Just a reminder: "Big Oil" does NOT set oil or gasoline prices. Wall Street does.

[Redstone]

And if the Walls Street Futures parasites bid up the price to $90 per barrel, are the oil companies supposed to say "Nah, that's too much; we'll sell it to you for $70 per barrel?"

I'm not a fan of Big Oil companies, but people, you gotta put the blame where it belongs:

1) Wall Street parasites, and

2) You and me, and EVERYONE else who drives when they don't HAVE to. Mrs R and I use VERY little gasoline, because we live and work in town. But on a nice day like today, we'll jump in my car with the roof down, and drive a couple of towns upriver for a picnic with our kid. We're driving for pleasure, so we don't have a right to bitch about gasoline prices, any more than other people in town who drive a 450-horsepower Porsche Cayenne (this is true) containing ONE 120-pound woman to a store near the top of Main Street, then DRIVE ONE-QUARTER MILE and re-park to go to another store near the middle of Main Street.

Anyone here who HASN'T driven 1/4 mile on a nice day to get something that isn't heavy to carry, like a video or a sandwich? I know there are plenty, and you folks are excused. As are disabled people, of course.

Anyone who HAS, well, YOU are a big part of the problem, and you can stop complaining right now.

Redstone

[johnaries]

1. Wall St. sets Oil prices, not Gas prices.

Big Oil is blaming the current trend on "refinery issues". Of course, if they had reopened some of those refineries they closed n the '70's it might not be an issue.

But, by keeping refinery capacity down, they control the market and increase prices.

[Redstone]

2. Uh, what's gasoline made from?

Redstone

[johnaries]

12. There is a huge difference between the price of oil

and the price of gas. For one thing, the oil companies use a "sliding margin" markup. The higher the price of oil, the higher the percentage of markup. In theory, this is to help pay for addition exploration. In theory. But this markup is only the beginning. By restricting the refining and availbility of gasoline, they can artificially inflate the price of the end product.

In case you haven't noticed, there were several periods in which the price of oil went down whereas the price of gas continued to rise.

[mrcheerful]

3. But control of oil refineries has no effect on price? Wrong yet again, restricting oil production ca

can and has effected oil prices. Wall street only has the power to manipulate the price of crude oil and the price per barrel. It's oil refineries that produce the finished product and slowing the production, by limiting the number of refineries, repairs of refineries and other things have a direct result at the gas pumps price.

[Redstone]

4. And where do they get the oil to refine into gasoline?

Redstone

[puerco-bellies]

13. Big Oil Negotiates contracts to pump oil in fields foreign and domestic

It transports that oil via it's own transportation network. It refines the oil in it's own refineries to products and sells those products in it's own franchises. The energy pits on the NYMerc trade oil and other futures that are written on contracts of petroleum in the transportation pipeline. The contracts cover a tiny percentage of the total oil/petroleum produced and or used in this country.

The pits are used as a pricing mechanism which is completely open to manipulation by the suppliers in a monopolized market. These pits are a secondary point of price manipulation from big oil, the first being the strangle hold of supply and influence of demand via influence in the adaptation of public transportation, American auto manufactures, i.e. electric/hybred technology.

The pits primary function is to protect secondary consumers of petro-products from even greater swings in pricing. By utilizing futures a company can "lock-in" pricing and allow a company to project energy costs to a greater degree than otherwise possible.

It's Big Oil that controls the pricing, period.

[IDemo]

19. Unrelated question - WTF is a pork belly good for?

after it's departed el puerco, that is?

[puerco-bellies]

20. It's bacon baby!!!

Mmmmm, tasty bacon.. slurp.

[IDemo]

21. PBLT sandwich,,,just ain't gonna taste the same now

[puerco-bellies]

22. Fear not my brother in smoked meats..

It is not the functioning belly part, just the cut bordered by the ribs, hams, and chops. Now grab a few thick slices of smoked pepper-corned goodness. Fry it crisp, slather some mayo on a couple of nice toasty full grain slices of bread, add a little LT to keep it plausibly healthy-ish and join mile high cholesterol club.
:-)

[mudesi]

5. The wall street guys don't really set the price

The traders are just buying at as low a price as they can so they can sell it later at a higher price. The price itself is determined by supply and demand, and it is the oil companies that are purposely restricting supply because they are effectively a monopoly, and restricting supply is what monopolies do.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Don't forget gasoline futures...

and I got yelled at when I said pretty much the same thing about how we do share much of the blame for doing our share wasting what oil we have.

Just little things like the excessive amounts of plastic packaging. Guess what most plastics are made from.

Know anybody who drove to the protests over building a new refinery in a Land Rover? We haven't built a new refinery in this country in over 30 years, and the expansions of current refineries haven't really kept pace with demand. Besides, when upgrading a refinery, you have to take a lot of it offline.

With the rest of the world competing for oil and gas that isn't increasing in supply, everybody better just stop whining about it and figure out ways to deal with it.

Like better bus service.

[Redstone]

8. And train service. I'd be only to happy to jump on the train in my town to visit my customer

in New Haven, about 30 miles away. But guess what? They don't allow you to bring a bicycle onto the train, the bus service in New Haven is crappy, so I'd end up having to take a taxi from and to the train station in New Haven, costing me more that it would to just drive there.

Redstone

[Demonaut]

11. plastic trees? see em every xmas

silly

[RB TexLa]

7. Speculation is a legitimate, important and necessary part of any market

[Redstone]

9. Well, then, it's OK, isn't it? Everyone can stop complaining now.

Redstone

[johnaries]

14. NO! It's not OK at all!

Remember the Republican "investigation" into gas price fixing, where the excutives weren't even place under oath? Remember that it was later proven that they had lied on several points? Remember how prices went down prior to the last election, but then went back up afs soon as the election was over?

Yo cannot convince me that oil companies are not engaging in price fixing until we have a REAL investigation.

[Redstone]

15. I agree. And why do Wall Street parasites deserve a piece of the action? What do they

contribute, except for driving prices higher and adding THEIR profits into the ultimate cost?

Redstone

[puerco-bellies]

16. The futrures markets exist as a pricing control mechanism.

Speculators bet both the up's and the downs in pricing. You don't understand the markets or the futures industry.

[Redstone]

17. I guess not.

Redstone

[johnaries]

18. And I will agree with you that we should all conserve more.

On that point, you are correct. Our own addiction is a factor in higher prices.

However, I still want an investigation into price fixing.

I'm afraid it's going to be a while before alternative fuels make a real difference, and in the meantime I'm tired of being gouged.

[mudesi]

10. Only if it's done honestly

Unfortunately, too many people cheat. I remember a few months back a video of Jim Cramer came out where he admitted to manipulating prices by having false reports come out.

[pimpbot]

23. Your arguement does not hold water for the last couple of months

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?time=24

Do the graph of gas price with the graph of crude oil prices. You'll notice both increasing in the last couple of months, but the gas price increase has a much higher slope. I would reason to say there are other factors involved other than just the crude price. (IE. big oil greed).

[MichaelHarris]

24. I think

ENRON used that same excuse. Remember the Enr.. I mean Wall Street brokers calling the power companies and asking them to "Go Down" for a while?

[Hippo_Tron]

25. I'm fairly sure that gasoline is significantly marked up

At the current price of oil, they could sell gasoline for less than it currently is, but then they wouldn't make as much profit. You wouldn't think that's unreasonable considering that they are making record profits.

[Chomskyite]

26. A question

Doesn't Big Oil have some control over what the Wall Streeters do?

[alittlelark]

27. The Wall Street parasites are sucking us dry.....

But you utilize an example that is both virtuous and impossible....


The 120 lb woman driving the kid to an idyllic location 1/4 mile from the house... with the top down.

COOOOL - but why not walk?




Those of us in Urban areas WALK. I am in a 'border zone', but we walk whenever possible.


I have driven 1/4 mile to get something heavy, but that was a piece of art given to us by a neighbor (2 houses away) that weighed 270 lbs.

[heidler1]

28. I own quite a bit of oil stock and watch the oil market every day that it's open.

The market is almost entirely influenced by world news including, weather, (FEAR), OPEC, accidents, China's & India's growing industrial capacity (Usage of oil) and Bush's & Hugo Chevese's & Irans saber rattleing threats. Bush is the worst of the bunch. Dwindeling reserves in the US makes it unprofitable to build more refineries. If the big oil companies built more refineries that were not needed the whole delivery system would become more inefficient so they won't do that unless it pays off for them. Refineries are very expensive to build and dangerous to operate.

Without the stock market the ability to large scale finance oil drilling and refining as we know it would not have happened. Countries that do not have the market get big oil to do the job.

When I worked for IBM Corp. one of my accounts was Standard Oil in Elsegundo, CA. When our computer that controled the Catcracker broke down I was often assigned the job, by IBM, to go fix it. You could hear the emergancy horns honking from a half a mile away. It was very stressful even being there let alone trying to fix some thing.

IMO Redstone has it pretty much right. We must get down to the small sacrifices that we can all do. If I had my way the first thing would be to lower speed limits. 60 or less on the highway and 25 in all cities and towns. This would make it legal to drive elecric golf carts to do all of ones shopping and even encourage people to live closer to their work.