I have a question!

[nodlenor]

Due to "IKE" the oil companies had to shut down their refineries and therefore raised their prices. Does that mean all those people who haven't been able to work because of "IKE" get to raise their wages or if someone gets layed off for one reason or another do they also deserve a raise to cover their losses? It looks to me like what's good for the goose should be good for the gander. If the oil companies are going to raise their prices everytime we have a disaster they should have to donate at least part of their profits to the people who really lost something.

Crude oil prices are going down and gas prices are going up. That tells me that the Arabs aren't the ones responsible for the price increases we've been getting lately and maybe never have been.

Also, how does every gas station in the country know when to raise their prices and by how much? Price fixing? No, they wouldn't do that would they?

There, I got that off my chest.

[DalesCarpentry]

I talked to a friend tonight about similar things. the reason the price went up is because they can pure and simple. I follow your logic completely. I guess they figure they need to make the same profit weather they are producing or not. Dale

[Spanky]

One word for you...

DEREGULATION


What a mistake that was!!



Spanky

[Mikey]

nodlenor:  it never really was the arabs, it was always the American oil refineries and the oil companies that set the prices and gouged you.  The US has not built any new refineries since the 70s and it doesn't matter how much per barrel oil is or how many barrel the arabs can send us, it is our own oil companies and refineries that are limiting production, setting prices and screwing us so badly. 

For all the profit the oil companies have made over the past even 20 yrs they have never once built any new refineries - and it ain't the seagull and butterfly huggers either, it is simply their full knowledge that they have us by the balls, that they can gouge however much they want from us and, that they have absolutely no intention of cutting their profits in any way.

Look at it this way - oil company refineries have a limit on their production - they can only make just so much or the companies only want them to make just so much.  This way they can keep jacking the price up whenever they want for whatever the reason when the only real reason is profit.  Katrina and Ike were just excuses.

So, we need more oil and gas refineries to increase production and cut the profits from these companies.  I do not think the answer is in government owned refineries but in more competetion to lower the prices. 

There was an aritcle running around the intenet about the North Shore in Alaska and Gov. Palin's stement about the amount of reserves found there and how those reserves could reduce our dependence on foreign oil and provide us with necessary fuel sources for years to come.  In conjuntion there was another article about the largest oil reserves in the world found beneath the Rockies in N. Dakota, Montana and Canada - enough to drop the worldwide price of oil to about $16 per barrel, which would mean pennies a gallon at the pumps. 

I think the only way to get out of this crunch is to beat the oil cartels ar their own game and I believe Sarah Palin just may be the one to do it. 

Hey, nuts to the tree huggers and butterfly lovers who don't want the Artic Flea to become extinct - Open up the North Shore and drill for oil under the Rockies and let the rest of the world fend for itself.  Just my two cents worth.  Mikey.

[BBF]

Mikey:
The oil Co run at less then 10 % profit which isn't a rip off in my mind.

[rex6666]

supposedly the refineries in the U.S. are not set up to refine the oil that
we pump in the U.S., some thing about grade of crude we have and we
were buying most all oil overseas. I read an article that a co. wants to build a
refinery that will handle any thing. they went to the AZ desert something like 30-40 miles from nowhere, to stay out of trouble with the tree huggers.
With all the air test, soil test, goat dropping test, seagull fly over test.
butter fly nesting test. it will take 12-15 years before the first gal. of
gas drips out the back end. This is if every thing passes the TEST. this is
just one of the reasons no new refineries are being built. The EPA ran all the small refineries out of business. when i lived in El Paso, TX in the early
80's their were 4-5 refineries now i believe their is one TEXACO left. It
seems that if the refineries are making so much money, they would not close, or would build more. I have a feeling it is after it has left the refinery that the gouge starts.

[oldandslow]

I have never heard that about the refineries not being able to handle US crude. I know the big one at Big Spring,TX does. In fact I think that's all it refines. Of course that is only one refinery and it wouldn't make sense to pipe foreign crude to it.  My son was stationed in EL Paso in the early 90s and we would drive there to see him occassionally. Gasoline was always higher there than any other town in the area.

I spent my all my working life in the oil industry except for a couple of years. 27 years was for a major oil company. When the price of crude was high the production end of the company was making money and the refining end was hurting. When the price was low the refinering part of the company was doing good and we were dealing with big budget cuts, big cutbacks in exploration, and generally tough times including lay offs.

One of the biggest reasons the oil industry hasn't been able to do much in the US in the last twenty years is the EPA and state agencies environmental rules. Quite a few of the rules are to keep the tree hugger types shut up. Some were needed but not all of them.

[gypsyman]

OLDANDSLOW hit the nail right on the head. We have 2 oil refrinerys here in NW Ohio, out of an original 5. The EPA has basically sent up guide lines that would double or triple the cost of building new refrinery's. Another reason why big business is moving overseas. Instead of costing 200 million, might cost half a billion to build a new refrinery. Have to sell alot of gas with .20 or .30 per gallon profit to pay for that.  gypsyman

[ironglow]

  Must be a local gouging thing..no money gouging in this area. A local TV station did a survey and found none in the several counties
  in this end of my home state.

[Dixie Dude]

I work for a natural gas company for 33 years.  It is not all the oil companies doing this.  It is all the conditions combined.  You can't run a pipeline, build a refinery, or anything without doing an environmental study.  It has cost us a fortune to have to install pipelines by bore instead of trenching because of some "endangered" animal, fish, or even endangered "grass" which we ran into one time. Refineries stink.  No one wants one in their "neighborhood".  If they have to shut a refinery down temporarily, it puts gasoline in short supply.  Local gas stations then have to by from different distributors, which raise prices to cover additional costs and sales.  Existing refineries have to try to make up difference in supply if one or more are shut down, this causes overtime productions, which drives up costs.  Government regulations cost natural gas companies about double what it would without the regulations.  It is a combination of high OPEC pricing, lack of new refineries, Most new oil in the US is offshore or on government land and in Alaska.  About half of the cost of a gallon of gas, is government taxes: on the barrel oil, transportation taxes, distribution taxes, per gallon tax, and sales taxes.  Don't blame it all on the oil companies.  Natural gas is taxed at the wellhead, taxed if it crosses state lines (federal), sales tax from transportation pipeline to local distribution pipeline, sales tax on the sale to individuals.  Oil and gas are taxed all along the way.  If Obama taxes the big bad corporations, they are only going to pass it along to us.  We need a flat income tax and a national sales tax to solve all this mess.  Government needs to relax the drilling bans, and get out of the way.  Then we can get our own supplies, and the prices will stabilize, and the supply will be stable.  

[oldandslow]

The state of NM gets a huge part of it's annual revenue from the taxes on oil and gas. I won't go into all the different taxes that are charged plus lease sales on state owned land which is a huge amount of NM. Southwestern University did a study about three years ago that showed the state derived 40% of it's annual revenues from oil and gas production in Lea County alone. Throw in the other oil and gas producing regions of the state and I'm sure it it well over 50% total. If it wasn't for revenues from the oil industry NM couldn't even afford paved roads. Still, most everyone in the state doesn't want the oil industry anywhere near them.