Cadillac Owners Forum banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

Seriously WTF is up with Gas Prices???

2K views 15 replies 13 participants last post by  jonnyd 
#1 ·
This is getting stupid again. I just love paying like $75+++ each time I fill up.:bigroll:
 
#3 ·
With the needle just a knotch above the "E" I paid $57 for a top off with mid grade this week. I agree it's insane. What was worse is the second I hung the gas filler up the station lowered the price 3 cents a gallon. :mad: It was just the idea of it that pissed me off.
 
#4 ·
Between all of this Wahhabi business, a fearful market, and greedy oil companies, I would have to say that we're all screwed and we should expect these prices to remain the same until...
 
G
#5 ·
I support capitalism,
That said.. things are out of control.
I guess it is better than europe,
$8 per gallon I think it is there.


Another thing to remember is that adjusted for inflation,
Gas ought to cost several times what it now costs.
The hard part is that it has gone up so much all at once in the short term.


I think what we really are being screwed on is INSURANCE.


Hopefully we can end IRAN and take the oil from there.
IRAN makes me mad and angry anyway.
I love to be rid of annoyances.
 
#6 · (Edited)
Well you have to look at the whole of the issue. The market deals with supply and demand. The supply is not getting smaller it's just the demand is getting larger. Mainly it's the fact that people in China want to live the American lifestyle, and its happening.

On top of that, all of the easy-to-get crude oil is going to be used up in about 20 years. After that's all gone they will have to filter it out of sand and dirt, which will bring the prices way higher (about $8-$10 in America).

In actuallity all of our energy (with the exception of geothermal) is derived from solar energy. Crude oil is decayed plant and animal matter. Plants get their energy from the sun and animals steal that energy by eating the plants. Likewise, convections in air and water are also caused by the heat from the sun.

I have been looking at the energy crisis for a good long time now trying to find ways around it. To be honest, there's a million ways to help us through it, but none of them are being used enough. Silicon is too expensive to make using solar panels practical. Hydrogen energy is not a good alternative because to get the hydrogen you have to either extract it from unleaded gasoline (it would be more efficient to leave it in) or it is extracted from water with a process called electrolysis (you put more energy into the water than you get out with the hydrogen).

IMHO More non-combustion powerplants should be built (ie. solar, wind, water). My dad is the manager of a powerplant on the island that I live on. The powerplant he works at uses two 30,000hp jet engines to power 1/3 of the island. Those two jet engines burn about 1million gallons of naptha fuel a week. That's all gasoline that could be put into vehicles or other equipment, or even saved for future use. What erks me is the fact that just about ALL powerplants that combust fuel to make power, use that method exclusively when they could put up solar panels on the roof and a few wind turbines around the site. Not only would that reduce fuel consumption when the plant is not running on full load, but it would also raise the output value of the full load mark. Both of those combined means more money for the buisness running the plant too.

Ethanol is a good alternative IMO. The only problem is that it is a solvent and will eat away at rubber components (ie. insulation on the coils in the fuel pump, any rubber fuel lines, diaphram in the FPR (Fuel Pressure Regulator), and possibly injector O rings). This only means that it's not good to use it in older cars though, but E10 is okay for older cars because the ethanol is diluted. The newer cars are built with no rubber fuel system components, making them ethanol compatible. Ethanol will be expensive at first because the gas stations would have to make their tanks ethanol compatible and that costs them a few $k. You can get more ethanol out of sugar cane than you can with corn, so I don't know why they're mostly getting it from corn rather than sugar cane.

All in all, the only way to lower the price of gasoline is to reduce the demand for it. And the only way to do that is to implement the use of more renewable resources.
 
#7 ·
FredMaxwell said:
Hopefully we can end IRAN and take the oil from there.
IRAN makes me mad and angry anyway.
I love to be rid of annoyances.
Yes! End IRAN with a big f'ing bomb. I concur!

Uh, threads getting closed now! :D That's all from me!
 
#9 ·
I guess sugar cane doesn't grow everywhere?
And how much do you need to grow to meet the demand of the world?
All nice that we make the 'poor' countries up-to-date in technology, but that means their consumption will rise too.

Some day we will end up living from agriculture and hunting again... thinking of the 'Drink Milk' commercials hahaha
 
#10 ·
Yeah, maybe sugar cane doesn't grow in certain climates. Still an acre of solar panels produces about 3 times as much energy than an acre of corn.

We need to vary our energy sources more. We are all standing on thin ice, and if we don't spread our weight out, we will fall through (if you catch my analogy). Really its the vendors and big companies that are guiding down this hill with their products though.
 
#12 ·
Gas prices here are about $2.80 for premium, up from under $2.50 last week. I can't see how it's anything more than greed and politics right now, and it's only going to get worse if China ever lifts their price caps.

I really like the idea of widespread use of ethanol for cars. It may not be a whole lot cheaper than gas in the long run, but it's renewable and the prices should be a lot more stable. I've seen a couple hydrogen piston engines and they'd be even better, but they've got a long way to go and at the moment it's not economical to produce hydrogen.

France's power grid is almost all nuclear and they don't seem to have any problems with accidents or disposal. I'm not sure how they do it, but we could probably follow their example on it and fix some of the problems here. I like solar and wind, too, but some areas would have trouble with them and we'd need something more powerful and less space consuming in some places. If the geography supports it, hydroelectric power is good stuff, but it too couldn't be used everywhere.
 
#13 ·
TeagueJT81 said:
I can't see how it's anything more than greed and politics right now, and it's only going to get worse if China ever lifts their price caps.
To answer the original question, the switch from MTBE to Ethanol has caused a temporarily limited supply. It takes time to get ethanol to the east and west from middle America to blend with gasoline.
 
#14 ·
I personally have no idea when the crude oil will run out, and I have a hunch that neither do the oil companies, or they're full of it and lying about it to use as an excuse for limited supply. The reason is because the "we're going to run out" fear was stated years ago, consumption has grown more than the projections were, and it hasn't happened yet. Maybe that's been refined, but even if it has, it's not entirely relevant to the current prices. They're robbing us...

Last year, the oil companies, once again, made record profits... Not record cash flow, PROFIT. And it's on the order of billions, I believe. We keep hearing all these "boo-hoo" excuses why they "have" to raise the prices... Oh, summer time, people are traveling more...oh winter time, fuel oil is being used more... We're sooooo sorry, we terribly wish we could give you lower prices, but we just can't afford it... This seems to be the message portrayed, and they made more SPARE money than EVER before...

There are plenty of good alternatives to it... There are practicality concerns, but not nearly as many have to be there. One major one is the oil companies don't want their business turned upside down and the demand on their product to go through the floor. I could imagine some productive hydrogen plants utilizing lightning rods hehe... Either way, if the alternative requires "fuel" stations, then they have to replace gas stations throughout...and that is no small task... It is one that would best happen gradually, jobs slowly going from one trade to the other and labor slowly being applied in search of new methods. Unfortunately, this requires risk and investment, like starting a business...and no business wants to take that risk twice, most especially one in such a dangerously bankrupt trade as petro...oh...wait....:bigroll:
 
#15 ·
Jesda said:
To answer the original question, the switch from MTBE to Ethanol has caused a temporarily limited supply. It takes time to get ethanol to the east and west from middle America to blend with gasoline.
That, and now that more and more states are demanding ethanol for thier fuel, it's straining the limited number of plants that produce it!
On top of that, to quickly get ethanol plants up and running, most are switching to coal burning to produce the ethanol! So the coal burning plant that is producing the ethanol to reduce the car emmissions is more than offsetting the benefits of using ethanol!
It's going to be a big cluster f#% until more plants are built that can meet the demands, and do it cleanly! :alchi:
 
#16 ·
Thank president bush guys......follow the money trail and you will see who it leads too:want:
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top