RV Fuel Issues & Prices - Post 'Em Here!

[Dick_A]

All other fuel threads will be automatically deleted. 🙂

[qtla9111]

And so what if we drill, drill, drill. Then what? Will the price of oil and fuel go down? I doubt it.

People can do what they want. In my case, I want to go solar as soon as possible. Electricity has never gone down in price. I don't care what it costs me short term, in the long term it will pay off.

No more doubts and no more promises. I will take care of myself.

[Bucky_Badger]

SRT wrote:
Isn't it amazing when the price of crude oil goes up the price of gasoline leaps up 10-15 cents a gallon right now. But when the price of crude falls (almost $100 now) the price of gasoline oh, so slowly, drops by pennies. Must be maximizing profits for all concerned. 😞

Yeah, tell me the oil co is not cutting the hog in the @ss. oil high was what 147.00, gas was 3.99 here. Oil is now 103.00, gas is 3.61.

Bunch of thieves.

[TrueLarry]

I just read an article that Duke Power is approved to build two new power plants that run on natural gas and that their cost is expected to top $1.36 Billion. This is in North Carolina. The only value these plant bring is that they generate waste steam that is (theoretically) going to be put to use in some other fashion. The purported advantage of gas fired plants is that it is easier to turn them on and off. You can read about it on the Charlotte Busines Journal website.

With all the other fuels (coal, nuclear, water, photovoltaic, etc.) that could be used to produce electricity, they are consuming the one fuel that supplies most homes in the US. More competition and more price pressure. I'm sure we will continue to feed the price pressure of competing fuels. So not only will be not be able to afford to drive but we won't be able to afford the gas to heat our houses and, oh by the way, the electrical rates are expected to rise due to the high cost of producing it.

This points out that we need to continue to conserve and find our own alternatives to reduce the demand on the resources we still have.

[topflite51]

A reduction in short term gas prices is not the answer to anything, except to get one party more firmly entrenched in power in congress. It certainly won't help the economy of this country in the short or long run. Releasing strategic reserves, will only lessen the call that is growing of DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW. Even T Boone Pickens, who is pushing natural gas and wind power, says drill, drill, drill.

So what if it doesn't come online in the near future, at least it will be online in the future. That is more than can be said for other forms of energy.

Now this will probably get deleted as too political, it seems only one can be political in this thread, the rest of us get deleted.

Probably the reason why there are fewer and fewer people participating in it.

What a Shame!

[AO_hitech]

Fezziwig wrote:
Why not just do it?

Because those in political power don't want the price to come down?!?






That's not to political for this thread, is it? :W

[Fezziwig]

A sure way to reduce short term gas prices is to release oil from the Strategic Petrol Reserve (SPR), which is 98% full. This can be accomplished either by executive order or congressional action. Congress is trying, but...

Here's an interesting short article explaining it:

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2008/pump_prices.html

Remember "drill here drill now" will take 10-20 years to produce results and they will be negligible.

Using the SPR makes good sense, after all, that's what it was designed for. And it worked very well in the past.

Why not just do it?

[Fezziwig]

lwmuddy wrote:
I like the Solar idea because the Sun is always there, at least during the day light hours.
Problem is that when the Sun sets you have to rely on storage batteries and BIG ones too.

Solar generators will mostly be used to chop off the daily peaks in electricity demand. Legacy generators have to be designed to produce twice average power because of fluctuating demand.

There are many methods of energy storage: batteries, compressed air, molten salt, and in Costa Rica they use pumped storage (looks like a regular water tank)

The DIY TV shows show them all the time, but these people are REALLY wealthy.

For the average American this is not a financial possibility.

Around here it's middleclass people trying to save a few bucks every month. Wealthy don't care. I've seen solar powered houses in Mass. and Maine, too.

In CA there are 20,000 households that are offgrid, most of them are moderate or low income, a combination of survivalists and hippies. Many traditionally poor communities are using solar power, even if just to bake bread in a solar oven made from a used tin can, in Appalachia and Africa.

Say, they made Cells really cheap and everyone loads up their roofs and sells the balance back to the Utility Company. Great idea and it is done all the time.

Now you have to have a control center, with all the dials, gauges and batteries.

How is the average person supposed to understand all the technical information behind their newly found power source? It has to be monitored.

One cheap PC.

Would the Utility companies have direct connection to every home to be able to do the monitoring and be able to send out a trouble shooter.

Already at least two connections: internet DSL and GPS satellite.

Would the Utility Companies be in control of this entire process as they are now with your metered electricity? Would they sell and install everything just like get getting a new hot water heater and piping?

All would be arbitrated and market determined.

As it stands right, now only the really wealthy can go full out Green.

The Media gives one the feeling that "All Out Green" is just around the corner, but is isn't.

Many people are already green, and they are generally un-wealthy, in some cases poor. The rich don't care.

If we go all electric for cars that great, but what about boats, ships and semi's? Are oil tankers going to have sails?

Boats and ships, etc., are easy. Harder is airplanes. But right now Boeing has a prototype of a hydrogen powered airplane using a Ford hydrogen engine for power. The goal is to compete with the Predator and Global Hawk pilotless planes that we use for spying and spot attacks. they stay aloft for 7 days at a time. Hydrogen is produced from electricity (perhaps solar) and water.

An what of the lowly Catalytic Converter that was supposed to clean up the air and cure the Smog problem? Not to mention the "AIR System" and the Oxygen Sensors plus all the rest of the junk we pay for to improve the Air Quality.

It looks like all we improved was the WALLET Quality of a lot of companies.

Most USA cities have been saved from Smog Death by cats and other auto smog controllers. Ask anyone who was living in a major US city in 1970. They should be required on trucks/buses also.

[SRT]

Isn't it amazing when the price of crude oil goes up the price of gasoline leaps up 10-15 cents a gallon right now. But when the price of crude falls (almost $100 now) the price of gasoline oh, so slowly, drops by pennies. Must be maximizing profits for all concerned. 😞

[TrueLarry]

Spot pricing will, obviously, have an impact and will result in price fluctuations that are outside the norm - the home heating oil spike this summer, for example. There is no logical reason for oil to be almost $5 this summer and back down to less than $4 now. That is just because oil is the new gold for the speculators.

As the demand went down and the supplies eased up, speculators backed off and the price came back down. Of more signifigance is the long-term trend. That's what we need to be concerned about. We will never see $2 per gallon again. One point Fezziwig has repeatedly made that I agree with is that subsidies also skew numbers because prices are artifically impacted by political meddling. We cannot fixate on one form of energy and say that solves the problem. We must develop all of it including drilling for oil and expanding our refineries.

[lwmuddy]

I like the Solar idea because the Sun is always there, at least during the day light hours.
Problem is that when the Sun sets you have to rely on storage batteries and BIG ones too.

The DIY TV shows show them all the time, but these people are REALLY wealthy.

For the average American this is not a financial possibility.

Say, they made Cells really cheap and everyone loads up their roofs and sells the balance back to the Utility Company. Great idea and it is done all the time.

Now you have to have a control center, with all the dials, gauges and batteries.

How is the average person supposed to understand all the technical information behind their newly found power source? It has to be monitored.

Would the Utility companies have direct connection to every home to be able to do the monitoring and be able to send out a trouble shooter.

Would the Utility Companies be in control of this entire process as they are now with your metered electricity? Would they sell and install everything just like get getting a new hot water heater and piping?

As it stands right, now only the really wealthy can go full out Green.

The Media gives one the feeling that "All Out Green" is just around the corner, but is isn't.

If we go all electric for cars that great, but what about boats, ships and semi's? Are oil tankers going to have sails?

An what of the lowly Catalytic Converter that was supposed to clean up the air and cure the Smog problem? Not to mention the "AIR System" and the Oxygen Sensors plus all the rest of the junk we pay for to improve the Air Quality.

It looks like all we improved was the WALLET Quality of a lot of companies.

OH POO, I've got to start battening down the hatches for Hanna this weekend.
Man the pumps men, we're taking on water.

[Fezziwig]

The "Free Market" picture is distorted by the immense government financial subsidies involved (primarily to big oil) which is ten of billions (the GAO once estimated $120billion/year). There are FIERCE behind-the-scenes battles over those subsidies.

A normal person might say "cut ALL the subsidies and let them all duke it out!". But politicians (both in congress and the administration) are not normal, so they just CAN'T do that!

So the normal person might say "OK, then start shifting the subsidies from one to the other over a period of time". But politicians can't do that, either.

We end up subsidizing ALL the competitors! Aren't we generous!

[H_1]

Found the link I'd mentioned earlier.
Rick Wagoner (GM CEO) on Charlie Rose

On the subject of incentives he said that GM doesn't expect the government to pay for the development of vehicles like the Volt, but would like to see the government encourage the demand side to help build volume. That would be a combination of incentives to buy, and also allowing fuel prices not to drop too much. The company is already realigning its production capacity to the reality of high gas prices and they would hate to see a reversal in demand for trucks at this point.

Not expressing approval or disapproval, but it seems possible there will be a long term impact on tow vehicles.

[traxtermax]

TrueLarry wrote:
...This is the reality - supply and demand...

In July heating oil was $4.89/gallon and now, September 3rd, is $3.87/gallon. How is that supply and demand?

[AO_hitech]

TrueLarry wrote:
This is the reality - supply and demand.

The current price spike is not supply and demand driven. The facts just don't support that.

[TrueLarry]

I've been following this thread for a few weeks now and it seems to me that it is going round and round and the same people keep saying the same things - hmmm sounds like the Republicans and Democrats debating in Congress.

What it really boils down to is quite simple - cost/benefit. We the people will buy the energy that is the cheapest we can get to meet our needs. Why we are all in a panic at the moment is that we can't just change everything in order to keep getting cheap energy. Oil companies will produce more when we stop putting restraints on their production and refining and when the profit enables them to do so and make money at it.

We the People will buy/install/use solar and wind when they are cheaper than gas/oil/electricity and we have the ability to use them effectively. What it comes down to is that we will have to be using a combination of all of these for a period of transition until something else comes along and takes their places.

Go back 150 or 200 years and we started with wood because it burned. Then we got coal so we used that because it was smaller to store and hotter to burn. Then oil came along and it got us something cheaper and easier to transport and use. It also gave us the internal combustion engine. When I was a teenager I drove a 75 HP six that got 8 miles per gallon. Now I drive a 230 HP six that gets 20 mpg. However, it's still internal combustion.

Now that we are facing the ultimate end of cheap oil, we must change again. The problem is that everything we might change to is still more expensive and has problems of distribution, transport, etc. However, the good news is that the price is causing us to conserve somewhat and the price of oil has dropped about 25% or so in just a few weeks. This is the reality - supply and demand. If demand goes down and/or supply goes up, the price goes down. When a cheap substitute comes along the price of fuel will fall. If nothing comes along it will keep going up. However, it will not be the government that makes this happen. When the feds or congress get involved they muck everything up artificially, which just makes matters worse. We don't need price controls and we don't need subsidies. What we need to do is let the market work, let companies make money and innovation will produce some solutions.