Bush thinks: Mmm, I might have to tap that...
...the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, that is.
In a speech yesterday, amid ridiculously high gas prices (by American standards), the President called for probes into allegations of price gouging by oil companies, eased enviornmental regulations, and actually suspended deposits to the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) all in the name of lowering gas prices.
Rock on!! Right? Well, not really. You see, the SPR is just about filled up anyway and, according to Bloomberg, was only putting away about 25,000 barrels of
the 10 million imported into the US daily. Stop trying to figure out the percent in your head...0.25%. this means available to us will now be a quarter of a percent more oil than we already had. let's put that in practical terms: say you have a vehicle with a 20-gallon tank, (assuming the exta petrol is distributed evenly to every US gas station) 0.05 gallons in your tank will be thanks to the SPR deposit suspension...at $3.00 a gallon it's kind of like the government giving you $0.15 every time you fill up.
Now, of course, since politics play a role, we are likely to save more than $0.15 per tank in the upcoming weeks but the higher summer prices are coming anyway and the SPR deposit suspension is going to cotribute very little to us in the long run (probably the short run, too). Expect to see gas prices dip in the next few days but it will likely be only a couple of cents.
But no matter how low this drops prices, it is only a band aid. What are long-term, real-world solutions to this issue? We invite your comments.
Moving on to another part of the presidents speech, price gouging:
Can their
be any doubt? Exxon's chairman, Lee Raymond, has been give a retirement package in the neighborhood of $400 million (this is what that looks like in zeros $400,000,000...EIGHT ZEROS!!). If you work that into an hourly wage (based on how long he worked for Exxon) it comes to about $6,000 an hour. Check out this story if you're not pissed enough already. This guy charges you and I three bucks a gallon then gets to sit on $400 million for the rest of 
his life.
Your thoughts on this subject, too.
This is all I have for now. Enjoy your extra couple of cents at the pump...buy yourself an RC Cola.
In a speech yesterday, amid ridiculously high gas prices (by American standards), the President called for probes into allegations of price gouging by oil companies, eased enviornmental regulations, and actually suspended deposits to the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) all in the name of lowering gas prices.
Rock on!! Right? Well, not really. You see, the SPR is just about filled up anyway and, according to Bloomberg, was only putting away about 25,000 barrels of
the 10 million imported into the US daily. Stop trying to figure out the percent in your head...0.25%. this means available to us will now be a quarter of a percent more oil than we already had. let's put that in practical terms: say you have a vehicle with a 20-gallon tank, (assuming the exta petrol is distributed evenly to every US gas station) 0.05 gallons in your tank will be thanks to the SPR deposit suspension...at $3.00 a gallon it's kind of like the government giving you $0.15 every time you fill up.Now, of course, since politics play a role, we are likely to save more than $0.15 per tank in the upcoming weeks but the higher summer prices are coming anyway and the SPR deposit suspension is going to cotribute very little to us in the long run (probably the short run, too). Expect to see gas prices dip in the next few days but it will likely be only a couple of cents.
But no matter how low this drops prices, it is only a band aid. What are long-term, real-world solutions to this issue? We invite your comments.
Moving on to another part of the presidents speech, price gouging:
Can their
be any doubt? Exxon's chairman, Lee Raymond, has been give a retirement package in the neighborhood of $400 million (this is what that looks like in zeros $400,000,000...EIGHT ZEROS!!). If you work that into an hourly wage (based on how long he worked for Exxon) it comes to about $6,000 an hour. Check out this story if you're not pissed enough already. This guy charges you and I three bucks a gallon then gets to sit on $400 million for the rest of 
his life.Your thoughts on this subject, too.
This is all I have for now. Enjoy your extra couple of cents at the pump...buy yourself an RC Cola.
posted by nicholas at 1:17 PM
4 Comments:
i will go through your numbered list in order to respond to you most efficiently:
1. i agree we need higher refining capacity. the problem is oil companies don't want new or more refineries. why spend money on that when they are raking it in with the ones they have and then have it expected of them to lower fuel costs? the path of least effort is going to win out there, barring government intervention.
2. first we've got to sell the market on one type of fuel. it's not going to work without uniformity. ethanol seems to be the hot product now, what with chevy already having some vehicles running on it...but hydrogen was the one everybody was talking about 5 years ago and the fuel bush mentioned he expected the next generation of drivers to utilize. biodiesel has also been mentioned. somebody needs to decide. and that is a "world decision" since everything runs on oil...but if america decides to go "green" then i think the world will follow. bottom line: we need to choose a fuel and go, ASAP.
3. i have nothing to add to that, i agree completely.
4. i like the idea. and if there were a commuter rail that could reliably get me to work in new orleans from my home in abita (approx. 50 miles) i would be one of the first in line to buy a ticket. but there isn't one. and that's not just the case in louisiana. look at houston where people live 40-50 miles from work and the only way to get there is by car because there is no public trasportation into the city. or los angeles where people actually commute from over 60 miles away in san juan capistrano to get to work in downtown LA. once they get there they do have a subway but it is horribly unreliable. to m knowlegde, the only US cities to get it right when it comes to public trasport are boston, chicago, dc, and ny. at anyrate, this country is geographically huge and based upon personal freedom (ie: being able to drive where you want, when you want). people are not going to drive less if they don't want to...and some that want to (like myself) cannot because they have no other means by which to get to where they need to go.
i'm going to bring up one thing that wasn't in your top 4. hybrids. they are also problematic, mainly because it is only at low speeds where their fuel economy is maximized (it is at lower speeds that they utilize their electric motor). when you are going 55-80 on highways and interstates, which is what many people's (and my) commutes consist of, they use the gas engine and losing a lot of that fuel efficiency. so, even if some of us got hybrids it wouldn't help our wallets out too much.
that's all i'll say for now. this post got too long.
Anyone else want to bet that Exxon bastard drives an SUV? And I bet he goes the long way home just to spit us.
Has any one else heard about the supposed next generation Prius that gets roughly ninety miles to the gallon in the city? This is about twice the current mileage.
rogue-
"in the city" is the key phrase there. it still won't help long-range commuters like me a whole lot of good. that being said, 90 mpg anywhere is pretty amazing if it is true...unfortunatly, no matter what mileage it gets, it's still a prius.
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