Is oil really $10 at the pump without govt help

 

cars wait for gas 1973

I just read this article and the comments today at

 

http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461. His math is a little off but the government sites are kinda screwy so I can see where he could go astray.  Check out these two:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc_nus_mbbl_m.htm

http://www.airlines.org/economics/energy/MonthlyJetFuel.htm

Both sites claim the about the same month but the number are way different. The EIA site states that jet fuel is going at the rate of about 48 million barrels a month is July 2008. The airlines site states that they are going through 1.65 Billion gallons a month in August 2008? How can this be? It says gallons (bils) on top of the column. Even if they meant millions, 1.65 million and 47.76 million aren’t even close. Someone is screwing up here or am I reading something wrong?  According to what I can find on the government sites, they all seem to agree that we are pushing 21 million barrels a day into the US one way or another. To keep it simple let’s say we have a 30 day month. 21×30 is 630 and is fairly close to the monthly figures (a little high but I rounded up).

As for the article’s content, I agree that it would be a nightmare to be weaned off oil overnight but it needs to be done soon. Look at what Brazil did with ethanol-they are way ahead of us. And how about all those high MPG diesels that are all over Europe? They are made buy our automakers over there so why do they never send them to or make them in the US? My 99 VW Beetle TDI gets close to 60 MPG right now and all I do to get better than EPA is to keep my tire pressure up, time stoplights, do the speed limit and coast down hills. There are US brand cars that can do that over in Europe but not in the good ol USA.

And then there’s the hybrids (all the rage) When I bought the diesel I was wondering why anyone would buy a stupid hybrid (with an unproven track record) that you can’t plug in at home, charge it up and drive it for peanuts. If I could have plugged it in I might have bought one. But noooooooo you have to buy a conversion kit for big $$$$$$ to enjoy the “plug in privilege.” What the heck were they thinking? And why did GM kill the electric car right when they were way ahead of everyone? By now the Volt would have been on the market for years. Why did they let Toyota and Honda get the jump on them? Why is GM they closing plants for good and not retooling them for small new generation hi-tech cars like Honda and Toyota are? Diesel engines are about 30% more efficient than gas engines right out of the box. My car goes faster, hauls more and has tons of space in it (and it doesn’t have tons of batteries to replace only God knows when). The new diesels are so clean they can even be sold in California. And then there’s the question of why not a plug in diesel hybrid?

All I hear or read about is subsidies for cars by way of roads, interchanges, parking lots, gas, and oil wars. Lots of people I know get injured or killed in them every year. Big Airline interests get the next big wad of bills. Why is it that nothing goes to passenger rail systems anywhere except California (and they are going bankrupt over this financial mess). I read that California is putting in a 220 MPH rail run from SF to LA. Why can’t I jump on a train and go from Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison and then to Minneapolis? Have to go to Europe for any high tech transportation. The US is dead last. More cars on the road seems like a bad idea to me. Anyone ever think about that nasty mass transportation thing? Eeewww I might actually have to stand near other people. That would suck. I guess we should just stick to what we do best and spend our money blowin up stuff-cool!

Anyway this post-  http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461 is interesting. I agree with the comments- this post needs to be freshened up a bit. I think I’ll just check all the facts and write a simplified version (heavy on the bullets points) and post it to my blog. This needs to be on peoples’ minds NOW!!!

Next I’ll attack McCain’s and Obama’s energy policies. I know “it’s the economy stupid” but in the long run oil (and deregulation) really got us into this mess in the first place. If we didn’t finance terrorists with our oil purchases we would probably have a lot more money to fight terror.

JCE

http://johnceberhardt.wordpress.com/

Ethanol plants go down the tubes

 

John C. Eberhardt

 

The housing bubble pops, investors stumble over each other trying to find another place to make money and end up buying commodities such as corn and oil. The result is that the prices skyrocket. And when oil prices went up so did gas prices. Then there were cries for domestic alternative fuels such as ethanol and then came the mandates and the subsidies. The mandates and subsidies came along inside the Energy Policy Act of 2005. That energy bill back in 2005 mandated that 4 billion gallons of renewable fuel (you guessed it, mostly corn-based ethanol) must be added to the United States’ gasoline supply in 2006. Then it mandated 4.7 billion gallons in 2007 and 7.5 billion in 2012. This is a huge increase in ethanol use but is still only a teaspoon full when compared to the 140 billion gallons of gas the U.S. burns every year.
 

 

Then came the “chicken and the egg” problem. Now we’ll go back to the investors again. Ethanol was supposed to be an alternative fuel that could be produced by many sources including and mostly domestic corn. Investors again stumbled over each other investing in these ethanol plants. Almost overnight ethanol plants started popping up all over the United States and every one of them were designed to use corn. And everything seemed to be going great until the demand for corn went way up as it started to deplete the suppl

 

y of corn used for our food and for feedstock. This caused the price of corn to rise even more. Once the price of corn went up, this drove the cost to produce ethanol to skyrocket. Then to make things worse, speculators again made a quick buck buying (even more) corn futures which then drove up the price of corn even more. Now the high corn prices, the credit crunch, falling oil prices and decrease consumer demand is causing the opposite to occur.
Just when you thought things were bad enough, another nail in their coffin came as now there were too many plants making too much ethanol. The oversupply of ethanol caused ethanol prices to fall sharply. Ethanol plants that were just finished being built and others that were just starting to be built went bankrupt. It seems like more of them go down every day. John McCain just announced in last night’s debates that he is planning to eliminate the import tariff of 54¢ per gallon on Brazil’s sugar and ethanol imports. And I quote from last night’s debate “”I would eliminate the tariff on imported sugar cane-based ethanol from Brazil.” I don’t know all the answers but I myself can’t really see how this can I help our domestic ethanol industry in any way at all. I think they should be some common ground here somewhere that we could get to. I can’t help but feel sorry for our alternative energy programs. What is going to happen next is anyone’s guess.

Source: http://genomicsgtl.energy.gov/biofuels/transportation.shtm
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005
Source: http://www.doi.gov/iepa/EnergyPolicyActof2005.pdf
Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/
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