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Best damn thing Bush has done in a while....now give him his due

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by ScribePharisee, Jul 14, 2008.

  1. ScribePharisee

    ScribePharisee New Member

    After Katrina's spike, gas went from $3.09 here to $1.99 over the span of a year. Just as we learned that China and India, blamed for the price hikes, dropped their consumption by 33 percent. Didn't read that? I didn't either. Because blaming India and China is bullshit.
     
  2. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    I didn't click on the link... did he catch another perch?
     
  3. Grimace

    Grimace Guest

    It's not bullshit. Oil is a global market. You do not have a grasp of the basic facts.
     
  4. MartinEnigmatica

    MartinEnigmatica Active Member

    Just another day in the life of the world's biggest polluter
     
  5. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    So oil is a global market, but adding to the supply will not have any noticable effect on that market? Somehow I don't remember that popping up as one of the choices in the old Econ textbook.
     
  6. Grimace

    Grimace Guest

    Yes, it would have an effect. About 10 cents. Which in 10 years, would save you 10 cents off of $8/gallon. Oh boy.

    Once again, you, like others who favor drilling, don't understand the basic facts. The US does not have enough oil to offset the global market enough to lower prices by a significant amount.
     
  7. goalmouth

    goalmouth Well-Known Member

    The estimated crude reserves in the Alaska refuge total about 1% of daily U.S. consumption, meaning drilling there would have a negligible effect on prices.
     
  8. ScribePharisee

    ScribePharisee New Member

    Coming from someone who has a real grasp on the cost of a McValue Meal, you should know the significant difference between $3.09 a gallon and $1.99 a gallon, which more than accounted for the Katrina spike. You want to explain how China and India's demand dropped gas prices 70 cents a gallon in about a year?
     
  9. Grimace

    Grimace Guest

    You're ignorant of the basic facts.

    The hurricanes caused a temporary spike in prices because it struck a main oil supply and distribution location. China and India -- which did not cause the hurricane -- had nothing to do with that spike in price. You got me there.

    However, China and India -- along with supply and demand, speculators, the weak American dollar, events in the Middle East -- do have a lot to do with the global demand for oil and the rise in oil prices before and since then.

    They are two different things.
     
  10. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    So it's better to fiddle while Rome burns? To actually watch our economy circle the bowl and wave buh-bye as it gets sucked into the pipe, rather than grab a plunger?
    Maybe I'm just a simpleton, as you say, but I'll take a crack at answering your questions.
    There are a whole bunch of factors at play here. Growing worldwide demand, instability in a number of major oil producing countries (and shithead leaders in a few others), speculation in the market, and a weak American dollar to name a few.
    So, the U.S. puts more oil into the market. That, clearly, goes toward solving the demand problem because there's more of the stuff. Oh yeah, and the U.S. is also a politically stable country which makes it a reliable source of oil. Most times, you don't have to worry about a group of rebels blowing up a pipeline in Iowa.
    Also, I read a front page story in USA Today, today, about offshore drilling in Louisiana. Said something like 72 percent of U.S. oil production is done off the coast of Louisiana. Moving some of that production into places like ANWR or off the coast of California lowers the chances of price spikes whenever a hurricane gets into the Gulf.
    More oil on the market makes speculators think twice about throwing money into said market, which eases the price down ever so slowly. And if the price comes down, it backs the U.S. away from the brink of an economic collapse that would take the world down with it.
    Now, the price of oil will probably never be below $85 or $90 again. But let's say an increased U.S. supply takes it down around $100 and it sticks there. That's probably the best case scenario for a lot of reasons. It stabilizes the economy, the oil companies still make enough money that there's incentive to drill in new places and increase supply, but it's still just high enough that people are bitching about it and pushing for more fuel efficient cars, hybrids and new sources of energy.
    It was a chain reaction of circumstances that got us to this point, and a chain reaction that'll take us out.
     
  11. Makes too much sense, Bat.

    Why can't you explore for more oil while also developing alternatives? For that matter, how about resurrecting nuclear power?
     
  12. Grimace

    Grimace Guest

    Whoa, whoa, whoa! You skipped a couple of steps.

    Like, you know, how do we actually get that oil? How long will it take?

    There aren't enough oil rigs to pump the oil that's out there right now. In fact, the oil companies are only drilling in a small percentage of the area that's open to drilling right now. Why? Because they don't have the resources to do so.

    We can't do it quickly enough to make a difference. It's pointless.
     
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