Future Predicted Gas Prices

[Kuripot]

Originally Posted by Kuripot

Personally I don't think the world economy can sustain oil prices at this level indefinitely. IMHO the rise has happened to quickly and there's a bubble formed. I predict we see gasoline below the $3 mark again before the summer of 2009. India, Indonesia, and China have been subsidizing oil prices. Other countries have frozen the price of gasoline. They can't afford to continue to do that forever. When they stop, and gasoline goes through the roof in those countries, their economies will suffer significantly and demand for oil and gas will drop as it already is in the US and Canada. Thats when prices will come back down. I believe they will drop after the summer olympics when China cuts back on their subsidies but I'm not sure how much. It just depends on how long these governments can keep the price low in their countries.

Anybody see oil coming down today? Countries are dropping their subsidies and demand is dropping too. It's only a matter of time before we see sub $3 gas again in the US. Watch what happens after the summer olympics.

[GasSavers_JoeBob]

Maybe...in my neighborhood, most stations are around 429.9 cents per gallon for regular, and I've seen as much as 489.9/g for premium at one station. That station is one which usually has lower prices...guess there isn't much surplus gas that they can get cheap...

[bowtieguy]

Originally Posted by Kuripot

Anybody see oil coming down today? Countries are dropping their subsidies and demand is dropping too. It's only a matter of time before we see sub $3 gas again in the US. Watch what happens after the summer olympics.

i do not agree w/ his politics, but george soros believes there is a bubble soon to burst as well. i truly hope both of you are correct!

[slurp812]

Originally Posted by bowtieguy

i do not agree w/ his politics, but george soros believes there is a bubble soon to burst as well. i truly hope both of you are correct!

Me too, but I am fully prepared to pay over $5 a gallon...

[Snax]

Originally Posted by Biffmeistro

Trying to use that sort of an argument is like trying to say if everyone in the world dumped a bottle of food coloring in the ocean that it would turn red, merely because if you put a bottle in a glass of water it would turn red. The scale is far too great to have much of an effect.

The effect that humans have on global warming is real, and it is measurable. But it is also negligible. Even if all man made CO2 were to stop, it wouldn't do any good for the "climate crisis".

With water vapor taken out of the picture, man made greenhouse gasses account for about 5.5% of all greenhouse gasses. Quite the significant amount. However, since water vapor accounts for 95% of ALL greenhouse gasses, and something like 99.999% of all water vapor is natural. This makes it so that man made gasses only account for about .23% of all greenhouse gasses.

Have you ever superheated water then dropped 0.23% sugar into it? It is literally an explosive reaction. Granted, it's apples to potatos, but consider that 0.23% of an impact by mankind may just be enough to be catastrophic. Out of the average 26,000 breaths an adult takes per day, what percentage of breaths do you think a 1-pack (20 cigarettes) per day smoker takes? Nope, no cancer in there!!

You also mention that it takes 30% more energy to produce ethanol than it gives back. That is PURE horsecrap. I can grow corn in my garden without spending more calories to grow it than I would get out of it. Converting those calories to an alcohol form does not reduce them so much as to require more energy than is already there. That 30% figure is a fantasy generated by the oil companies and investors to muddy the truth and is really a misquote of the fact that ethanol costs more to DELIVER than oil due to a lack of pipeline ability.

The TRUTH is that ethanol requires more energy to obtain and deliver than oil, but it is still a net gain at the end of the process and less expensive to provide. And if you want to talk subsidies, need I recap what the oil companies have been receiving?

I don't think ethanol is any miracle, and I don't know one way or the other on it's real affect on food prices, but it's a start toward something different which may lead toward greater energy independence AND possibly lower fuel prices as more efficient crops are utilized for production.

For cripes sake, one of the most fertile valleys on the west coast, the Willamette Valley, is still primarily a haven for grass seed farming! Wheat and corn grow like crazy here, but clearly the priorities of industry are not on keeping food production costs reasonable since people in this country care more about their lawns than growing things to eat!!! So don't believe the scarcity hype either. If farmers made more money growing food, they would! And hypocrites with expansive lawns and no gardens who complain about food and gas prices are the peak of ridiculousness. So few are willing to look 3 feet past their doorsteps to the obvious solution ready to smack them in the face with a weed whacker.

I know, I'm ranting now, but people in the US do allot of whining about stuff they have at least some power to control, yet they refuse to even take that first step of planting a garden, and blame others for their problems instead. I'm not accusing anybody here of that, but that seems to be our culture.

OOps, forgot to add that I think we will hit an over $5/gallon average in this country as the oil companies make a last ditch effort to milk every last dime out of us before the Democrats make some rather painful changes to the way they are allowed to do business in 2009 and beyond. Of course, prices will drop for some unrealistic BS reason right before the general election, but I wouldn't bet on it being any cheaper than it is today.

[nlife]

Originally Posted by jamithan

I hope so man. I live in Alberta (ya that Alberta with the 2nd most oil in the world). Gas is like $0.11 in Iran or some crap. How do they get away with that and we pay $1.23 a litre ($4.67 a U.S. gallon = 3.8L). We actually think a $4.00 gallon would be great.

...actually, doesn't Russia have 40% of the worlds known oil reserves?

N

[opelgt73]

Originally Posted by jamithan

I hope so man. I live in Alberta (ya that Alberta with the 2nd most oil in the world). Gas is like $0.11 in Iran or some crap. How do they get away with that and we pay $1.23 a litre ($4.67 a U.S. gallon = 3.8L). We actually think a $4.00 gallon would be great.

Because the majority of Canada's oil is in the form of oil shale, or as I have heard it called "the tar sands". It is not not light sweet crude. Oil shale is much more expensive to extract and refine and only recently have plants been set up to extract/refine it as it has now become a profitable endeavor with crude being so high. Same goes for Venezuela. Both Canada and Venezuela produce crude but the vast majority of their "oil" is in the form of shale.

Actually the worlds reserve of oil is broken down almost in equal thirds, 1/3 being in Canada, 1/3 in Venezuela, and 1/3 in the middle east. The middle east has had an advantage in that it's large reserves are in the form of light sweet crude (or other heavier forms of crude). As the price of oil from the middle east rises it will become more and more attractive for oil companies to extract oil from the tar sands.

I used to work for a company that built power plants and refineries. I remember around 2005 my boss telling me that they were bidding on oil shale extraction projects in Canada. He told me the break even price per barrel was around $45. As it is now $120+ I think it's obvious that we will see more plants built there.

[civic_matic_00]

Originally Posted by opelgt73

Because the majority of Canada's oil is in the form of oil shale, or as I have heard it called "the tar sands". It is not not light sweet crude. Oil shale is much more expensive to extract and refine and only recently have plants been set up to extract/refine it as it has now become a profitable endeavor with crude being so high. Same goes for Venezuela. Both Canada and Venezuela produce crude but the vast majority of their "oil" is in the form of shale.

Actually "tar sands oil" is different from Oil Shale. Canada's oil come from tar sands, Oil shale is basically rock impregnated with oil and the US has the largest oil shale reserve in the world....but, it would be costly to harvest and I doubt that environmentalist would agree to do so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale

Some analysts, along with the United States Geological Survey, draw a distinction between oil-shale resources and oil-shale reserves. "Resources" may refer to all oil shale deposits, while "reserves" is more narrowly defined as those deposits from which oil can profitably be extracted using existing technologies. Since extraction technologies are still developing, the amount of recoverable kerogen can only be estimated.[6][18] Although oil shale resources occur in many countries, only 33 countries possess deposits of possible economic value.[19][20] Well-explored deposits, which could be classified as reserves, include the Green River deposits in the western United States, the Tertiary deposits in Queensland, Australia, deposits in Sweden and Estonia, the El-Lajjun deposit in Jordan, and deposits in France, Germany, Brazil, China, and Russia. It is expected that these deposits would yield at least 40 liters of shale oil per tonne of shale, using the Fischer assay.[6][14]

A 2005 estimate set the total world resources of oil shale at 411 gigatons ? enough to yield 2.8 to 3.3 trillion barrels (520 km?) of shale oil.[2][3][4][5] This is more than world's proven conventional oil reserves, estimated to be 1.317 trillion barrels (209.4?109 m3), as of 1 January 2007.[21] The largest deposits in the world are found in the United States in the Green River basin, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming; about 70% of this resource is located on federally owned or managed land.[22] Deposits in the United States constitute 62% of world resources; together, the United States, Russia and Brazil account for 86% of the world's resources in terms of shale oil content.[19] These figures are considered tentative, as several deposits have not yet been explored or analyzed.[6][2]

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if companies are allowed to tap into the oil shale reserves in the US, it can drastically reduce oil prices but it may increase greenhouse gasses more though.

more information about Oil Shale and Tar sands:

http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/index.cfm

[Wyldesoul]

Originally Posted by Snax

Have you ever superheated water then dropped 0.23% sugar into it? It is literally an explosive reaction. Granted, it's apples to potatos, but consider that 0.23% of an impact by mankind may just be enough to be catastrophic. Out of the average 26,000 breaths an adult takes per day, what percentage of breaths do you think a 1-pack (20 cigarettes) per day smoker takes? Nope, no cancer in there!!

There is a major flaw in that argument. Yes, adding .23% of something to something different can have a MASSIVE effect. Such as if you were .23% cyanide to your water you would die, or .23% capsaicin your tongue would feel on fire. Or, yes, both of your examples.

However adding by .23% to something that already exists, would have little to no effect. In your examples. Using .23% more sugar to add to that superheated water won't make the explosion any more massive. Or with your smoker. Taking a single breath of smoke per day more wouldn't have a real effect, if he's taking 500 already (So that we have about .2% additional).

Or to counter the "need" people have of reducing our carbon emissions. Taking a single breath less per day, while still puffing those 500 breaths won't stop that smoker from getting cancer. Nor would it, for us, stop the world from heating up.

Originally Posted by Snax

I can grow corn in my garden without spending more calories to grow it than I would get out of it. Converting those calories to an alcohol form does not reduce them so much as to require more energy than is already there.

Yes, yes you can. Because corn is an excellent food source, but not an energy source. Quite a difference between the two, if you argue otherwise, I'd like to see you sustain yourself on nuclear power or solar energy. It is a MASSIVE net gain in calories, but in order to convert it into alcohol, there is a net loss in calories, and more importantly, a net loss in BTUs. Meaning the process of distilling takes more energy than it is worth.

Originally Posted by Snax

For cripes sake, one of the most fertile valleys on the west coast, the Willamette Valley, is still primarily a haven for grass seed farming! Wheat and corn grow like crazy here, but clearly the priorities of industry are not on keeping food production costs reasonable since people in this country care more about their lawns than growing things to eat!!! So don't believe the scarcity hype either. If farmers made more money growing food, they would! And hypocrites with expansive lawns and no gardens who complain about food and gas prices are the peak of ridiculousness. So few are willing to look 3 feet past their doorsteps to the obvious solution ready to smack them in the face with a weed whacker.

It's a matter of free market on that one. The in the Willamette valley are making plenty of money growing grass seed, due to the current demand. If they stopped, demand wouldn't stop and prices would skyrocket, causing more farmers in the country to turn to grass seed growing, because it's profitable, until there are enough farmers for price to level somewhere.

The price of corn has increased. And it increased when ethanol became subsidized. That's a fact. Now, economically it makes sense that the increased demand of ethanol to raise the price of corn, but if you want to look at them as unrelated coincidence, feel free.

Originally Posted by Snax

I know, I'm ranting now, but people in the US do allot of whining about stuff they have at least some power to control, yet they refuse to even take that first step of planting a garden, and blame others for their problems instead. I'm not accusing anybody here of that, but that seems to be our culture.

You know, I can't agree with you more on this one. My lease wont' allow it in my apartment complex, but my parents have quite the large vegetable garden.

[Kuripot]

Originally Posted by Kuripot

Personally I don't think the world economy can sustain oil prices at this level indefinitely. IMHO the rise has happened to quickly and there's a bubble formed. I predict we see gasoline below the $3 mark again before the summer of 2009. India, Indonesia, and China have been subsidizing oil prices. Other countries have frozen the price of gasoline. They can't afford to continue to do that forever. When they stop, and gasoline goes through the roof in those countries, their economies will suffer significantly and demand for oil and gas will drop as it already is in the US and Canada. Thats when prices will come back down. I believe they will drop after the summer olympics when China cuts back on their subsidies but I'm not sure how much. It just depends on how long these governments can keep the price low in their countries.

It's starting, China is raising its price on fossil fuels (reducing subsidies). I didn't expect it until after the summer olympics but sooner is better rather than later.

Let's what happens.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080619/oil_prices.html