but can still go 400 miles and fill my tank for $35

our minivan, on the other hand....

 

And that's regular gas at that!

 

I recieved this e-mail: If it's true, what is our problem?

Here is the e-mail:

Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, we're looking at a resource base worth more than $5...3 trillion.

"When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea.." says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.

"This sizable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years," reportsThe Pittsburgh Post Gazette. It's a formation known as the Williston Basin , but is more commonly referred to as the 'Bakken.' It stretches from Northern Montana , through North Dakota and into Canada . For years, U. S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the 'Big Oil' companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves..... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels. And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!

That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 2041 years straight. And if THAT didn't throw you on the floor, then this next one should - because it's from 2006!

U.S. Oil Discovery- Largest Reserve in the World
Stansberry Report Online - 4/20/2006

Hidden 1,000 feet beneath the surface of the Rocky Mountains lies the largest untapped oil reserve in the world. It is more than 2 TRILLION barrels. On August 8, 2005 President Bush mandated its extraction. In three and a half years of high oil prices none has been extracted. With this mother load of oil why are we still fighting over off-shore drilling?

They reported this stunning news: We have more oil inside our borders, than all the other proven reserves on earth.. Here are the official estimates:

- 8-times as much oil as Saudi Arabia
- 18-times as much oil as Iraq
- 21-times as much oil as Kuwait
- 22-times as much oil as Iran
- 500-times as much oil as Yemen
- and it's all right here in the Western United States .

HOW can this BE? HOW can we NOT BE extracting this? Because the environmentalists and others have blocked all efforts to help America become independent of foreign oil! Again, we are letting a small group of people dictate our lives and our economy.....WHY?

James Bartis, lead researcher with the study says we've got more oil in this very compact area than the entire Middle East -more than 2 TRILLION barrels untapped. That's more than all the proven oil reserves of crude oil in the world today, reports The Denver Post.
Don 't think 'OPEC' will drop its price - even with this find? Think again! It's all about the competitive marketplace, - it has to. Think OPEC just might be funding the environmentalists?
Got your attention yet? Now, while you're thinking about it, do this:

By the way...this is all true. Check it out at the link below!!!
GOOGLE it, or follow this link. It will blow your mind.
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911

 

Sensationalism at it's best.

Here's the problems:
- The US Geological Survey says the recoverable amount is only 3.65 billion barrels, not 2 trillion.
- it's a lot more expensive than $16/barrel to extract. It's currently about $70/barrel, down from about $90 a few years ago, so it only makes sense to go after it if oil prices are $5-$10 above that.
- it's a very complex process to extract it, so it's slow. Current production is only 350,000 barrels a day, about 2% of US demand. You basically have to squeeze it out of rock - it's not like drilling a hole and letting it gush out.
- the extraction process is very water-intensive, and the Dakotas are famous for their lack of water. This will likely be the biggest impediment to scaling operations.
- the extraction process is very energy intensive - some studies indicate that it takes more energy to extract a barrel of oil from these sources than is in that barrel of oil.
- the process has risks of poisoning aquifers (drinking water sources for wells). This is where the environmentalists come in.

The funny thing is, the more we rely on expensive sources like this, the higher the price of oil goes. As a fungible commodity, the price is set by the cost of extracting the last barrel of oil. If demand were lowered to match the supply of cheap pumped oil sources, like what happened after the 70's oil embargoes, we'd be back to $20 oil. But those sources are drying up, so even that strategy won't work long term - we still need the shale and tar sands sources (and ANWR, and off-shore rigs) just to replace the oil we're getting now. Hopefully someone will invent a cheaper/less water intensive process for extracting it.

Or maybe electric / alternative energy cars will help us ease into the post-oil age?

 

Saw a report this morning that suggested $5 gas by the summer if the Libya crisis continues.

 

this is crazy

 

The money hungry politicians are at work again... They have found their excuse to raise the price of gas again... I love how we had that crisis 2 years ago.. making it sound like we were gonna run out of gas in 6 months or so.. thus raising the gas to a near $4.50 a gallon for premium,, then all of a sudden seemed like overnight, gas dropped back to a near $1.95 a gallon for premium.. but its been inching up ever since and now they have a new bs excuse to raise up the price ridiculously... oh wells,, nothing that "us" normal joes can do about..

 

Once they got use of the big bucks it hard to go back to the little 75% profit on a gallon. They want 150%.
How many times will it take the American people to say NO more! We have the oil right here - Start drilling .
IN our life time we will never be off oil but we can surely cut back so it will come down to 25.00 a barrel.Even that price is too high!

 

I just spent $3.83 a gallon on this thing. Awesome loaner with 30mpg though.

 

The answers to the oil problem have been around for years. Cars have been engineered for many decades to run propane, electricity, steam, you name it. Politicians, both democrat and republican have killed the latest innovations because of the power of the oil industry. Each innovation is killed by the 'next innovation' only to stall and evade the technology in favor of the oil's interest. In my short life, I've seen electric cars become the rage with the GM EV1 only to see it killed by hydrogen cars (remember seeing Bush and Shwarzenaeger together pushing exxon hydrogen stations throughout the country). Then it in turn was killed by hybrids. Hybrids are the best of the rest for the oil industry because it keeps gasoline.

The endless war between the oil industry and the government will keep us as casualties.

 

Agree - It's not only politicians but also speculators - its been inching to the same spot as it was 2 years ago - and no one in the govt cares about this speculation? They say - "fool me once ....."

I'm here in NY - many of us have our own well for water - and its good - even tastes as good as $1 bottled water.
And we've a situation with hydro fracking - and I'm no environmentalist either!
All of the sudden one day realized our water tasted bad - and I was panicking - did they already start doing something even though NY state has not fully approved it yet?
I guess when it hits your backyard, which one will you care about more - water or oil?

 

So what exactly is the government supposed to do about speculators? They are necessary for the efficient functioning of commodities exchanges. Without them, we have long gas lines and gas rationing when supplies tighten up. And what they do in the oil exchange is short-term only - they can't sit on a contract for more than about 90 days before someone has to take delivery of the oil. So ultimately a refinery sets the price they are willing to buy it for.

 

In my opinion, oil should be regulated. Much like we do with the power companies. They are not allowed to raise prices without state approvals. They still make hefty profits, but just not out of control like oil. If not for energy regulations, we'd be in anarchy. Thank god the politicians didn't take it so far as to de-regulate energy.... oh wait they did, at least for a small while. California did it and it was led to greed also known as the Enron fiasco where Enron played with prices like a toy and blacked out california residents causing untold deaths 40 times in just 1 year.

We need to regulate oil. Regulate fueling prices and limit oil profits. We also need to build nuclear power stations and drill in anwar if necessary. But we need to do it smartly and not like the mess happening in NY with the natural gas attempts to get gas.

 

It's a good idea, but only if we can regulate the whole chain, starting with oil sources, which we can't because we import half our oil. Regulating just the refiners and distributors would do exactly what happened in California with electricity - causing massive shortages of gas, and refiners and distributors going bankrupt like the CA power companies did because their prices are regulated but their suppliers' prices are not. In this case, foreign crude oil suppliers would play the part of Enron.

As an example, let's say the government sets the price of gas at $2.00, and that crude oil needs to be $50 or less for the refiners and distributors to make any money. What happens if the price of oil is at $60? Or $100 like it is today? The price is set by the world market, not by the US government. Why would any supplier sell our refiners oil for $50 when they can fetch much higher prices in some other country? Heck why would our own oil companies use our Texas oil domestically when they can sell it to Japan instead for more profit?

This is exactly what happened to CA when they partially deregulated the power industry - they let wholesale prices fluctuate but kept end users' prices fixed. When Enron raised the price of wholesale electricity, the power companies were stuck in the middle, and couldn't break even because they couldn't raise the rates of end users. Blackouts ensued, along with power company bankruptcies.

Anyone here old enough to remember the gas lines and gas rationing in the 70's?

 

Ahem............yeah I'm old enough.

During that time I was employed at a military bulk fuel storage and we dealt w/ the local refineries a lot (Chevron and a independent). Interaction w/ private refinery personnel was very frequent since they were our suppliers of both leaded/unleaded gas, jet fuel, aviation gas, and diesel fuel.

Gas rationing was in effect creating long lines at the gas stations. Pricing was going up at an astounding rate (I remember buying premium grade gas for less than $0.30 a gallon before all of this). LOL, during high school when going out w/ a friend I used to give him a dollar to help pay for the gas and he had a guzzler driven like Richard Petty.

Going back to my dealings w/ the private refinery guys......they reported that they had so much gasoline stored there that they had maxed out of space. They were converting tanks used for other products to gain additional room and were in danger of shutting down production of refined oil. It was an expensive and lengthy process to start up again so this didn't sit well for the refinery. There goes the concept of supply and demand. The local government knew about the refineries situation but refused to stop the rationing. So if political help is what some of you want......I wouldn't hold my breath. Praying would provide better results.