Everybody in the world market except for perhaps the producers of oil are paying the same price per barrel. It is a world market, after all. So don’t say that America is getting cheaper oil, because until I see some real, hard numbers I’m calling bullshit. Your higher prices (outrageous, actually) stem from the fact that your governments have gouged the living hell out of you guys in taxes. So don’t bust our chops because we pay less and now we’re unhappy about the upswing, blame your bosses for the crushing taxes they put on you. They’re almost like the sin taxes they put on smokes over here, only everybody with a car pays them where you’re at. And you let your governments do it to you.
Look on the bright side: current prices are the lowest they will be for the foreseeable future. If you want to save money, buy gas futures at to today’s prices to use tomorrow when the prices continue to rise.
Did we say that America gets cheaper oil, or that Americans get cheap gas? We get gouged on fuel tax, agreed, but it’s surprisingly liveable-with and if you’ve got enough incentive you can learn to make fuel economy a factor in your decision-making - which is what one or two posters seemed to be arguing against; f’rinstance, in post #15. “I want to carry on exactly the way I am now! Someone bring me cheaper energy so I can do it! Or else the world will come to an end!”
Nope, this is sort of like lighting a candle instead of cursing the darkness, only the other way round. Your government daren’t tax fuel at anything like the rate ours does, because it would be political suicide. Consequently, you’ll just carry on guzzling the old gas.
In a democracy, the people are the government. European people recognise that taxing fossil fuel consumption is responsible governance. We don’t “let our governments do it to us” so much as do it to ourselves. If other countries govern themselves less responsibly, well, we’ll just have to bear the consequences.
Who started the bitching anyway? Ooh, someone having to pay the egregious sum of $2.50-ish per gallon. I ain’t bitching (not right here and now, anyway) about Government graspology, only them who don’t know cheap gas when they see it.
It’s not just about the caribou. It’s about native people, who live in Canada, who survive on those caribou when they come into the (Canadian) territory. Lose the caribou, and the people are fucked. Some of us don’t like to see native Canadian people’s lives and culture sacrificed to America’s drive to squeeze every last bit of oil out of its soil.
the funny thing is that most Europeans DON’T bitch about gas prices and “how much it sucks”. I just paid the equivalent of $4.35 a gallon,which seems reasonable to me and all my neighbors. We just don’t buy SUV’s, and never will. It’s Americans who bitch, because they gotta have a Hummer, but don’t want to pay for feeding it.
The amount of ignorance in this thread is astounding. Greenskeeping earth-lovers aside, the real problem is not “non-renewable resource dwindling = more $'s.” It is much more complicated than that, and renewability is the least mitigating factor. A few have hinted around at the real problem, in that they have indicated it is a world market and that globally the price of crude is high ($67/barrel or so this morning). The problem with rising prices stems from multiple factors, including, but not limited to:
Price of crude.
Price of oil futures. Right now, the futures speculators are buying up large quantities of the oil reserves (that’s an oversimplification of the futures market and out of the scope of this conversation).
Worldwide consumption. India and China are starting to make a huge impact in the available oil.
Lack of refineries. NIMBY, and extraordinary red tape have prevented refineries from being built for nigh-on 30 years now. The existing refineries are at near 100% capacity, and any small hiccup, such as a hurricane in the Gulf, reduces the available refining capacity. This increases price. All of you environmental earth-lovers that are griping about gas prices: you can stop now. Environmental policies are what have prevented new refineries from being constructed. The simple truth of the matter is that it simply cost too much to build one with all of the onerous environmental requirements. That is evening out now that crude is as high as it is (someone quoted $40/barrel as being the break-over point in an article - I’m not sure how accurate that is, but it seems reasonable).
Seasonal cycles. The increase at the pump right now is partially due to refineries having to switch cycles to produce heating oil to prepare for the coming winter in the States. Decreased gasoline production = higher prices. See the previous point about refineries.
Lack of alternative power sources. A fair number of our power plants in this country are run on fuel-oil (though not the majority, which operate on coal). Replacing these plants with nuclear or hydro-electric energy would reduce our reliance on oil considerably, and also help address future capacity issues with electricity. Oh, wait…what’s that? Oh! We can’t build nuclear, it’s “unsafe”…and damming rivers, well, we might actually displace a frog or something…remember all that environmental red-tape I mentioned where building refineries is concerned? That goes double for nuclear or hydro-electric.
Bottom line: it’s complicated, it won’t get fixed overnight unless we piss off some people to do it, and there’s not a politician in this country that will touch the environmental regs on the books now in order to ease things.
Tapping the A.N.W.R. reserve will do very little to stabilize gas prices. Remember, the oil up there is not in vast underground pools like in the Arabian Peninsula. One cannot simply drill down and pump it up. The oil there is contained in fractured shale, IIRC, which calls for a different, and more complicated, process to bring it to the surface. The cost of the operations would mean that the oil produced would need to be priced high in order to defray the costs of production.
I think what really should be debated in this issue is why do Americans feel such a sense of entitlement? Why should we be entitled to cheaper gas prices than the rest of the world?
We screwed up 30 years ago by not instituting a high gasoline tax. We had just been hammered by OPEC, it was the perfect time to put in a tax, increasing yearly, to force Americans to be more frugal with gasoline. Instead, politicians went the easy route and we went from the Muscle Car culture to the SUV culture, both gas guzzling, both putting us at the mercy of oil producers and supply swings. Not only that, those who want to save on gas, and buy a tiny gas sipper, put themselves in danger because they are travelling the road with behemoths 3 times their size.
Mass transit won’t help. I live in Manhattan, which has arguably the best mass transit system in the country. Why do so many people in here not have a car? It’s not the mass transit, it’s because there’s no place to park, and there’s too much traffic. If there was ample free parking and space on the road, we would pretty much all have cars, and use them frequently.
The reality is that gas prices don’t need to go down, we need to stop buying gas guzzlers. The only way that happens, is for prices to stay high.
To repeat; we don’t get cheaper oil than the rest of the world. We just don’t get taxed into oblivion on it. We also don’t have a sense of entitlement, no more than anyone else. If we stopped using oil tomorrow the demand would remain the same, or if it didn’t stay at that level after being eaten up by someone else it would return to that level in short order.
Everyone thinks that they are entitled to oil, and they are, as long as they are willing to pay the price for it. Ours just happen to be cheaper than most places, although those prices have gone up to the tune of 200% or so in the last two years so it hurts us more because we haven’t budgeted properly for it yet, just like someone who is taken by surprise by a $7.00 gallon of milk would be.
It’s not just that the price of oil has gone up, but also that the value of the dollar has gone down. Oil prices in Europe have increased 15%, while we’ve seen the same 15% increase, plus a 15% drop in how much oil our dollar will buy.
Incidentally, I forgot something else. The increase in fuel costs has resulted in upward pressures in prices across the board. They may not have manifested themselves yet, but they have to eventually. This makes sense because it takes fuel to get goods from here to there and that price will be passed on to us in the form of increased prices.
These prices are having dramatic effects across the board, not just at the pumps. Poorer people will be bitten very hard by this if they’re not already feeling the pinch.
Lowering the huge fuel taxes immensely would help more than anything. Increasing refining capacity in the US and ignoring the blatant lies of enviromental extremists and drilling more in ANWAR and offshore in the US certainly would help a bit as well. But I don’t think dramatically. But given increased world demand (China) and US supply (refiners are at capacity, no?), I think that high prices will be around for a long while. A change towards smaller engines, more diesel engines, and smaller vehicles is probably what will happen. I’d rather drive a 3/4 ton pickup with a V8, but economically, I’m much better off with a little pickup and a 4cyl. People will have to start choosing a nice car instead of the 4 door pickup or large SUV for family cars because high dollar gas is here to stay.