Sunday, August 21, 2005

GAS PRICES

These are clips from two recent BBC articles.
Oil cartel Opec is pumping a record 30 million barrels a day, and could boost that by another 1-1.5 million barrels if needed, its president has said.
Purnomo Yusgiantoro, also oil minister of Indonesia, said the organisation's 11 members were 2 million barrels above the current 28 million barrel quota.
But any further increase would have to wait until September, he said.
Oil prices broke new records overnight as Asian trade pushed a barrel of New York light, sweet crude to $44.77.


Exxon Mobil, the world's biggest oil company, has announced a threefold jump in profits, crediting a sharp rise in global crude oil prices
The company said pre-tax profits for the first three months of 2003 came in at $7.04bn (£4.4bn ; EUR6.3bn), up from $2.1bn dollars during the same period last year.
The result was Exxon's best ever over three months, beating its previous record of $5.2bn in the final quarter of 2001.
Shares in Exxon - which sells fuel under the Esso brand - were up 1.3% at $35.66 in early trade on Wall Street.


Now, which one do you think is causing gas prices to rise? Oil production can continue to rise, but relief at the pumps will not be seen as long as oil companies continue to rape us. Should we stop taxing gasoline and watch our roads fall apart, or should the government start to regulate the oil industry? I know that won't happen with Bush in office, but maybe we can hope for the future.

4 comments:

Man of Issachar said...

"Should we stop taxing gasoline and watch our roads fall apart, or should the government start to regulate the oil industry? "

The oil industy is heavily regulated by the goverment.

Look into what it takes to open a refinary, the rules on what kind of gas the refineary makes, and also what oil compaines are by law reauire to add to the gas to make it burn more effeciently.

Take a look at MTBE and the furture libality in which that causes.

You could break up the oil compaines to create more compeition, but until the goverment gives incentives instead of disincentives to the oil industy the pice of gasoline is not going to change much.

Secondly, the post about not taxing gas was a joke, pointing out the REAL concerns of politions, how they look in office, not really about gasoline.

Man of Issachar said...

thridly, The presnet day cost of gas when adjusted for infaltion is not extraordinary high.

The fact is that gas was farily low when adjusted for infalation, and is really retuning back to near normal levels.

Fourthly, I think I am actually the only one I know who is in favor of high gas prices. High prices of gas, while it has it's downsides, also has it good sides, the biggest being in my mind a push for more effeceint cars and maybe alternate sources of energy for cars.

Sandcastle said...

The regulations in place don't prevent the oil companies from drastically inflating gas prices. Regualtions about what can and can't be added came about after oil companies began adding lead to gasoline. They fought years of studies that found leaded gasoline to be possibly the most damaging environmental blunder in the history of the world. The fact is that American oil companies are one of the most powerful institutions in the world and we are all starting to suffer for that. And I support high gas prices as long as I am deployed and not filling up my car.

Man of Issachar said...

"They fought years of studies that found leaded gasoline to be possibly the most damaging environmental blunder in the history of the world."

They partially stem from that, but the particlaur addition that I am talking about was added because of pollution concerns. Then the chemical that was added actually causes water contamination.

And the oil compaines could possible get sued because of what they goverment made them do, and they cannot do anything about it.