor in the cartel's decision to hold off on any action.

"There is sufficient supply. There's plenty of oil there," he said.

In an address to the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference, Bush said, "It should be obvious to you all that the demand is outstripping supply, which causes prices to go up."

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8V7F6780&show_article=1

If supply is plentiful, why is the cost so high? And if it is not, why is OPEC stating that it is? One of two things is going on. Either the supply is dangerously low and OPEC doesn't want the cat out of the bag, or the market is being manipulated to inflate the prices. If the prices are being inflated, then I might wonder to what end. That money has to be going somewhere, and regardless of whether it's just making a bunch of Arabs rich or funding terrorists, the average citizen in any country that uses oil (which is every country) is paying for it. The comments about problems in the US economy being a "key factor" in not increasing supply is certainly suspicious. Are they out to tank the US economy? It would not surprise me if they were. If not, and if the supply is actually worse than OPEC wants to let on, then that's seriously bad news because it means WWIII once the cat is out of the bag. Once the oil stops flowing, and people start starving because nobody can make enough diesel to ship food supplies, the bullets start flying. Either way, this is not a good situation.


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ReBoOt

Mean ol Swede

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Re: Oil Price Inconsistency

« Reply #1 on: 2008-03-20, 08:49 »

There are already alternatives to using gasoline or diesel, but since the oil is a supply that will end eventually its really important that more alternative fuels is "invented".

Atm one liter of gas costs $2,17 (think its around $8.68 per gallon why cant you guys in the US start using the metric system -.-) here in sweden and it seems like its our goverments rule to higher the price with 1 swedish kronor per year.
The cost of gas is already insane, but they really wants us to buy cars that run on ethanol and so on.


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Phoenix

Bird of Fire

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Re: Oil Price Inconsistency

« Reply #2 on: 2008-03-20, 18:33 »

Ethanol is a bad choice though. It's expensive to make, and it requires growing an insane amount of corn or other crop on what normally would be food crop land in order to burn it as fuel, and it takes more energy to make it than you get back from it. Does it really make sense to burn your food in your auto? It's no answer to oil. It's like using a band-aid to patch a sucking chest wound if you ask me.

The cleanest option would be to have 100% electric vehicles, and recharge them from power grid, and that would only really be clean if you used fusion reactors, which nobody seems to be able to get working just yet. Right now there is a process that exists to turn biological waste into a synthetic light sweet crude that could be refined easily into diesel or gasoline or any other fuel, along with most useful petroleum products used in manufacturing. This technology has been around for close to 20 years, yet why is it not being pursued or discussed? It would solve a few problems - reducing the amount of waste going into landfills (recycling, anyone?), cheaper renewable fuel, create jobs, and reduce dependence on foreign oil suppliers that use the market as political leverage. Easier for the politicians to just subsidize corn than to do real R&D I guess.

I can't say about metrics, except that both systems are used and intermingled. They sell more tools that way. I blame capitalism!