Fuel at $3.59 and rising

NoWingsAttached

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Gasoline…I heard on a radio talk show, hosting a financial consultant wiz, that the reason for the most recent rise in fuel is based on the government bailout of Wall Street brokers and banks. Seems that they didn’t use the money to reinvest in lending, and other things they should have. They used the money to buy futures like petroleum, which has been driving the price up for all of our commodities.

Not only did we pay to bail out these jokers who swindled us to begin with, we are now lining their pockets with profits, on futures obtained with tax dollars, at the pump. Wall Street, Main Street, and Capital Hill - all one big, ugly singularity that we can’t seem to break up snd get off of our backs...

This is apolitical. They are ALL in on it.

I strongly urge you to write your congressman and tell him/her/it you are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. You can do this online nowadays you know, so what is holding you back from letting your voice be heard? DO IT.
 
IMHO it's true that governments (all of them) have taken no action to prevent those who have committed capital crimes (i.e. commited crimes using capital) from doing it all over agian. This has little to do with rising gas prices. Peak oil has been several years ago and a company that has neglected any sort of necessary security measures and has caused immeasurable damage to the local people is still legally free to dispossess each and ever cent that was wasted by a reckless mangement of theire customers.
 
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I like solutions much more than complaints so here goes:

We could do something, but almost everyone would have to participate.

We need to start a price war between all the oil companies.

We need to simply boycott the two largest oil companies, Exon, and Mobil.

If we all stopped buying fuel from them until their prices were lower and then buy from them only until the others lowered theirs to compete.

Boycotting all of the stations for a day is a joke, but targeting the top two with NO SALES forever until they comply will work folks!!

It is called supply and demand, and we can control the demand as long as there are other companies to buy fuel from, them repeat the process on the others until price is fair!

So lets start a boycott and not buy fuel from Exon or Mobil until their prices are .10 or .25 lower than any other station?
 
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petrol prices

petrol prices

This is a wake up call,

here in england we are paying £1.50 per ltr £7.50 per gallon or $12.05 per gallon..you think you have problems!
 
All in, People are too stupid and lazy to do that. I would be all for it, but people are simply too Fing ignorant and stupid to do what you propose. Some people have exxon or mobile gas cards and they won't go anywhere but there ( even though it is just as easy to get a normal visa card and use it for fuel ) others just go where it is easiest, even with gas right across the street a few cents a gallon less. And people simply don't care enough to do anything more.... people are still buying gas hogging cars and trucks, still driving like the roads are race tracks, and driving anywhere and everywhere like it's raining gas outside.

Think of it like this.... how many people voted for Obama? That there should show that over 50 percent of america is simply just stupid.
 
I've seen that approach touted before. It won't work. The oil company retail outlets may be the visible, but they are not the main profit centers. Oil is produced and then dumped, poured, or otherwise pumped into the common pool for redistribution at fuel depots throughout the country. Exxon oil, Mobil Oil, Shell Oil all swim happily together in the same pipelines until they are pumped into fuel trucks. A driver for RaceTrac or QT may be filling up with oil from the fuel depot that is mostly Shell today, mostly Exxon tomorrow and a mix of everything. Even an Exxon truck may be filling up from a regional depot with mostly Shell gasoline a lot of the time.

The large dollars are made selling refined gasoline into the nationwide depot system and pipelines. OK, the company owned stores make a profit on top of that, but if Exxon/Mobile had to choose, they'd close the retail outlets and keep selling into the system (and laugh all the way to the bank).

Even if you stop buying fuel at Exxon/Mobile retail outlets, you still end up buying their fuel. It could have some small impact if enough people retreated from their retail outlets, but some of them are Franchises, and hurting the Franchisee has almost no impact on the Label company itself.
 
The customer is the only one that controls demand!

We could really hurt a company, but I fear Ron is correct!
 
July 2008

July 2008

I was up north on a trip to move my elderly parents down to NC. Both were in poor health and I had to clean out their home to get the move started. On the evening news all the talking heads were in a frenzy about record close of oil at 147 $. Pundits and speculators were calling for $200 a bbl in no time. The sky was the limit. I looked at my father in law and told him "this will all end in tears" the market will not sustain this... Fuel prices in NY were about 4.50+ a gallon at that point. I was furious. A week or 2 later fed chairman ben bernake stated to congress that he was going to start investigations into large financial institutions (banks) that were " prohibited " by law from investing in "speculative" markets (energy / oil) It took about 30 seconds before the bank rats started to liquidate and by Sept the market tumbled and "housing" was blamed for the crash. The question is like the chicken or the egg .... ? . ? . ? If folks were paying about 8 billion a more a day for fuel then than they were a few years ago how were they going to pay their mortgage. ? Any 5th grader could tell you while housing may have been responsible with bad loans, what made them go bad in the first place ? What the greedy bankers did not count on was the effects of their greed. Now that the housing market crashed and they all got bailed out they have limited their exposure and they will run it up again.

Congress made some new regulations that were supposed to go into effect in January that was supposed to prevent speculation in the oil markets again but for some reason there is no enforcement or the money men were able to talk about postponing the enforcement of the act. Then the M.E $hit storm came about. Oil supply in storage here in the USA is at 29 year HIGHS, obviously purchased at session lows.... ! Our economy is on the brink and just starting to recover and wham ! The pigs are back at the trough again. Saudi Arabia has picked up production and the market is well supplied so why 100 a bbl for oil. ? . We need to outlaw speculative positions in commodities period. Commodity markets were set up to guarantee producers and purchasers prices and create stability in the economy. Now they only serve to enrich people that have nothing to do with whatever industry they seek to poison. this cycle will continue until they all get burned but are not allowed to be bailed out by the public guarantee. Bankers need to go bankrupt and get locked up and hung from the gallows.


The amount of suffering they have imposed around the world because of their greed is truly staggering. There are no (negative) consequences for the players involved in this charade and it will continue until either 1. we are all bankrupt. or 2. enough people wake up and fight back against the game.


I do not want to expand too much on my Moshe, Middle East prediction but I can see this situation spiraling out of control and blowing up to the point where the draft is re instituted to send Americans to secure the oil fields of Libya and Saudi Arabia....

J
 
I figure.....it is what it is!

I've got more important issues to worry about than the price of gas.

Drive less or buy something that gets better milage.

I do feel for those that make a living in transportation though....very hard to make money when gas prices keep increasing.

I don't think there's a whole lot we can do to stop the increases.......fuel prices over seas make our prices look like a deal.

Barry (gonna buy a bike...or a horse) K
 
It's Bush and Cheney

It's Bush and Cheney

It's Bush and Cheney enriching their oil buddies!

Bwah ha ha ha!

China is leasing land in Texas. Soon China will be selling us our own oil.

Wait for it...........wait for it.

The first thing we should do instead of boycotts is to unelect every member of congress, every governor and any president that won't drill for oil...or they had better come up with a financially reasonable substitute for energy.

It ain't here yet.
 
The first thing we should do instead of boycotts is to unelect every member of congress, every governor and any president that won't drill for oil...

Everything said before this is pie-in-the-sky.
Ray, you have said it all.............Now, let's do it!
*********
 
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Well interesting idea, except you have a somewhat inelastic demand. The price rises, the demand drops and the price does not change.

In 1987, Oil became a commodity. Prior to that in the U.S. the producers contracted with the purchasers whom were generally the refineries. I can remember the owner of an exploration company be very pleased that he got 50 cents extra, even though he had to sign a year contract. Prices were somewhat stable in the U.S. THEN oil became a commodity more open to world events and the whim of OPEC.

In 1982 we had around 300 refineries, today about 150. Gone are the old Branded refineries as every company had their own refinery. Now the refineries run at nearly capacity and the difference between brands are the additives.

The Keystone 36 inch pipeline runs from Canada to Cushing Oklahoma were the crude can further be distributed to refineries. The second phase of the pipeline will run to Houston. This pipeline has 3/4 the capacity of the Alaska pipeline. Branches of the pipeline will run to North Dakota the hottest play in the U.S. China has picked up leases and will own crude at the Canadian end.

Most gas stations are owned by individuals or small LLCs and make 5 to 8 cents a gallon.
 
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The customer is the only one that controls demand!

We could really hurt a company, but I fear Ron is correct!

The average citizen is a small percentage of gasoline sales. The effort, even if every joe blow on the road stopped buying gas, would be laughable in terms of profit loss.
 
Just bought mid grade for $3.25 a gallon today, up 20 cents in 2 weeks.
 
Hey Dingbat, at $12.50 a gallon how do you live over there.

I mean ...what do you drive ? How much do you drive ? How much do people earn ?

How do you heat your home ? I need a better feel for how you deal with that !!!!!
 
LANICOL
"Most gas stations are owned by individuals or small LLCs and make 5 to 8 cents a gallon."

That has been mostly true for a number of years, but what you don't see is the CREDIT CARDS fees we eat. The Fuel Vendors force all consigned dealers to use THIER credit card machines, That way they cover the bulk ofthier interests in those markets; because the transaction payment does not return to the market. It is paid to the fuel vendor, and the market is issued a credit for the card transaction on the next weeks invoice.
My Credit card fees currently are costing me 3% and Debit card fees are .16 cents per transaction and 2.1/4%.
You do the math!
Customer buys $20.00 gas @ $3.29/gallon = 6.06 gallons. potential profit is 30 - 48 cents, but if the customer puts it on a credit card it just cost you .60 cents for him to charge it.
Three years ago, 80% of my sales were paid with CASH, 5% with checks and 15% with credit/debit cards.
In todays market 75% of my sales are paid with credit/debit cards, 2% with checks, and 23% is cash.
 
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I check fuel prices most mornings.
K Mart , here locally, made a mistake yesterday on thier marque.
 

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Of course you are not going to influence the global market or the price of oil. However I feel demand in a local/ our domestic market could be influenced!

My father and brother owned a Union 76 station in the 70's when gas wars were common between oil-company chains. I did there books, and I know the volume of the fuel drops every two weeks. Multiply that volume times the number of branded stations and I know intuitively that we can influence prices. You are not going to put them out of business but we could make them compete to get our business back.

One or two mounts of losing that retail volume is going to hurt; I don't care how big the company is.

We could also affect the supply side of the equation.
As Larry pointed out there are actually less refineries now. If we had more refineries and storage capacity a company could buy and store while the price is low and refine and store when it high, but they mostly only make what we burn.

But it is not in any of the oil company’s interest to build a refinery and create more supply as long as they have an equal production capacity with each other.

If just one oil company would build a new refinery the others would have to also, or lose the advantage of buying when low and storing, and selling when price is high.

So have the tree huggers pick a location, and help design it so they won’t bitch and have the government build a new state-of-the art refinery and then not run it but auction it off to the oil companies who will now fight over having the advantage and more supply than the other companies.

We may only have to do this once as the others would need to build there own to get back to the status quo of equal supply to compete again and earn there stockholders the same return on their investment.
 
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