parent2noles

OT a bit, but my brother is in a lather about the Honda hydrogen car. I pointed out that a fill up could be a bit troublesome, but he's got fuel cells before his eyes.

Seems Honda will only lease them for now.

Yes - let's blame Bush for the price of fuel. He's from Texas, after all...and a Republican!

Bullet

p2n, didn't you know he's the blame for everything bad in the world right now? I even heard he got into a fist fight with Kurt Schilling, and THAT is why Schilling hurt his elbow and is out for the season. And I could swear I saw him trip Tiger at a golf game earlier this year, hyper-extending his knee.

For many, it's an easy game to play. Sorta like using the fat kid as your favorite target during dodgeball!

mini

Oh, he and his Texas, oh, sorry, Dubai friends are doing just fine.

HAL: Summary for HALLIBURTON CO - Yahoo! Finance

TerpDad

Not to mention he stole the election don't you know!

BCEagle91

I wonder at the common refrain that we need more refineries. At least at the current low prices for gasoline (from the perspective of refineries). A quick look at the charts of Valero and Sunoco (major refiners) has Valero down 45% over the last year and Sunoco down 50% over the last year. So it appears that the refining business isn't as lucrative as other parts of the oil business. Given this, why add more capacity if you're not doing that well with what's already there?

On speculation driving up prices: speculators bet on prices going up and prices going down. I don't know that it's reasonable to blame them for a large chunk of the problem.

LongPrime

I am or was an R. I am fairly sure that our friends and not so friendly friends in China, India, Europe, S America, Mexico, Africa, Antartica, Russia, and the Middle East, have opinions stronger than mine about W.

Bullet

BC, its reasonable in the same way that every commodity is impacted by what the speculators are willing to hedge their bets on. Right now, they are all standing in a circle yelling at each other "Buy, Buy, Buy!" It keeps driving up the price. Start getting them to yell "Sell!" to each other, and watch the price start tumbling down a few bucks, rather quickly.

TerpDad

The only question I would like answered is I heard they, "speculators" ,moved their operation to Europe in 1993 because of less regulation. It was about then oil prices started moving higher so the rumor has it! OPEC has been smiling ever since! Has this been disproven?

BCEagle91

"BC, its reasonable in the same way that every commodity is impacted by what the speculators are willing to hedge their bets on. Right now, they are all standing in a circle yelling at each other "Buy, Buy, Buy!" It keeps driving up the price. Start getting them to yell "Sell!" to each other, and watch the price start tumbling down a few bucks, rather quickly."

When one person buys a commodity, someone else has to sell it. So for every buy, buy, buy, there is a sell, sell, sell. From a speculators perspective. Now let's say that Joe Speculator buys a contract of oil for delivery in September. What is he going to do when September arrives? Take delivery in his front yard? If you want lower prices, decrease the money supply.

BCEagle91

"The only question I would like answered is I heard they, "speculators" ,moved their operation to Europe in 1993 because of less regulation. It was about then oil prices started moving higher so the rumor has it! OPEC has been smiling ever since! Has this been disproven?"

Well, a look at a historical chart of crude will show that what you wrote is untrue. "speculators" is not a homogeneous class. There are a lot of universities that are speculators via hedge funds. Pensions too. And even Japanese housewives.

Bullet

Not neccessarily the case. There are WAAAY more speculators yelling "Buy" right now than "Sell'. Simple Keynesian economics: more people willing to buy than there are willing to sell means the price goes up. When there comes a time there are more people yelling "sell" than buy, the price will come down.

Similar thing happened with the housing bubble. More people willing to jump in and buy a home meant the average home price rose astoundingly for most markets in a relatively short time. As long as people were willing to keep purchasing the homes, the prices kept going up. When consumers finally said, "Enough! I can't afford to pay these prices!", houses stopped selling so quickly and the market bubble burst, leaving many who used adjustable or interest free mortgages to purchase in the hopes that their home values would rise enough to easily refinance using their equity in a world of hurt.

WashDad

All the salmon that would have been swimming into San Francisco Bay were safely out to sea when last year's spill happened. The drop-off in salmon has happened up and down the west coast -- including many rivers that don't empty into the SF Bay, and has been going on for a lot more than a year. Can you explain how the spill in the SF Bay affected salmon runs in the Skokomish River in Washington, or are you arguing that the salmon in SF were killed off by a 1,000-barrel spill and there is some other cause in the other hundreds of rivers and streams on the west coast? Or that the salmon run reductions in the past were caused by the 2007 oil spill?

I won't even go into why a discussion of oil drilling has absolutely nothing to do with a collision between two ships that caused a spill of ship's fuel.

Link to article about salmon management focusing on California: Feds warn entire salmon season could be halted

BCEagle91

"Not neccessarily the case. There are WAAAY more speculators yelling "Buy" right now than "Sell'. Simple Keynesian economics: more people willing to buy than there are willing to sell means the price goes up. When there comes a time there are more people yelling "sell" than buy, the price will come down."

I just had a look at the Commitment of Traders report for June 17. Speculators are long 244,275 contracts and short 139,156 contracts. So the speculators are net long. The commercials are long 1,619,494 contracts and short 1,712,099 so the commercials are net short and the number of their contracts dwarf the speculators. The commercials are considered the smart money.

"Similar thing happened with the housing bubble. More people willing to jump in and buy a home meant the average home price rose astoundingly for most markets in a relatively short time. As long as people were willing to keep purchasing the homes, the prices kept going up. When consumers finally said, "Enough! I can't afford to pay these prices!", houses stopped selling so quickly and the market bubble burst, leaving many who used adjustable or interest free mortgages to purchase in the hopes that their home values would rise enough to easily refinance using their equity in a world of hurt."

Have you ever shorted a stock? Your reasoning seems very simplistic.

VectorWega

Drilling for oil will only be a temporary solution and won't rectify the primary contributor to this problem (and other more pressing problems): irrational consumer behavior.

While financially (and economically) we will have to take our lumps in the short term, those lumps will not outweigh the positives that will result due to a higher price of oil (positives created because consumers/businesses will be forced to act rationally and secondarily, the business innovation which is driven by this problem).

BCEagle91

"Drilling for oil will only be a temporary solution and won't rectify the primary contributor to this problem (and other more pressing problems): irrational consumer behavior."

I think that the primary contributor is the money supply and the attempts by Greenspan to avoid the Kondreytieff winter. Easy money policies are just pushing on a string if there isn't a willing borrower.