Effective ways to deal with gas prices?

E85 is supposed to be less expensive and better for the environment.

e85fuel.com will tell you if your car can take it and where you can buy it.

Has anyone use this?

 

i belive if we decrease demand prices will go up and stay up. look at it like this If i were selling gas to you and I bought this big house, tons of servants, 50 ferraris in the garage, if you started buying less, I would think well if I raised prices I would still make the same amount but with less work, and If no one is here to stop me I might as well, and I will get all my friends that sell gas to do the same. (in other words opec)

the only way to change it though is through the govt.

As a business owner If I knew that ALL my employees were getting a bad deal I would try to get them a better one through nego. and get other businesses together to change it.

I just think bush and chaney have too many friends in the oil business making two much money for them to change it.

I am not against bush or chaney. so dont start saying I am communist, or socialist please Just think it through!

john

 

Im starting to think it might actually be cheaper just to open my own Gas Station. Or maybe even my own Oil Company. Or Oil Rich Country.

 

Then you're a liberal. LMAO (just kidding)

Gvt doesn't want to regulate gas prices ... serves them well enough, and we can't live without it.
I will just get myself a couple 25gal tanks, and fill 'em up when prices drop under 70c /liter (canada) ... until then, I'll have to pay a frickin dollar per liter.

 

I see the problem as 20 years of relatively cheap gas has allowed people to buy and own cars with (basically) no regards to the fuel consumption of those vehicles. It will take on the order of 10 years to retire the current fleet AFTER gas prices stabilize.

After the fleet has been reitred, it will take another 10 years for populations to migrate closer to where they work (or migrate the work to where they live) in order to mitigate overhead of getting to work and back.

We did it to ourselves, government can't won't shouldn't solve this problem, people can and will.

 

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!

When has the govt ever improved anything?? The last thing we need is more regulation or help from the government.

sjb509 is correct, we need to decrease demand. If we decrease our demand enough, they will either have to lower prices or stop making money.

Walking not only saves money, but is healthier in the long run.

Dom

 

If less oil is sold, wouldnt prices need to come up in order to cover production costs.

 

I don't know. The price increase has not caused me to change my driving habits. Some of my friends won't take any long trips this summer. Maybe if I had a H2 I would feel different. I guess for what I pay for coffee a few times a day I can't really complain about the gas prices. The most I have paid is $2.09 a gallon, I use 93 octane.

 

I am saying this: I have been driving since 1969, bought gas at $0.17, watched the first oil crisis (73) just when I bought my first car, gas zoomed from $0.35 to $0.75. Yet that gas at $0.75 cost me more hours of work labor to achieve than $2.00 gas does today (for someone in equivalend economic grade today as I was back then).

 

you are correct i agree with you, And I know some people or media will say in porportion to what we were paying 20 years ago It is more in todays dollars, but what I dont understand, everything has come down in price by half if not more, phone service, long distance service for example, due to technology vcrs are much cheaper today than they were 15 years ago.

So shouldn't gas be too, 20 years ago you couldnt drill as far down, get as much oil out of a well, they didnt have computers to say where the best reserves are, they didnt have computers keeping control of inventory, a just in time shipping inventory they have today,

With my thinking (which could be wrong) gas should be much cheaper. not more!

but who benifits from keeping the price up?

john

 

It causes me to second think what I want to do and I try to group all the errands at once more...but I still drive for the hell of it a bit.

Gas is hurting, my daily is a Range rover.. I need something better I think...like a 456 or SL600

 

I don't really see the prices going down. Ever. Anybody look at China's increasing appetite for raw materials(including oil). Their consumption is growing exponentially. I think it's supply and demand.

I may get stoned for this but I welcome the higher gas prices. I love the fact that SUV sales are slowing. Hell, I'd go so far as to hope that pump gas hits $10 a gallon. The roads won't be clogged up with monster SUVs and the highways will be a lot more empty.

As for ways to adapt I think it's easy. Either earn more or modify your lifestyle.

 

I actually put race gas in my lawnmower the other day, cause i was too lazy to drive to the station. Needless to say the grass didn't get cut any faster, but it jsut points out the fact that if your worried about gas prices your in the wrong hobby

 

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Although I dislike SUVs intensely, as well. I also dislike high oil prices.

-Hurts everyone, including ordinay joes in ordinary jobs, driving their Hondas to work.

China is the 700 lb gorilla in global economics and is certainly a huge factor in prices...

 

Oil is a consumable natural resource with constant demand and technology products haved a much more limited demand (you buy 1, 2 and that's it)- and it's the manufacturing process that gets cheaper over time to produce them that makes them cheaper. Phone service is a service that is not consumable.

Oil companies and oil-producing nations who bear the risks, costs and burdens of finding, extracting and processing the oil for us benefit from keeping the price per barrel up; governments then benefit by taxing the heck out of it and keeping gasoline prices up.

 

When a bunch of companies manufacture stuff at more than a million units each per year, they learn things, these companies take what they learn and figure out how to make these things for less money so that their profits rise (VCR)

In the case of telephone service, in the 1990s these companies build a fiber optical backbone to the phone system. This same backbone carries the internet. And with the internet and all the phone traffic occuring, this backbone is operating at 2% capacity. The phone companies are trying to increase capacity utilization by offering rates just high enough that they can cover the intrest payments on the incurred debt of building this infrastructure. In a few years, the next generation of optical transceivers will be installed and the backbone capacity will drop to 0.3% unless there is a big upswing in bandwidth demand.

So the cost of a phone call goes to pay for writing down the investment in the backbone infrastructure and electricity that runs the equiptment.

Even though we can drill much deeper*, it is still expensive to drill and more expensive to drill deeper, and even more expensive to pump oil up from deeper wells. Shipping and inventory is mere overhead, finding, drilling and pumping are major cost centers.

Producers benefit from keeping the price up, consumers benefit from keeping prices down. But notice that the major producers in the middle east are not so happy with out attempt to install democracy in a region known for kings rulling with iron fists. Perhaps these kings are not so happy with democracy on their boundaries that might lead <gasp> to democracy in their country down the road. Notice, also, that any of the 5 major ME producers can shut off 1 MBarrels per day going into the supply side of the system, and cause massive increases in the price due to the inelasticity of demand in the short rum.

*In the late 1960s there was a hole drilled approximately 6 miles into the ground, the technology to do this has stabilized and its cost has come down.

 

They say this, that, and the other thing....Truth is...they are sticking it to us..becuase they can.........everyone tries to put a complex idea behind it...they tried to get away with it, they did, so they will continue to do so..If you think it is just affecting a $50 bill a month you are WAY wrong. There is a massive boom of service industry in the United States and every Tom, Dick and Harry started their own small business so they could eat after getting layed off...Some are doing well and some are not....MANY are using large amounts of fuel for machinery....So a few SUV's arn't being sold...big deal.....think the gas prices are not hurting us.....Let's see the tourism dollar amounts after this summer...I for one have cancelled my trip to New York, the UP, and S> Carolina based on fuel prices...People are not going to be racking up miles on their cars either so the auto industry will suffer, as well as the truckers, airline ect.....They are sticking it to us good and some people are REALLY struggling with the prices. Most people where I live commute 60 miles to work each day.....this is a bad thing...with diesel fuel near $1.90 there is your clue..And to just say buy a smaller car ect ect is not a solution...The US economy is highly based on commuting, trucking, airline, and small contracting business, all using plenty of fuel.....Think the economy is bad now, keep these prices up and see how bad it gets.......It's all BS....I'll think I'll buy my own cow now and make my own milk and grow my own food and ride a horse..Hell I'll be Amish!!...opps Amish don't pay taxes, so that won't help the country either......

 

Oil companies are collecting record profits while consumers get drilled at the gas pumps, underscoring the iron grip the companies have over virtually every aspect of the oil market.

In the first three months of this year, profits for the five largest oil companies operating in the U.S. rose nearly 40 percent over the same period last year. The companies are involved in all facets of the industry, from exploration, production and refining to distribution and retail sales.

In the wake of recent oil company mergers, the five companies -- Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, BP Amoco-Arco, Phillips-Tosco and Marathon -- control more than two-fifths of domestic production, nearly half of the domestic refining and more than three-fifths of the domestic retail market. These top five oil companies are so big that they produce more oil than Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Yemen combined. A copy of Public Citizen's report "No Competition: Oil Industry Mergers Provide Higher Profits, Leave Consumers With Fewer Choices"...........

This was a report from 2001. The same crap all over again, exept that the oil companies profits are probably higher now! I think that the government should cap their profits. When PG&E got busted for ripping off the public, they had to give rebates back. Why the F not with big oil?

 

Why is it that people start crying foul when oil companies post great profits? What's wrong with them making a profit? Hell, what's wrong with a 40% increase in profit? You don't hear people wailing away when software companies have great profits and their margins are much better than oil.

Like I said, I'm all for higher gas prices. Might it negatively impact the US economy? Maybe, but I believe people can and will become more resourceful. Just like the landscape of jobs in the US is evolving so might the living/commuting practices of the regular joe.

 

You could always save money in another area by using this!? You would therefore have more money for gas!??
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A nice dose of reality is what Americans need to understand that they aren't entitled to 1.00/gallon gasoline. $4.00/gallon is about right for us rich Americans who refuse to even refine our own fuel as it will spoil the landscape in some town.

I already know of at least one person who rented a room near work so he can stay there 4 nights a week and go home on the weekends. He lives 30 miles from work and drives a small truck.

There already ARE alternatives to driving to work. Buses and trains while not paletable to most middle class people are a valid alternative. You can follow the bus to work or you can get on it. If you aren't willing to get on it. Stop moaning an pony up.

Most people agree prices are going to stay high.....
Then make some money and buy real estate in the cities
I don't think that offices will move but I do think people will start to migrate back to the cities over the next 10 years.