cold,

Have you ever bid up the price of an item you were selling on ebay by using a second account to bid up its price?

That’s the same thing the oil companies are doing and what rubes call “market forces.”

alphie on August 1, 2008 at 12:16 AM

Alphie, that’s called Shill Bidding, and it’s illegal. Not only in the commodities markets, but on eBay, If you are doing it, I suggest you stop, because when they catch you, you can be prosecuted for it.

I would also like to thank you for demonstrating my assertion that there is no such thing as a Universal Moral Compass.

Snake307 on August 1, 2008 at 12:37 AM

OK Alphie, it’s time to take your pills. Here’s the truth. Imagine if you will a bunch of people sitting around a table. Half of them are oil sellers, the other half are oil buyers.

The moderator says “Oil sellers say they have 1 million barrels of oil today.”

If no one buys that oil, then the oil sellers get nervous, the same way you and your friends get nervous if no one bids on your auction. They paid to have it taken from the ground, they can turn the pumps off, but it takes time, and it may be difficult to get them going again later. It’s not like they can just throw a switch and the oil magically fills tanks all over the world. Take anything you want, take computers shall we, and you get the same situation. Greater supply, means that the price falls.

There was a time when I first got into computers, when 512MB of RAM cost more than a hundred dollars. Seriously. When more companies started to make RAM, the price dropped. Then we changed to SIMs, then to DIMMS, and God alone knows what we’re onto now. The point is, the price drops when there is more available.

Now, back to our round table with the oil sellers and buyers. Imagine now that the moderator says “We have one billion barrels of oil today.”

The combined buyers say “We only need half a billion, sorry.”

The sellers start to lower prices, OPEC does what to increase the price? Reduces output. Mobil, Exxon, and even the evil Halliburton are not members of OPEC, they could be grabbing oil right here, and instead we’re demanding that someone else produce more.

The alternative energy and alternative transportation plans just aren’t ready yet. I’m sorry, that’s realistic. For example, I just looked at electric cars. There is one place that does conversions of the Scion XD tearing out the engine, on a car you’ve already bought I might add, and installing an electric motor and batteries to drive it. Range is about 130 miles on a single charge. The cost for this conversion on top of the $20,000 car? Another $55,000.

Now, assuming that you drive this car for fifty of the fifty two weeks, and you plan on keeping it for five years, not a bad average. That means you would have to regularly spend more than $200 a week on gasoline and maintenance to show any savings by going electric. You still have some maintenance of course, tires, electrical problems, so that may actually cost you more in the long run.

I drive a Ford F-250 Pickup (Vintage 1995) every day to work. It cost me a whopping $85 to fill it up when Gas touched $4 a gallon here. Even if gasoline touched $8 a gallon it still would be cheaper for me to keep driving my gas guzzling pick up truck which gets about 12 miles to the gallon, seriously. I’m not joking, twelve miles to the gallon is about average for that truck. It’s old, and geared wrong for just driving here and there. I don’t really haul anything regularly.

So still, it’s cheaper for me in both the short run, and long run, to drive this old beat up truck every day, and I intend to do just that, until the wheels fall off.

I haven’t touched on safety yet. We haven’t even discussed the dangers of Lithium batteries, the energy source of choice for many prototype electric cars, and the small problem of them heating up and causing fires. Minor danger, no worries. We haven’t discussed the actual pollution that the hybrids like the Prius cause. Greater pollution than the beat up old truck I drive will ever make, because the batteries in that Prius are lead acid, and the processing of that lead is horrible for the surrounding areas. It’s so toxic, that many countries have banned the processing of lead ore into lead.

Alphie, these are real numbers, taken from the websites that do electric cars. They cost anywhere from $70,000 to $100,000 and get one third the range of a Kia burning plain old Gasoline per charge/fill up. It takes what, ten minutes to fill up my truck, and I’m off and rolling in a cloud of exhaust fumes. Six hour later, you’re charged up for another hundred miles. It’s not ready for prime time yet.

It’s getting closer. It’s far closer than it was ten years ago, but it’s not there yet. That’s the facts Jack.

Snake307 on August 1, 2008 at 1:39 AM

I’m not the one who is delusional enough to believe that if we turn over our children’s oil reserves to the oil companies today…they’ll lower the price of gas out of the goodness of their hearts, Kini.

That’s what the far right is smokin’

alphie on August 1, 2008 at 2:23 AM

Now wait a ding dang minute. A few responses ago, the answer was alternative energy sources. Al Gore, the famed Goracle, just put forth a plan to get us all on wind and solar for our home electrical needs, and now the worry is we’re burning our children’s oil supplies?

Alphie, you’re grasping at straws my friend. I’m calling you my friend, because like me, you have a suitably cynical attitude towards life. You distrust things, which is good. You distrust companies, which is certainly understandable. However, you operate on the assumption that only the companies, in this case, the oil companies, are lying. I feel like Rodney Dangerfield in the movie back to school. He explains about the bribes and kickbacks that will have to accompany the opening of a business. The Professor is not impressed, and is quite displeased about this interruption.

You’re on the right path, the companies are probably not telling the whole truth. The best path is to assume that no one is telling the truth, and seek the truth for yourself. The truth is there is plenty of oil, and with a little luck, and a couple breakthroughs, we may not need even half of what is left. With Fusion power on the horizon, and alternative energy sources improving all the time, it’s entirely possible that most of our energy will come from solar, wind, or wishful thinking in twenty years or so.

Nuclear would be a great stopgap means of reducing oil consumption, but forget getting that through congress either. The greenies would roast any Democrat who voted for it on a spit in the middle of Pennsylvania ave. and demand another vote immediately.

The Democrats lie, the Republicans lie. The Democrats weasel out of positions they claim to support, and often support the wrong side of an issue. If a Nations first interest in it’s own survival and well being, then the Democrats actions often are in fact, suicidal. The Republicans claim to support an issue and weasel out of actually supporting it. When you come right down to it, there probably isn’t a dimes worth of difference between either political party. I could take one poly sci major and dump him in either party, and he’d be off and running. (I use he not as a slight towards women, but in realization of the limitations of our language.)

Alphie, take some time, and look at the facts. Gas was under three dollars a gallon, until the Democrats came into power in 2006. Iraq had been going along for a while before the gas prices jumped to the insane numbers now. It isn’t Exxon, or Mobile, or even the hated Haliburton. It’s business. Shrinking supplies coupled with greater demand. Price must go up until demand and supply achieve a balance.

The first thing you have to realize is that Value, the thing we’ve been dancing around, is relative. An object, say an iPhone, may be worth $400 to you. It may not be worth that to me. It’s relative to what each of us want or need.

The truth is that Reagan had the right idea, and do you want to know the one big difference between us and and most of the Third World Countries? It’s not a political system, or Unions, or even Liberalism. It’s energy. Cheap, plentiful, reliable energy. We can maintain our food for longer, because we have electricity, thus reducing disease from spoiled food. We can light our homes, and warm ourselves in the winter. So long as we have that energy at an affordable level.

We shouldn’t be trying to restrict access to energy, we should be shoving that energy around the world, creating new trading partners, new friends to interact with. The reason is simple, you don’t go to war with a trading partner. We’re not going to war with China, not because they control us, because we’re winning with trade. China has restricted information websites as the Olympics begin. Do you think that no one knows those things happened? Do you think that the information isn’t getting out there anyway?

An informed populace is a dangerous populace to a controlling Government. Think about that, isn’t it interesting that the Chinese work so hard to make sure their people don’t know, while we provide information for our people to know? The Chinese Government didn’t tell their people that Man had walked on the moon until the mid 1990’s. Imagine that for a moment. How controlling do you have to be to deny information on that accomplishment of Mankind?

I’m a Conservative. I believe that Government is never the answer, that I the individual, am the answer to a vast majority of the problems that will face me. I believe that social programs should be used as a safety net, not a hammock. That a man who ends up in that hammock, should be encouraged, perhaps re-trained, and sent back up that ladder of success. Life isn’t fair. It never has been, but that’s the point. If it was fair, then the struggle to better ourselves wouldn’t be worth it. I’ll get my fair share no matter what I do.

I’m a conservative, because I’ve never found a government program that I liked. I’ve never seen one that was a success. I also don’t believe in Conspiracy Theories. I was in the Army. They never got my shoe size right, in nine years, they never once issued me a pair of shoes that fit right. If the Government can’t give me a pair of shoes that fits right, how in the world can they possibly be this all controlling finely manipulating Machiavelli only dreams of being that good conspiracy creator?

Question the companies, good, but don’t stop there my friend, you’re only taking the first steps. Take the rest, and join us in the circle of enlightenment. DOh, I wasn’t supposed to mention that. My delete button is broken, I can’t go back and fix it. Just pretend you didn’t read that. LOL

Snake307 on August 1, 2008 at 2:53 AM

Corn farmers are making record profits from the price of corn.

Tell me alphie, where’s the justice?

Kini on August 1, 2008 at 3:05 AM

Not to mention that people are starving because of the Ethanol requirement. Sure, up to eighty million people are starving, food riots are breaking out in Mexico City and in Egypt and other nations. Of course, that’s fine. I don’t mind, because Damn it, I have to save the planet here people.

Snake307 on August 1, 2008 at 3:07 AM

What is really amazing is that Nancy Pelosi is on her high horse about the Iraqis not reaching !00% political resolution while she (and her party) will not allow energy bills come to the floor in our own country.

Taking that summer recess to campaign is more important for Pelosi than the American people whose interests she is supposed to represent Constitutionally.

The Dems are playing fast and loose with our economic and national security. It’s time that they be called on their obstructionism in no-nonsense terms.

Pelosi’s abuse of power is chillingly irresponsible.

onlineanalyst on August 1, 2008 at 3:30 AM

I would agree with you, if only one simple fact wasn’t just as true.

The Republicans were in control of Congress and the White House from 2000 to 2006. Minor loss in 2001 when Jim Jeffords switched parties, but the Republicans got solid control in 2002.

That truth right there is a big problem. The problem is that John McMaverick and the Gang of 14 would not allow bills to even get considered to drill.

The Republicans had a chance, and John McCain and his Maverick attitude cost them and us, the chance to stop this before it ever happened.

Truth is a bitch when you look at the whole truth.

Snake307 on August 1, 2008 at 3:40 AM

Snake307: With their slim majorities, could the Republicans have overcome the filibustering?

In the House, Nancy Pelosi is derisively referring to the “two oil men” of the current administration. The public perception promoted by the Dems and abetted by the media was and is that the Republicans are in the tank for the oil industry.

To part one, yes. They could. There are enough blue dogs that could have been cajoled and pushed into it. Remember we had a solid Majority, something like fifty five seats. Are you trying to tell me that we couldn’t manage to convince five Democrats to bring it to a Debate? Ben Nelson voted to allow drilling off the coast of Virgina. That’s one Democratic Vote that we could have gotten with a little work. Perhaps include some tax credits to alternative energy sources.

That’s the point. The Republicans weren’t serious. Reid was serious when he pushed his bill through. He made it so attractive that the Republican bosses had to twist arms to keep them from Voting for it. Threats to gut someone’s funding for reelection are usually effective.

The Democrats are playing hardball to get their agenda through, and our side is still playing political games, hoping to have some issues to go home and scare the population into voting for them.

Oh, the claim that the Republicans are owned by the Oil Industry probably wasn’t refuted when McCain got a million dollars in campaign contributions from Oil Company Execs after he promise to drill offshore.

Could the Republicans in either of the chambers at the time have successfully rebutted those claims, especially when oil had not reached the price/bbl that it has now reached?

Knowing the reactions of stubborn Dems even now, I would say no.

onlineanalyst on August 1, 2008 at 4:05 AM

Yes, the Congress passed, and the President signed legislation to reduce our dependence on Foreign Oil in 2005. It could easily have been added to allow drilling offshore if it was offset by tax credits and stimulus packages for alternative energy sources. Hell, give the Democrats a tax credit for an electric vehicle along with fifty million in grants to businesses to develop the bloody thing and they’d allow limited offshore drilling, at lest five would.

The point is we could have done it, but we didn’t because we really couldn’t. We have too many RINO’s like McCain who opposed drilling until July of 2008 and still is nothing more than a tax and spend political hack. So who do I blame? I blame Republicans, because they could have beaten this, but decided not to do something, it was too hard.

I would point out that Newt and the boys in 1995 put Welfare Reform on the President’s desk twice before they finally got him to sign the third time. If you want something, and you believe in it, you fight for it. The Republicans don’t believe in anything but political power and privilege, and that’s all they fight for.

Snake307 on August 1, 2008 at 4:31 AM