Oil will hit $100 a barrel...

[IHS Fan]

today. Right now it is trading at $99.60/barrel for February delivery. It's up $3.62 today.

[crzyjournalist03]

Good thing I don't buy oil by the barrel....

[rockdale80]

Wow...that is really great news. :rolleyes:

[Aesculus gilmus]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OIL_PRICES?SITE=TXDAM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=BUSINESS.html&CTIME=2008-01-02-09-38-46

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices soared to $100 a barrel Wednesday for the first time ever, reaching that milestone amid an unshakeable view that global demand for oil and petroleum products will continue to outstrip supplies.
******************

But let's spin this positive. A gallon of gasoline is still cheaper than a gallon of milk. I'm sure there are other comparisons waiting to be made to make us feel better.

[Adidas410s]

Originally posted by Aesculus gilmus
But let's spin this positive. A gallon of gasoline is still cheaper than a gallon of milk. I'm sure there are other comparisons waiting to be made to make us feel better.
Good thing I'm not putting 30 gallons of milk into my car every week!!!! :eek: :eek: :eek:

[pero chato]

.

[SintonFan_inAustin]

Originally posted by IHS Fan
today. Right now it is trading at $99.60/barrel for February delivery. It's up $3.62 today. :doh: wait til summer, its suppose to be around $1.30/barrel heard it from a valero birdie

[sahen]

Originally posted by SintonFan_inAustin
:doh: wait til summer, its suppose to be around $1.30/barrel heard it from a valero birdie

do you mean $130/barrel?....if it dropped to $1.30/barrel then the bottom would fall out of the market and im pretty sure the economy would crash....

[alaskacat]

If it gets to 130 you are looking at 5 a gallon for gas and a depression starting as people cant afford to go to work as Mass Transit don't exist in the US to be functional except in some large cities.

[LH_Tuff]

Originally posted by sahen
do you mean $130/barrel?....if it dropped to $1.30/barrel then the bottom would fall out of the market and im pretty sure the economy would crash....

Actually, the lower the price of oil, the better off the economy is. People can afford to drive their SUV's when going out to dinner. :D

[loboes86]

Originally posted by LH_Tuff
Actually, the lower the price of oil, the better off the economy is. People can afford to drive their SUV's when going out to dinner. :D If it gets to low, companies quit drilling and start closing the producing wells in, which causes lack of work for companies who depend on oil flowing. This causes mass lay-offs and people can't afford the SUVs or the gas to fill them. Kind of like it did back in 1985 & 1986.

[zebrablue2]

what a mess our country is heading for in 2008.

[sahen]

Originally posted by loboes86
If it gets to low, companies quit drilling and start closing the producing wells in, which causes lack of work for companies who depend on oil flowing. This causes mass lay-offs and people can't afford the SUVs or the gas to fill them. Kind of like it did back in 1985 & 1986.

bingo...$1.30 per gallon would mean we would end up in an economic crisis....the energy sector is huge and if oil dropped that much then a lot of people would lose their jobs....

[sahen]

Originally posted by zebrablue2
what a mess our country is heading for in 2008.

hopefully not...there are doomsday forecasters before every year, things have a tendency to work out most of the time, lets hope they do again....

[bandera7]

They will not get it up to 5 a gallon because they know people will not pay that much. They would lose alot of money by raising it that high. They will keep it as high as they can while still selling as much as they do.

[GreenMonster]

Originally posted by bandera7
They will not get it up to 5 a gallon because they know people will not pay that much. They would lose alot of money by raising it that high. They will keep it as high as they can while still selling as much as they do. I totally disagree. Big oil knows that they have us held hostage. We have to pay what they want to do what we want. At some point we will start slowing our activities but we will never stop completely. Either way, they will continue to raise prices and increasing their profits because they can always point to the modernization of China and claim that is what's causing the change in demand. This is true, but the real issue isn't availability of oil. The real problem is the unavailability of refineries. Not one new refinery has come online in the United States since 1982. In that same time frame hundreds of refineries have been closed by the EPA. It is cost prohibitive for oil companies to build new so they instead increase capacity in several other facilities to make up for lost production elsewhere. Our current problem is most if not all refineries are running at capacity all the time. Our consumption is right at the top limits of what we can produce so there is never any surplus as in the past. So, this causes shortages every year when the refineries reconfigure for summer blends in the spring and again when they go back to winter blends in the fall. If the refineries would run summer blend year round (it is a cleaner burning blend to help reduce summertime smog) then the bi-annual "shortages" that cause the price spikes in early summer and again in fall would stop occurring because the refineries would not be shut down for 2 to 3 weeks to reconfigure. The environment would also benefit from the cleaner fuel. Refiners do not like this idea because they make more $$ off of the winter fuel because it costs less to produce and they would also lose out on their own industry created shortage that they have been getting fat off of in recent years. On top of that, the lack of bi-annual gasoline "shortages" would not encourage the belief that there is a shortage of oil in the investors. When gasoline prices go up many investors see that as a lack of oil on the market and that makes them want to buy, this drives up the demand for oil which in turn drives up the price. Granted, in this vicious cycle that actually does get the oil companies to boost oil production, but that does little to affect our prices at the pump due to the lack of refining capacity. Corn based green-fuels are also not all they are cracked up to be. Yes they save us fossil fuels in our vehicles but they burn massive amounts of fossil fuels in the creation of these products making their actual "Green" impact negligable or non-existant. They also cause other problems in our economy by raising corn prices that drive up feed prices that drive up beef,pork,and poultry prices. The impact can further be felt in many other areas of our local supermarket due to the increase in farmland being used to raise corn which is being subsidized by our government in their effort to appear "green" which lowers the amounts of other commoditees grown. Farmers are getting rich off the subsides and we are getting poor from the increased food costs across the board because of the "trickle down effect" (y'all like that twist on Reaganomics) from the corn fiasco. Our only truly safe bet is the emergence of a safe, cost effective, and reliable use of hydrogen as a fuel source for our vehicles. The only by-product is water, and there is more hydrogen in the atmosphere than any other gas therefore making it readily available. Question is, "When will Washington, Detroit, the Corn Belt, and Big Oil join forces to make this truly "green" option a reality?"

[sahen]

green that was long...and hard to read w/ no paragraphs, i tried to read it in one breath i almost passed out...i dont konw why i did that, i guess i like to take breaths at paragraphs, at least that post taught me that about myself....haha


anyway, couple things the oil companies dont build refineries in the U.S. anymore for 2 reasons...the gov't has so many restrictions on the environmental stuff it costs too much to build them here when they can build them overseas...also its a lot cheaper to employ someone overseas to refine the oil than here....if the gov't would ease the restrictions (not any time soon) there might be a couple of refineries built here....

also the price of oil is probably the main driving force in the cost of gas, that isnt set by the oil companies...thats set by OPEC...

i aint saying the oil companies are completely innocent but they aint completely guilty either...its a combination of greedy people that are causing this...

[Gontex]

Actually the market will take care of the prices. When gas prices get too high for people to pay them, you will see a drop off in demand. When the demand decreases, then the price should drop. In the meantime, the speculators will continue to drive the price of crude to new all time highs. We have already proven that we are willing to pay more than $3.00 per gallon for gasoline. What we have to remember is that everything we do depends on oil. From the food we eat to the clothes we wear, everything is affected by the price of oil. George Bush continues to shoulder the blame for all this when in fact the flourishing economies in India and China are what is driving this price increase.

[charlesrixey]

if there are 55 gallons in a barrel, think about how much TAXES you are paying for your gas

anything over that 55gal/$100 is overhead for someone other than you

[IHS Fan]

there's 55 gallons in a drum. in a barrel it's only 42 gallons.

[Txbroadcaster]

Another problem is the future sales is driving up the current cost..Even though the speculatives are not the true value of the Oil at this moment, the speculative value is so hot right now with everyone playing the futures market

[Aesculus gilmus]

Originally posted by sahen
its a lot cheaper to employ someone overseas to refine the oil than here

It's a lot cheaper to employ someone overseas to do a LOT of things besides that as well. This is the key reason there will not be a "middle class" of workers in this country ever again.

Free trade is a given and an article of almost religious devotion among most economists.

So American workers' wages will have to fall and Asians/Mexicans etc. will have to rise until there is an equilibrium.

I predict the Americans' wages will fall a lot faster than those other countries' wages will rise.

This is an added benefit of having instituted a police state since 9/11. All disgruntled workers can be declared "terrorists" (and they possibly could be, if there are too many of them).

[BobcatBenny]

Originally posted by Aesculus gilmus
It's a lot cheaper to employ someone overseas to do a LOT of things besides that as well. This is the key reason there will not be a "middle class" of workers in this country ever again.

Free trade is a given and an article of almost religious devotion among most economists.

So American workers' wages will have to fall and Asians/Mexicans etc. will have to rise until there is an equilibrium.

I predict the Americans' wages will fall a lot faster than those other countries' wages will rise.

This is an added benefit of having instituted a police state since 9/11. All disgruntled workers can be declared "terrorists" (and they possibly could be, if there are too many of them).
That was amazingly astute and coherent. :clap:

[sahen]

we will see if wages in america fall...i would be more willing to bet that companies would keep paying people the same just employ less people...its a lot easier to tell people "we are in a hard time so we have to lay you off" then it is to say "well we got less money so we gotta pay you less"....

when you lay people off there are hard feelings with former workers, when you drop their wages then your current employees are mad....the former is better for the employer...

[alaskacat]

Originally posted by Txbroadcaster
Another problem is the future sales is driving up the current cost..Even though the speculatives are not the true value of the Oil at this moment, the speculative value is so hot right now with everyone playing the futures market

Speculationis at least $20 a barrell, but thegasoline crunch I saw coming 10-15 years ago. When Oil companies were allowewd to merge.They bought out all the small refiners, that just had gasoline plants and closed them all therfore creating a smallmonopoly between Exon, BP Phillips/Conoco and Shell

Theydictate what the price will be. Gasoline can be made out of lots of things, old tires, drip gas, etc. Condensate is the main catalyst fr gasoline, not oil.

So the price per barrel is just crap...just as much gasoline starts out with a natural Gas condensate any more

[sahen]

uh...i work for exxon in the research department making catalyst....oil is used to make gas, you put the oil through the catalyst then it breaks up into many different parts (refining) and then those parts are refined further to seperate into seperate products....you cant just skip the oil part and oil is not the catalyst it is the main reactant along w/ heat and some other stuff....unless if you want to get the oil out of those tires then i dont know what your talkin about alaska....

on another note, getting oil out of those tires is not very cost effective for making gas, true we could do that but it wouldnt do much if anythign to the cost of gas, if we strictly relied on it instead of oil then the cost would go up....

also i dont see how 5 companies = a monopoly....if you really think they are talkin to each other about how much to sell gas at then i dont know what to tell you other than your beginning to sound like a conspiracy theorist....the price of oil is the main factor in the cost of gas and that is determined by OPEC/speculators....

[loboes86]

Originally posted by alaskacat
Speculationis at least $20 a barrell, but thegasoline crunch I saw coming 10-15 years ago. When Oil companies were allowewd to merge.They bought out all the small refiners, that just had gasoline plants and closed them all therfore creating a smallmonopoly between Exon, BP Phillips/Conoco and Shell

Theydictate what the price will be. Gasoline can be made out of lots of things, old tires, drip gas, etc. Condensate is the main catalyst fr gasoline, not oil.

So the price per barrel is just crap...just as much gasoline starts out with a natural Gas condensate any more Just curious have you ever run any drip gas( condensate from natural gas ) in one of your vehicles ?