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Fill ‘er up: Cheap gas
With oil plunging to record lows, and the average retail price for gas sinking to less than $2, will Americans rekindle their love affair with trucks and SUVs? Falling gasoline prices are putting extra money in the pockets of consumers, but there is also some concern that drivers may return to their gas-guzzling vehicles.
Are you taking advantage of cheaper gas prices? Could this be the second coming of gas-guzzling vehicles, or is this simply a brief reprieve? Share you cheap gas strategies.
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
It’s become a truism that Americans are driving less due to high fuel prices. Here are five signs that signal a decline in demand:
1. Drop in volume: The fall in U.S. oil demand in the first half of 2008 was the biggest in 26 years, according to the EIA.
2. Less time on the road: Americans are spending less time behind the wheel, according to the Dept. of Transportation
3. Taking the train : A record number of riders are turning to mass transit to get around
4. Fewer buying gas : Retail gas sales have dropped below year-ago levels
5. Safer roads : Fewer drivers mean fewer road accidents, according to Warren Buffett. Berkshire Hathaway is the parent company of Geico, one of the largest U.S. auto insurers.
Is the writing on the wall? Share your signs of dropping oil demand.
I live in Sacramento Ca and after watchin”Sons of Anarchy” am curious. WHERE is Charming Ca?
To dig or not to dig? The crude question
President Bush is urging Congress to end a decades-old ban on offshore oil drilling in response to consumer anxiety over record-high gas prices.
“Every American who drives to work, purchases food or ships a product has felt the effect. And families across our country are looking to Washington for a response,” Bush said.
The push by Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain to lift the ban could find plenty of support. About 60 percent of Americans surveyed in a Reuters/Zogby poll said they would favor government efforts to boost domestic drilling and refinery construction.
Roughly the same amount said they would back efforts to reduce domestic demand through tougher fuel-efficiency standards.
Do you favor more U.S. oil drilling?
For more on the rising cost of oil, click here.
For your consideration here are some real:
Oil Facts
Sources U.S Geo Survey – U.S Energy Info Admin – Bureau of Land Mang – Dept of inter Oil & Gas Journal
Saudi Arabia holds the world’s largest oil reserve. The U.S holds the world’s 12th largest oil reserve but we are the world’s 3rd largest producer of oil. We produce about 8 million barrels a day. The U.S is the world’s largest consumer of oil, China is the second largest. We consume about 20 million barrels a day. The U.S appetite for oil is so huge that it dwarfs China’s consumption. Even with China’s massive 1.3 billion person population they consume a modest 7.2 millions barrels a day.
What are we doing with all this oil? 69% is used for transportation, 24% is used by Industry, 5% is used by residential and commercial and 2% is used for electrical power.
Where do we get the oil we use? Canada is our largest provider of oil, next is Saudi Arabia then Mexico.
There are only two places in the U.S where we are not allowed to drill; the first is about half of the Eastern Great Basin (the area of concern is half of Nevada & most of Utah). We are not allowed to drill on about half of it because some of the Native American tribes who call it home object to it. The second is Alaska’s North coast – we actually do drill there but most of it is protected as a National Wildlife Refuge.
As of 2006 we had over 500,000 oil wells pumping 24/7 for us and that number has increased since then.
So why is the price of oil so high? That depends on who you talk to. A very simple answer is supply and demand; Fox news loves this meaningless response. Personally, I would look at the commodity traders. Remember what they did with electricity in California in 2000 – 2001. Remember Enron. Don’t be sad
Buck Up!
Feeling sad about the price of oil? Don’t worry we’ve weathered these gas storms before, every decade or so we get pummeled by a new one, but sooner or later fuel prices will begin to fall and then they will stabilize —- and when they do I’m buying the biggest, fattest Hummer you ever did saw!
Yea Haw!!
I’m only kiddin about that last part – I know that people who rely on transportation for their living are really hurting and that is a shame. I just don’t think that drilling for more oil is really going to help. Remember, we are currently the world’s 3rd largest producer of oil and it’s barely enough to supply 1/3 of our demand. I believe that the only real solution is to decrease our dependency on oil.
Let’s not fall back into the old oil trap.
Take Heart.
We are the biggest, toughest and most forward thinking country in the whole world, the solutions can not be as impossible as we are making them out to be. One man who has some great ideas is Billionaire Oil Tycoon T. Boone Pickens. Do an internet search and see what he says. Heck, even the Exxon Mobil heirs, The Rockefellers, believe that we should turn away from fossil fuels and create a cleaner, more dependable source of energy.
Impossible you say—Nothing is impossible for the greatest nation on earth!!!
Good Luck and God Bless
Holiday from gas tax: Good idea or more politics?
Presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton want to suspend the gas tax for the summer to offer drivers some relief from record fuel prices. President Bush said this week that he was willing to consider a fuel tax holiday.
Barack Obama opposes the idea, saying it would not amount to much. House Democratic leaders have also shown little support for suspending the gas tax. Some experts say that a gas tax holiday wouldn’t help drivers much if service stations don’t pass on the savings to consumers.
Do you support a gas tax holiday this summer?
The technology problem was solved in the 80′s when fuel injection became standard and we accepted to drive cars with smaller engines. My ’95 Corolla still gets 30mpg. The problem is people like to drive big cars with huge engines that obviously use more fuel, simple physics here. It’s their choice and last time I checked this is a free country and if it floats your boat to drive and SUV then by all means do it. Just don’t come complaining that you can’t afford to drive it because it eats gasoline.
Global Warming and Al Gore are trivial at best with Al Gore just being a well paid person that morons with no understanding of Environmental Science will listen too.
The liberal media is responsible for a lot of the false reports on Global Warming. From my own research we’ve found that the climate is actually cooling slowly, but that’s not what people want to hear. There was a international scientific convention in NYC a month ago about how our data is innacurate and that the Earth goes through natural cyclic climate changes and has been doing it since the formation of our solar system, long before humans began burning fossil fuels. Our data is insufficient and we have not been able to prove that climate change is caused by anthropogenic sources. Al Gore like to show you the data plotted on a huge graph but shrinks the horizontal scale and elongates the vertical scale to exacerbate the rise in temperature.
If you’ve ever taken a statistics course one of the first rules is correlation does not equal causation. You make statistics show just about anything in your favor. Believe me, I’m about to get a degree in Environmental Economics. Hybrid cars won’t save you any money if you have to drive at 65mph to commute to work, you’re just using the smaller gasoline engine to lug the weight of batteries and an electric motor. It will only save you money if your commute is short and you drive at in-town speeds of less than 35mph; which is pointless because you could probably commute more efficiently by public transportation or riding a bicycle.
Economics teaches that more disposable income to consumers is better than less income. I prefer more utility over less, paying taxes has never made me feel better about myself or trust the government anymore than I already don’t. The gas tax may not be all that much but it’s something and to some people that can make a difference. Let’s face it politicians are always trying to deceive people into voting for them, more votes keeps them in power, they like that. The majority of the voters have very little in the way of political science or economics backgrounds and they will vote for whomever they believe will make their lives easier. Key word and phrase here are “believe” and “make life easier.” Life is never easy and believing is dreaming which isn’t very productive.
If you want to save some extra gas money for the summer, sell the SUV, get a decent road bicycle, learn to live a little, use the bike to commute to work if it’s not too far which will get you in shape. If you have to drive, get a used manual transmission small sedan. You won’t have to fill up the tank as often. Part of becoming more efficient is learning to live without unnecessary conveniences.
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Some of this “cheep gas” is real. But some is to break the ethanol producers who spent multi millions for equipment based on $4. gas. Now they will not be able to pay their debit, and big oil will buy them out for cents on the dollar.