Hopeful article on gas prices

[AmbideXtrous]

If you can start planning for the end of days now everything will be a lot less stressful when it eventually comes 12/21/ 2012. I've got my acoustic guitar, a bottle of whiskey and my row boat to take out into the middle of the lake and just watch it all crumble down.

Meh. The zombies will get us before then.

 

[Climb14er]

It's already $5/gallon at a few gas stations here in California. San Francisco was in the $4.50 range weeks ago.

I'm trying to figure out a way to get invested in the oil companies. At the rate they are making money, there has got to be some angle there.

On a side note. About 5 years ago, I met a dude in the oil industry. He was from Texas and owned his own business dealing with oil. Sort of a 'middle' man of sorts. He made a few million bucks a year and told me, over the next 10 years your going to see oil prices skyrocket and there will be no better earning business in the world. I wish I would have paid more attention to him.

:bash:

Buy XOM, NOV, RIG, CVX, COP... the list goes on. Shares in the above stocks plus others in the drilling, production and refining industries can be had at the flick of a finger online through your brokerage of choice. : You're now in the oil business.

 

[TheBlueWave]

New refineries are what we really need.

As far as the money spent on the war comments...I absolutely disagree. That money would not have been put toward developing alternative fuel energy. That will come from the free market, not the government.

If we left alternative energy up to the government, they would come up with something silly like subsidizing an industry to harvest corn, boil it, ferment it, and make ethanol from it, at a nearly equal fuel spent - fuel produced (1.05 or so units produced for every unit spent on an energy balance basis) ratio. While this is going on, food prices would sky rocket.
Wait, that is happening right now! :bash:
Anyone who trusts this government to help the high cost of energy is a fool. It will come from somebody's garage, mark my words.

 

[seh750]

The only possible way the government can subisidize gas prices is suspending the 18 cents in federal tax or impose a windfall tax on oil companies.

How could imposing a windfall tax on oil companies help gas prices? Anything that increases their cost of business is only going to raise the prices of their products (i.e. gas and diesel) for the consumers.

Why isn't there more talk about creating synthetic fuel? Germany did it in the past and South Africa is doing it now. And one of the potential raw materials, coal, is abundant in the US. Anybody know anything about synfuel?

 

[jrs2]

I'm no defender of the government, but there are some things they have done (somewhat) right in the area of R&D of new technology. The internet, aviation and space for instance. Granted, these were all defense programs, but the spin-offs from them have been enormous.

Imagine where we would be now if the government had invested just 1% of the defense budget a year in alternate energy research since the early 70's when the first problems with oil occurred.

 

[TheBlueWave]

I'm no defender of the government, but there are some things they have done (somewhat) right in the area of R&D of new technology. The internet, aviation and space for instance. Granted, these were all defense programs, but the spin-offs from them have been enormous.

Imagine where we would be now if the government had invested just 1% of the defense budget a year in alternate energy research since the early 70's when the first problems with oil occurred.

I saw a show about the EV1 a little while back, and how lobbyists (oil mostly) killed it off by various methods. The Clinton administration was talking about hybrid research in the early to mid '90's, basically around the EV1 time frame. The big three rejected it under the table because they were in the orgasmic high profit SUV era. Well, the Japanese got nervous and started research programs on hybrid powertrains, thinking someone from the big three would beat them to it. The rest, as they say, is history.
I still say trusting THIS government is foolish. Take care of your own (family, friends, church, whatever) and everything will be fine. The innovations will come from a lab or garage somewhere, independent (hopefully) of government funding.

 

[JungleJim]

If you can start planning for the end of days now everything will be a lot less stressful when it eventually comes 12/21/ 2012.

Wow. It's coming right on my father's 74th Birthday.

By Dad's birthday, the winter solstice, and the end of days because some ancient civilization ran out of space on the rock they were scribing their calendar on...

Wait a minute, the days on the calendar hanging on our kitchen wall runs out on 12/31/2008.....THAT must be the end of days. It's coming sooner than most were predicting!!!! Beware....