Had a short meeting after work today with the bossman, and all the quarry guys. They are saying that by the first of December, according to reps from the Chicago Exchange, that On-Road fuel will be at $4.50 by the first of December. I know just in my dept(quarry stripping, and other earthmoving) that just in the past week we have fueled up 3 times and over those 3 times price as gone up 35cents a gallon or about $150 extra a fill up. We are already looking at cutting back on our quarry striping, cause if there aint no one to buy the rock, why crush it, and why strip the over burden off. I myself still think there is somthing "dirty in the woodpile" with the whole oil prices and more so on the fuel cost(last i checked diesel was a by-product of gas). Just thought I would share what I heard. Trbo
Thank god that winter is coming and operations will cease soon. The exhaust stacks look like dollar bills coming out of them. ointhead
But what about next season, is it going to get better? or WORSE? guess we will see. Trbo
Fuel Price In the U.K. road Diesel is now over $10 a gallon , its realy tuff to work with this heavy overhead to pay. tctractors
I hope alternative fuels are found soon. Biodiesel doesn't seem to be doing anything.
They know diesel gets burnt the most, so they charge the most even though its the easiest to make. I say we all protest and park the machines in the middle of the street, they did that in the 70's that dropped prices.
Thats what sucks, 98% of the population uses gas, the other 2% uses diesel, so they jack the price up on that and everyone suffers in the long run. It would be nice to just park em, but you would never get everyone to do it. I'd drive a dozer to the capitol, lol. Trbo
There are a few factors driving this price increase. 1 Unrest in the middle east. We have got to start drilling here and stop making this towel heads rich. 2 Demand for heating oil is on the increase as temps are on the decrease. Heating oil is diesel that is equal to an off road diesel. 3 Ultra low sulfur diesel. While diesel IS a byproduct of gasoline production, but ULSD has to be refined a second time to remove the sulfur. Handling the fuel a second time, and the energy required to refine and handle again is costly. Thank your clean air people for this. 4 Biodiesel isnt helping. This is because it takes a large amount of regular diesel. Last year we were running 20% bio mixed with 80% off road. Come winter I think we were down to a 5% 95% mix. It also costs to blend the bio, and store it. I see things really slowing down if this continues. These fuel prices are really hurting the economy. Fuel has gone up, and everything else has gone up. Combine high prices for goods with bad lending practices. People not being able to pay for things. Were in some serious trouble yet to come. We have also shot ourselves in the foot. Everyone wants goods cheap. So, we buy junk from china. Yes its cheap. Does it last. No. Is it safe, Maybe. Look at all the money we have sent to china. What would our economy be like if we kept it here? Josh
I'll try not to disrupt a good rant with too much information, but I enjoy researching oil and gas related stuff, so I apologize in advance if my brain spills onto this thread just a little The simple answer is that supply and demand are tighter than ever, except for a few temporary major disruptions. Quality of oil produced has dropped steadily over the last few years, making it slower and more expensive to get refined products out of a barrel. Just search Google for refinery accident or explosion, and you'll see just one of the effects the lower quality oil has had on older facilities. With the lower quality oil, you get less refined product out of each barrel and more waste. One of the effects has been to cut back on diesel production to keep up with gas demand. In all honesty, soccer moms would complain twice as much about $5 gas as truckers would about expensive diesel, so it's a trade off with who they try to keep least angry. The cost associated with producing an item such as gas or diesel have the effect of creating a floor for prices, but not a ceiling. Demand plays a much larger role. One of the biggest reasons that there have not been outright shortages, is because poorer people and countries have been priced out of the market. The big question is at what point will people in the U.S. start to be priced out of the market? I do love how everyone just "knows" the big oil companies are all in bed to get you, yet no one can prove it. This alleged violation of anti-trust laws would be enormous, so there should be proof everywhere. This mythical "they" sit in a dark room somewhere jacking up prices at will, although apparently they took a large vacation and forgot to keep an eye on things in the early 90's when oil was $10/barrel. The only conspiracy I believe in in regards to oil companies, is that they are not disclosing the extent of the problems the industry is facing. Everyone puts on this nice face and says they are fine, but look at some of the recent ads playing up they're advances in alternatives. Like BP calling themselves "beyond petroleum", if that doesn't strike you as odd, you must not be awake. I think they have learned from the lawsuits against the cigarette companies and are trying to give a glimpse of how bad things are without spooking everyone and being charged with driving prices through the roof with fear. Here's a prediction you can get back to me on in a few years. $5, 6 ,7, and above will become the norm for both gas and diesel. No amount a whining, fighting or protesting will change the reality of what's in the ground, how quickly it can be pumped, or what quality will come out. New projects started today will not even make up for depletion in existing fields, let alone new demand coming online. Large price spikes will be caused by minor events that used to be absorbed into the system when there was a bigger spare capacity. The options most talked about will be penalties or more taxes on the oil companies, both leading to less money invested in new production and refining(nasty positive feedback loop) There will probably be talks of price caps, leading to shortages if successful, since an increasing price is the normal way to sort out excess demand. Alternatives I won't even talk about, because they have done nothing, are doing nothing, and will do nothing. Basic math would shoot most if not all of them down, except for vested interests hyping them up. They are just another political promise to be added to the long listed of unkept political promises. Business will either find a way to make due with the higher prices or find themselves left behind. Talk is cheap, action is useful. For example, don't wait for everyone to buy the fuel efficient stuff before you do, get it while it's cheaper than it will become. While someone is off protesting, another business could be making themselves more efficient, who do you think will be better off? Check out www.theoildrum.com for plenty of information on the current conditions of the oil industry around the world.
Cat420 all that sounds good, until you look at the record profits from these oil companys.
They have made around 10% on sales for years. Gas and diesel usage has gone up almost every year for the last several decades, why shouldn't profits have gone up accordingly? I've posted somewhere on here about how the futures markets and the traders are what actually set the prices based on supply reports and demand and various other factors. What that means in real terms is the the oil companies do not set the prices. They can have an effect, but the industry is so big that no one player can really do that much. So their profits are a result of things they don't have a whole lot of control over. How is that any different than people making record profits from real estate over the last couple of years. Most of them did nothing to add any real value, but saw prices increasing 20% a year in many areas. It's been amazing to hear complaints that high oil prices can only be from unnatural or even illegal reasons, while appreciating real estate values were simply the way the market works:Banghead Or to bring things closer to home, nearly everyone who gotten a quote think excavators are making a killing based on their prices, but how many customers actually have a clue what costs are behind the scenes. But even still, I'd be willing to bet plenty of business' average more than 10% profits. Why is no one calling for their heads?
this is my favorite when i hear this on the news, how long has it been since there hasn't been upset in the middle east?? lol
I'll have to do some maths, prices here is: Gas 12kr/litre, road diesel 10kr/litre, offroad ap 8kr/litre. Thats:10 dollars/gallon, 8 dollars 30 cent/gallon and 6 dollars 65c/gallon And we are one of the biggest oilprodusing countries in the world. State takes around half of it in tax. And spends nearly nothing on new roads. There isn't many US gas V8's around on the roads here..... 4,55l/gallon and 4,55kr/dollar.
They way I'm starting to look at fuel prices is this: At the end of the day, who pays the diference for higher fuel prices? Not the contractor, the increases should be passed on to the customer. Now, we have to keep up with inflation as business owners, our rate increases include rising operating costs and inflation, but it's all part of doing business. If people can't afford the work, they won't do it. This may slow things down today, tomorrow, next week, next month, but with the population growing like it is, (don't get me started in that argument) infrastructure work and housing will never end. Yeah, fuel prices suck, but it's just the way it is. There are very little advancements being made toward alternative energy, this is really disgusting to me. Seems like everyone wants to complain about the issue at hand but do nothing to change it. Until then, we're stuck.
There is a problem with big oil they say they can't with the demand? They hav'nt invested any money for decades in building new refinererys! In my town 7 gas stations have closed down within a year (tanks removed)They just don't reinvest. I like to see what
There is a problem with big oil they say they can't with the demand? They haven't invested any money for decades in building new refineries! In my town 7 gas stations have closed down within a year (tanks removed)They just don't reinvest. I like to see what UPS & the Mail will charge! How about guys riding around giving free estimates!
Its only gonna get worse around here road diesel is very close to 4 bucks, they way they got it going really wont suprise me to see 6 dollar fuel by next year, itll really separate the men from the boys, lots of thingsll be parked
LOL I wish we could get enough people to do that.
haha i would do it too.
In case nobody else has thought of it, maybe we have finally reached the point where oil has reached it's peak and we will be forced into other fuels. This has been talked about for years, personally, I think it's here. With inflation calculated, what are you paying for fuel now versus 30 years ago? What about a septic system, what does it cost now versus 30 years ago? I would hope your estimates to do excvation have increased in the last 30 years, yet we complain about an increase in fuel. It's not like we haven't been told this is coming. Customers will have to pay the increase. Oil prices are bound to go up, gripe all you want, everything goes up in price.
There is absolutely nothing better to spur inovation than higher prices for a product that we just have to have, like energy in one form or another. The price however, and unfortunately, has to be paid by the end user of the product. End users are the ones that create the demand for other alternatives. If gas and diesel become too expensive, end users will demand something else that will still allow them to function close to the way they are accustomed to. One wonders though, what could replace petroleum fuels at anywhere near the efficiency and ease of use that we experience today, or that doesn't consume more petroleum (or other form of energy) in it's manufacturing than a petroleum product of comparable BTU. Government supports, i.e., taxpayer money, is not the way to achieve the alternatives, in the form of fuels anyway. So far that I've seen, the fuels produced with government help, if left on their own, could not and can not compete with petroleum products, and won't untill the petroleum products are priced in the 15 dollar or higher range. That's not considering the increase in petroleum fuel prices that will be part of the equation in producing the alternatives. Some government support in the study and development of alternative fuels may be good, so long as the study and other work is not mostly the result of pure pork-barrel politics from one vested interest (like agriculture) or another, like we are seeing today. As CascadeScaper didn't mention, sooner rather than later this world is going to have to consider limits on population growth, which equates to increased use of the earth's mineral reserves. We are literally using up the planet beneath our feet and it won't stand much more I think. Technology, while advancing, is not advancing fast enough to solve the crucial energy situation we find ourselves in today. That's if you look at it in terms of energy the common man can afford. In that regard, Americans are better off than most, we can give up a lot of things we think we have to have and still function and be happy. But SUV's, huge motor homes, 1000 horsepower fishing and pleasure boats, 5000 sqft. homes, toys made in China, these may be things that the average American will no longer be able to afford. Cat420 has some interesting thoughts and facts, the website he mentions is neat though one has to wonder at some of the information showcased there as to how factual it really is. I don't believe there is a coherent conspiracy among oil companies of the world, though I'm positive that the reason all the little refiners in the US were bought up and closed is because having less competition meant more market control and higher profits for the few companies that are now left. One can certainly place some blame at the feet of those individuals and organizations (The Sierra Club and others of it's ilk) that want to exclude certain areas of the world from oil exploration and production, even distribution. Also some blame can be apportioned to the states that are creating their own rules and regulations for fuel blends. California can hang it's head down in both areas in this regard. Events after the fact are proving that one sometimes can not have one's cake, and eat it too. So, hang on to your pocketbook, and start thinking about what you can give up or don't need, as you likely will have to make decisions about these things soon. I'm seeing my dream of the nice diesel-pusher motorhome disappearing, as is my vision of a nice summer place on some property I own in Michigan. Unless I rob a bank or win a lotto, there is no way I can earn enough money to pay for either one or both, not the way I see prices rising not only for fuel, but everything it touches.
I have no problems with prices going up. But considering a little over a year ago fuel was less than half what were paying now. I have a big problem with that.
Investing time and money in brand new refineries is a waste. Just like many business' maintain older equipment rather than just buy new, the oil industry has invested many billions in expanding capacity at existing refineries. There's far less red tape and cost involved. Only recently has refinery capacity and utilization gotten so close to actual production. You have to wonder what they know that you don't(like why build 100mb/day capacity if your internal research shows we won't exceed 9Xmb/day production). Pay no attention to the public face that they put on, actions speak louder than words. Companies that have been just old for decades are throwing tons of money at wind, solar, and lots of other places. They have a responsibility to maintain profitability for the sake of their shareholders and eventually that will not be found in oil. Understand I'm not try to antagonize, but why? Specifically, what makes this different than rising steel prices or rising home prices? What is so fundamentally different about fuels that no thinks prices are justified at any number? My dad remembers buying a new car and being upset that they charged 50 cents a gallon for the full tank, so the actual number doesn't seem to be the factor. Perhaps some of it is just because it's needed, but the concerning any product, the market only cares how many people will buy and at what prices. Whether or not something is needed doesn't really matter. What if rising prices were the only thing short of rationing that is preventing shortages right now? How would you address the issue? In regards to theoildrum.com, I'm not sure any website will ever be completely factual or without bias, but they have some quality information about things that can keep you reading for hours.
Because I am not buying steel. I am buying fuel. Also everything that is transported buy the use of fuel. Realeastate it goes up it has value after you buy it. You dont just burn it and then need more. Wife works 80 miles from home isn't getting more because fuel prices went up. Then I am paying more for trucking my wood. Then add lower wood prices. And the plain and simple truth is I am feeling the pinch.
At least in this line of work, excavating and construction, you can easily pass the higher cost of fuel onto your customers, whether it be a fuel surcharge or just a higher bid estimate. Sure, it's a rotten thing to do, but you're a fool to absorb that cost yourself. Most of the jobs that have to be done will gladly pay it, the few that balk should probably reconsider even starting the project.
There are a few reasons that your gas stations are shutting down. The big one is the high gas prices are hurting the STATION. A gas stations profit margin on things inside is way higher than on the fuel itself. The supplier sets the price for fuel. So the station may be making a few cents a gallon. When people have to spend more on the fuel, they have less money to spend in the store. Yes, in the business end of things you pass your costs on to the customer. So the excavation company doesnt lose their profit margin. 1% profit is the national average for excavation contractors. The people who take the hit is the operators. It costs you money to go to work everyday. My average commute in this trade is 30-60 miles. What kind of raise did you get last year? Usually its just a cost of living raise. So last springs cost of living raise kicked in, im still in the hole with fuel, natural gas, electricity, and food costs the way they have gone up.
Here is an interesting read about oil I found on another forum. Russia is far from oil's peak By F William Engdahl The good news is that panic scenarios about the world running out of oil any time soon are wrong. The bad news is that the price of oil is going to continue to rise. "Peak Oil" is not our problem. Politics is. Big Oil wants to sustain high oil prices. US Vice President **** Cheney and friends are all too willing to assist. On a personal note, I've researched questions of petroleum since the first oil shocks of the 1970s. I was intrigued in 2003 with something called the Peak Oil theory. It seemed to explain the otherwise inexplicable decision by Washington to risk all in a military move on Iraq. Peak Oil advocates, led by former BP geologist Colin Campbell and Texas banker Matt Simmons, argued that the world faced a new crisis, an end to cheap oil, or Absolute Peak Oil, perhaps by 2012, perhaps by 2007. Oil was supposedly on its last drops. They pointed to soaring gasoline and oil prices and to the declines in output of the North Sea, Alaska and other fields as proof they were right. According to Campbell, the fact that no new North Sea-size fields had been discovered since the North Sea in the late 1960s was proof. He reportedly managed to convince the International Energy Agency and the Swedish government. That, however, does not prove him correct. Intellectual fossils? The Peak Oil school rests its theory on conventional Western geology textbooks, most by American or British geologists, which claim oil is a "fossil fuel", a biological residue or detritus of either fossilized dinosaur remains or perhaps algae, hence a product in finite supply. Biological origin is central to Peak Oil theory, used to explain why oil is only found in certain parts of the world where it was geologically trapped millions of years ago. That would mean that dinosaur remains became compressed and over tens of millions of years fossilized and were trapped in underground reservoirs perhaps 1,200-2,000 meters below the surface of the Earth. In rare cases, so goes the theory, huge amounts of biological matter should have been trapped in rock formations in the shallower ocean regions such as in the Gulf of Mexico or North Sea or Gulf of Guinea. Geology should be only about figuring out where these pockets in the layers of the earth, called reservoirs, lie within certain sedimentary basins. An entirely alternative theory of oil formation has existed since the early 1950s in Russia, almost unknown to the West. It claims that the conventional US biological-origins theory is an unscientific absurdity that is unprovable. They point to the fact that Western geologists have repeatedly predicted finite oil over the past century, only then to find more, lots more. Not only has this alternative explanation of the origins of oil and gas existed in theory, the emergence of Russia as the world's largest oil and natural-gas producer has been based on the application of the theory in practice. This has geopolitical consequences of staggering magnitude. Necessity the mother of invention In the 1950s, the Soviet Union faced "Iron Curtain" isolation from the West. The Cold War was in high gear. Russia had little oil to fuel its economy. Finding sufficient oil indigenously was a national-security priority of the highest order. Scientists at the Institute of the Physics of the Earth of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Geological Sciences of the Ukraine Academy of Sciences began a fundamental inquiry in the late 1940s: Where does oil come from? In 1956, Professor Vladimir Porfir'yev announced their conclusions: "Crude oil and natural petroleum gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the Earth. They are primordial materials which have been erupted from great depths." The Soviet geologists had turned Western orthodox geology on its head. They called their theory of oil origin the "abiotic" theory - non-biological - to distinguish it from the Western biological theory of origins. If they were right, oil supply on Earth would be limited only by the amount of organic hydrocarbon constituents present deep in the Earth at the time of the planet's formation. Availability of oil would depend only on technology to drill ultra-deep wells and explore into the Earth's inner regions. They also realized that old fields could be revived to continue producing, so-called self-replenishing fields. They argued that oil is formed deep in the Earth, formed in conditions of very high temperature and very high pressure, like that required for diamonds to form. "Oil is a primordial material of deep origin which is transported at high pressure via 'cold' eruptive processes into the crust of the Earth," Porfir'yev stated. His team dismissed the idea that oil is is biological residue of plant and animal fossil remains as a hoax designed to perpetuate the myth of limited supply. Defying conventional geology The radically different Russian and Ukrainian scientific approach to the discovery of oil allowed the USSR to develop huge gas and oil discoveries in regions previously judged unsuitable, according to Western geological exploration theories, for the presence of oil. The new petroleum theory was used in the early 1990s, well after the dissolution of the USSR, to drill for oil and gas in a region believed for more than 45 years to be geologically barren - the Dnieper-Donets Basin in the region between Russia and Ukraine. Following their abiotic or non-fossil theory of the deep origins of petroleum, the Russian and Ukrainian petroleum geophysicists and chemists began with a detailed analysis of the tectonic history and geological structure of the crystalline basement of the Dnieper-Donets Basin. After a tectonic and deep structural analysis of the area, they made geophysical and geochemical investigations. A total of 61 wells were drilled, of which 37 were commercially productive, an extremely impressive exploration success rate of almost 60%. The size of the field discovered compared to the North Slope of Alaska. By contrast, US wildcat drilling was considered to have a 10% success rate. Nine of 10 wells are typically "dry holes". That Russian geophysics experience in finding oil and gas was tightly wrapped in the usual Soviet veil of state security during the Cold War era, and was largely unknown to Western geophysicists, who continued to teach fossil origins and, hence, the severe physical limits of petroleum. But slowly it begin to dawn on some strategists in and around the Pentagon well after the 2003 Iraq war that the Russian geophysicists might be on to something of profound strategic importance. If Russia had the scientific know-how and Western geology did not, Russia possessed a strategic trump card of staggering geopolitical import. It was not surprising that Washington would go about erecting a "wall of steel" - a network of military bases and anti-missile shields around Russia to cut its pipeline and port links to western Europe, China and the rest of Eurasia. CONT.
Sorry about having to split the post space seems to be limited here. English geographer and geopolitician Halford Mackinder's worst nightmare - a cooperative convergence of mutual interests of the major states of Eurasia, born of necessity and need for oil to fuel economic growth - was emerging. Ironically, it was the blatant US grab for the vast oil riches of Iraq and, potentially, of Iran that catalyzed closer cooperation between traditional Eurasian foes, China and Russia, and a growing realization in western Europe that their options too were narrowing. The peak king Peak Oil theory is based on a 1956 paper by the late Marion King Hubbert, a Texas geologist working for Shell Oil. He argued that oil wells produced in a bell-curve manner, and once their "peak" was hit, inevitable decline followed. He predicted that US oil production would peak in 1970. A modest man, he named the production curve he invented Hubbert's Curve, and the peak as Hubbert's Peak. When US oil output began to decline in about 1970, Hubbert gained a certain fame. The only problem was, it peaked not because of resource depletion in the US fields. It "peaked" because Shell, Mobil, Texaco and the other partners of Saudi Aramco were flooding the US market with dirt-cheap imports from the Middle East, tariff-free, at prices so low California and many Texas domestic producers could not compete and were forced to shut their wells. Vietnam success While the US oil multinationals were busy controlling the easily accessible large fields of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and other areas of cheap, abundant oil during the 1960s, the Russians were busy testing their alternative theory. They began drilling in a supposedly barren region of Siberia. There they developed 11 major oilfields and one giant field based on their deep abiotic geological estimates. They drilled into crystalline basement rock and hit black gold of a scale comparable to the Alaska North Slope. They then went to Vietnam in the 1980s and offered to finance drilling costs to show that their new geological theory worked. Russian company Petrosov drilled in Vietnam's White Tiger oilfield offshore into basalt rock some 5,000 meters down and extracted 6,000 barrels a day of oil to feed the energy-starved Vietnam economy. In the USSR, abiotic-trained Russian geologists perfected their knowledge and the Soviet Union emerged as the world's largest oil producer by the mid-1980s. Few in the West understood why, or bothered to ask. Dr J F Kenney is one of the only Western geophysicists who has taught and worked in Russia, studying under Vladilen Krayushkin, who developed the huge Dnieper-Donets Basin. Kenney told me in a recent interview that "alone to have produced the amount of oil to date that [Saudi Arabia's] Ghawar field has produced would have required a cube of fossilized dinosaur detritus, assuming 100% conversion efficiency, measuring 19 miles [30.5 kilometers] deep, wide and high." In short, an absurdity. Western geologists do not bother to offer hard scientific proof of fossil origins. They merely assert their belief as a holy truth. The Russians have produced volumes of scientific papers, most in Russian. The dominant Western journals have no interest in publishing such a revolutionary view. Careers, entire academic professions are at stake, after all. Closing the door The 2003 arrest of Russian Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of Yukos Oil, took place just before he could sell a dominant stake in Yukos to ExxonMobil after a private meeting with Cheney. Had Exxon gotten the stake, it would have had control of the world's largest resource of geologists and engineers trained in the abiotic techniques of deep drilling. Since 2003, Russian scientific sharing of knowledge has markedly lessened. Offers in the early 1990s to share knowledge with US and other oil geophysicists were met with cold rejection, according to American geophysicists involved. Why then the high-risk war to control Iraq? For a century, US and allied Western oil giants have controlled world oil via control of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Nigeria. Today, as many giant fields are declining, the companies see the state-controlled oilfields of Iraq and Iran as the largest remaining base of cheap, easy oil. With the huge demand for oil from China and now India, it becomes a geopolitical imperative for the United States to take direct military control of those Middle East reserves as fast as possible. Cheney came to the job of vice president from Halliburton Corp, the world's largest oil-geophysical-services company. The only potential threat to that US control of oil just happens to lie inside Russia and with the now-state-controlled Russian energy giants. According to Kenney, Russian geophysicists used the theories of brilliant German scientist Alfred Wegener fully 30 years before Western geologists "discovered" Wegener in the 1960s. In 1915, Wegener published the seminal text The Origin of Continents and Oceans, which suggested an original unified landmass or Pangaea more than 200 million years ago that separated into present continents by what he called continental drift. Up to the 1960s, supposed US scientists such as Dr Frank Press, the White House science adviser, referred to Wegener as "lunatic". Geologists at the end of the 1960s were forced to eat their words as Wegener offered the only interpretation that allowed them to discover the vast oil resources of the North Sea. Perhaps in some decades Western geologists will rethink their mythology of fossil origins and realize what the Russians have known since the 1950s. In the meantime, Moscow holds a massive energy trump card. F William Engdahl, author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd. To contact: www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net . (Copyright 2007 F William Engdahl.) http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/II27Ag01.html
I have an interview I saved with that author somewhere, I 'll try to find the link. I just can't remember if I ever listened to it . The problem with this statement, is that the Texas Railroad Comission(U.S. equivalent of OPEC), removed all caps on oil production prior to the peak is U.S. production. Companies were allowed to drill and produce all out and it didn't change anything. As evidenced by OPEC members constantly cheating each other, no one has the self control to purposely hold back production to raise prices for any length of time. Even Alaska coming online barely made a blip of the graph of U.S oil production. Total remaining U.S reserves, including ANWR, offshore, and anywhere else we could poke a hole are in the neighborhood of 50 billion barrel. A large number for sure, but remember you can't just suck it all out at once, so the rate of production would be almost meaningless compared to current usage. In regards to the Russian myths of Abiotic oil from the creamy neuget center of the earth, let's just say that this theory is espoused by people that predicted oil at $40/barrel right now. There's no way countries like Saudi Arabia would be investing in extremely expensive offshore drilling if their onshore stuff had the possibility of refilling. Russia was the poster child for oil field mismanagement for years. The graph of their oil production will show two distinct peaks, much like Saudi fields will. With both countries, early attempts to develop their fields were done with little regard for long term stability. Sensible heads would later take charge, realizing that fields could be ruined forever and oil left stranded if they didn't take it easy. The pump it hard and fast technique yields short term gains at the expense of future recovery. As it stands now, Saudi fields are looking at around a 60-70% recovery rate, when many fields around the world have barely reached 50%. When your reserves are in the 100s of billions of barrel, 10-20% is enormous. Similarly, Russia has been applying smarter techniques to their fields and are looking to achieve meaningful recovery rates. One thing is for sure, if oil is being actively produced deep within the earth, it isn't doing it anywhere near fast enough to have a meaningful effect on reserve size. In the end, if something doesn't lead to an increase in oil production, then who cares how true it may be?
Here's the interview I mentioned above. Probably about an hour long for anyone interested. Actually, for a whole ton of financial related interviews with experts or authors from various backgrounds, check out this site http://www.financialsense.com/asktheexpert/archive.html . If you have an Ipod and an hour to kill driving somewhere, most of the stuff is pretty interesting to listen to and really helps pass the time quickly.
Fuel price increases. Just back from another successful mission.:drinkup Boy, a lot of chatter about fuel prices I see... All I know is, I made a trip to Gulfport, Ms., to McDonough, Ga. (Hey,CB:Cowboy ) Atlantic City, NJ, Aberdeen, Md., Limestone,Me., Cape Cod, Ma. and finally home, the past 9 days. I watched fuel rise just about daily. I saw a low of $3.11.9 in Ms., and a high of 3.54.9 in Me. Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m., I arrived in Sturbridge, Mass. to innocently fill up. As soon as I stopped at the pumps, the worker told me I had to wait a minute for the price change. It went up a nickel in front of my eyes. Didn't even give me the courtesy of getting my 162 gallons at the "great Deal" of $3.48.9...so in return for his kindness, I bought 30 gallons instead, enough to get me to Buzzy's in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where I topped off at $3.41.9. Everyone is feeling the pinch as of now, those who work for a living anyway. Retailers are reporting a "slump" in their last quarter sales, elderly people on fixed incomes are nervous, and rightfully so. There's no question that the continued increases in fuel costs will eventually bring this country to it's knees. The bubble has to eventually burst. As so with the real estate market, having felt the ripple effect from those kind and generous lending institutions who lead the lambs to the slaughter by letting them borrow 100% on their already overpriced home mortgages, at a variable rate to boot. Now look what's happened.:Banghead Not to be an alarmist on this subject...but the time has come, I'd say, to start banding together and organizing a protest of some magnitude, lest we become victims of another recession. Most of the talk on the street I've heard within the transportation industry alone is quite unsettled. The problem is, if we continue to keep doing nothing, the oil industry simply keeps raising the price, gets us "conditioned" at certain plateau's in the cost, and slowly but surely repeats the process. I'm quite certain that big oil doesn't NEED the whirlwind profits that they are enjoying these days...it must be nice though. Just imagine if any of us could start installing a conventional, in-ground septic system like the "old days", with materials costing around $1,200.00, and charge the customers $50,000.00 for the job? Certainly would make life easier to operate at those astronomical profits, eh? A profit of $48,800.00; I'd like to do about 2 a week for the next couple of years, and charge the same people $5,000.00/yr. to pump the tanks out, too. I may not make many friends doing business this way, but what the heck, let them eat cake, right? This sounds a lot like what the fat cats at ExxonMobil, Citgo, Shell, etc. etc. are saying about all of us. What do those CEO's care. They haven't bought a drop of gas in years. This could go on for a long time, I'd better shut up.
What's up good buddy. :drinkup I tend to like this theory the best, because whether they intentionally try to do it or not, we still become conditioned to things over time......it's human nature. Either way, it's to their benefit.
If you’re buying diesel at $3.50 gallon you better stock up. With the Canadian dollar at a 50 year high of $1.07 USD, we’re paying $3.97 CDN = $4.21 USD Gallon. Even with the stronger dollar we’re not seeing reduced fuel prices. In the last month advertised prices on new trucks and equipment has started to drop %10 on average. Some dealer are quoting “USA pricing†in their Ads.
WOW the candaian dollar is more than the american dollar thats new.
Yeah, no kidding about the Canadian dollar. I remember as a kid a few years ago we'd go skiing in Canada and the Canadian dollar was worth .68 to 1.00 American. We can't call it the Canadian Peso anymore! I was in Canada a couple months ago and then it was about .96 to 1.00 so it's come up quite a bit in the last couple months.
when i was out to Breckenridge CO last winter for a ski trip they plow the streets out there with equipment, a JD loader and grader that i saw, but they all had a sticker on them that said powered by bio-diesel, guess that would cut some cost especially when plowing out there is a full time job with atleast 60-100 hrs most weeks per machine...
But what % bio are they using? Because it jells bad in the cold.
Hey now...you know what "good buddy" really means, don't you? (Not good...:spaz ) I was seriously thinking of finding a computer source last Friday evening while camped out in McDonough, Jawwwwga, and buying you a Sam Adams. However, duty called as usual. I was fortunate enough to have the service tech show up Sat. morning at Scott Equipment to open the gate so I could load my crane. I then had 8 hours of precious daylight to take advantage of with a 10' 6" wide load on, so I put 'er in the wind as hard as I could go, landing in Lynchburg, Virginia that evening. Maybe next time, bubba.:drinkup
I couldnt tell ya....i just remember seeing the stickers on quite a few town maint. vehicles including buses....those machines are prolly running 24hrs a day most of the time and sitting in a warm garage when they arent...they could have a tank heater hooked up too
The solution is definetly not Bio-Diesel. The US Federally mandated bio content has pushed grain prices through the roof and people are starving because of it. Australian farmers are getting record prices at the gate....great....but when the world is not producing enough corn, rape, canola already it has to be one of the most short sighted decisions ever made.
Lynchburg virginia. 45 minutes from me
I thought that bio-diesel had more of whatever it is that causes the greenhouse gas / global warming thing. Just like cow farts are also blamed for global warming. IMHO, It's all a bunch of BS. Global warming / Ice age.....Its happened many times before. Cant blame diesel burners....... As far as fuel prices..... think about it... If you had a fuel making business, wouldn't you want to jump on the band wagon and make some extra cash? I would..... its only human.... Now look on the good side of raising fuel prices.... If you're going to survive..you had better be wise and know how to bid a job. Only the strongest will survive. The cut throats who survived by working for a few $ less per mile, yard or hour will slowly starve themselves out.
I agree with you on many of your points ROP. I've looked alot at the global warming stuff, and if you look at the earth over THOUSANDS of years it has warmed and cooled many times over. Although some may think we are a huge factor in the world, I think that humans although great in number have a very small role in what effects the earth. Not saying we don't effect it but the earth is a HUGE place, and has been here for many years before us and as some believe, will be here for many more after we are gone. On the money train, yes if the neighbor down the road is charging $4.00 a gallon and you are only charging 3.75 wouldn't you want to raise up to say 3.95, make more money and still be a bit under. But as far as bidding dirt work and such, you are totally right at finally getting rid of the cut throats that under bid work. Knowing how to bid a project is almost as important as running the equipment. Few years ago we bid a road project, won the bid, ours was $40,000, next closest was at $49,600. I asked dad did we really leave almost 10K on the table or could we actually do the job for that amount. He sat down with me and we went over everything that pertained to the job. We were still going to make money on it. The bids on that project went from our 40K all the way to 96K. Yes one guy actually bid $96000. Now a few weeks later this same guy won a bid on a simalar but lil smaller project. Dad had our bid in at 21K and this guy took it for 9K. Well he did 9K worth of work, had a mess, and then told the township that there were more things that needed to be done and it ended up costing the town ship a PILE of money more. One thing we have always done, maybe not the greatest but have tried, is to keep track of everything from fuel usage on each machine to travel time and distance, to winter maintance, etc. Knowing EXACTALLY what it cost to run your biz will for sure help in bidding projects better. Even with high prices there will still be work to be done and the ones who have the numbers right on will usually win out in the long run. Trbo
Global warming is BS and if you take in account inflation we are still pay less for fuel then we have in the past. And thats with the Sierra Club and the Libs doing everything they can to raise prices.:usa
Oops, the times have changed haven't they. Good luck finding a connection in down here in Jawja, cause I can't even find one.....well not of my own atleast. :lmao We'll catch up witcha one of these days. :drinkup
I'm willing to give the big oil companies a few prices on the site work for a oil refinery if that'll lower prices. I'll take care of them on the price, add about 75% to my original price.