I'll be the first to admit that I'm not educated regarding gas prices...

[Dr. Funkenstein]

Originally Posted by Gauss

Random musing: It is kind of funny looking back at how Bush again was so wrong about what caused oil prices to skyrocket. OPEC insisted it was speculation but Bush insisted it was due to undersupply for so long.

What's really funny is that the speculation specifically deals with future oil supply and demand. So they're both right.

[Convo]

Originally Posted by brekk

Adjusting production to control pricing is not gouging, gouging is abusing goods that are a bare necesity and jacking their price up knowing people will still pay. Any gouging related to oil in recent years has been the result of massive speculation.

So if the prices jump from say $40 to $75 sharply due to the cuts OPEC has made would you consider that gouging? What is reasonable? To me they get the ball rolling and the investors take it from there. Maybe my discontent for some of these countries in OPEC is blinding me. I just have no faith in some of them. It's more than simple economics to me. Like I said these countries are used to oil being at a certain price. They are going to do everything they can to get it back up asap. You call it stabilization. At what point does it pass that? I just don't agree that OPEC is without blame. It controls 40 per cent of crude oil production, so of course its decisions have a huge bearing on the price of oil. OPEC set limits on how much oil its member countries produce in order to keep the price higher than it would be in a truly competitive market (but not so high as to encourage development of alternatives).

As far as all these refineries go. Oil companies invested in oil fields when prices were much lower, with the expectation that they could break even at, say, $25 per barrel. That is why they were turning out record profits. When the price of oil is even $70 they make a huge profit. You talk about fuel rationing in 5 years but Opec nations claim to have ever greater reserves, so you don't take them at their word on this but reference them to make other points?

Oh and Fuck you too! Your inability to concede any points makes this discussion useless.

[Aetos]

Originally Posted by kedwyn

Wrong. There is far more impacting the price of oil than just supply and demand and the US part of the demand curve is quickly becoming less important as other much larger countries advance.

I listed many of them in a previous post you can choose to educate yourself on them if you desire. Supply and demand is only a fraction of what moves the price of oil and for the most part is very predictable. The news may simplify that for the masses but that is simply not the only driver nor even the primary one.

Really, so supply and demand has no effect on the price at all?

you need to rethink that.

[kedwyn]

Originally Posted by Aetos

Really, so supply and demand has no effect on the price at all?

you need to rethink that.

I didn't say that so why are you implying that I did?

[Eomer]

Originally Posted by Fandiin

Eomer how is fort mcmurray oil sand project going?I was a week away from going up there as a insulator and they cancelled the call last year right before we had the arrangements finalized but I had some friends up there that said the camps were the best they had ever been in....I have been in some the horrible old camps on the north slope and that kind of made me never wanna go to another job with a camp

Armageddon. Don't get me wrong, the projects that are producing are going to be fine. Several that have come online or are going to soon are going fine as well. But there's been an avalanche of deferrals, delays and outright cancellations. I've been kind of shocked about it, to be honest. These projects take 5-10 years and billions of dollars to reach production, and I can't understand why so many have been delayed because oil has temporarily dropped in price. They're building these things on 20-40 year time lines. I guess that in the past 3 years or so, a lot of the companies just got too optimistic with their forecasts, and a stampede of investment got kicked off and now there's a stampede the other way. I just figured that they wouldn't behave like some amateur day traders when you're talking about billions of dollars of investments.

But yeah, there's lots of layoffs and slowdowns happening. But this is in a province that has had sub 4% unemployment for awhile now, and realistically the unemployment rate was less than zero, you couldn't find people period.

So personally I'm welcoming the slow down. But when you've been in a huge boom for 5 years, moderate growth all of the sudden feels like the end of the world. I'd be shocked if unemployment in Alberta went much past 5% in the next year.

Oh yeah, as far as the camps go, I've heard mostly good things. They treat you like gold for the most part. I've heard that one or two are bad, but when labor is as tight as it is, there's a huge incentive for them to take good care of guys. Mostly I hear about guys going to camp and putting on 20-30lbs in a shift because the food was so good.

[Aetos]

Originally Posted by kedwyn

I didn't say that so why are you implying that I did?

Originally Posted by kedwyn

Bottom line, we don't produce it, we use shit tons of it Thusly we have NO CONTROL over it or its price.

I'm not implying anything.

[kedwyn]

Originally Posted by Aetos

I'm not implying anything.

Its also priced in dollars causing the currency exchange rates and federal reserve actions to vastly affect price, it also is subject to wild swings due to pure emotion and these were the primary drivers in the huge increase we saw. Not just oil but other commoidites as well. It was not a supply and demand event, it was a financial event.

So explain to me why the huge run up had anything to do with supply and demand until then please STFU and stop quoting one line of an entire post and taking it out of contex.

The final line you quoted is in reference to someone, perhaps you saying that all we have to do is cut back to drop prices and its not going to make much of a difference in the LONG RUN. Other countries consumption is growing far faster and our ability to control prices simply by cutting our demand is very quickly going away.

So to sum it up:


The recent run up in prices had nothing to do with supply and demand.

The recent plunge had very little to do with the drop in demand although that perhaps brought the issue in the lime light. Oil was over bought due to people hedging a free falling dollar and a lack of any other place to put money. With the world in recession and the USA more or less on the front lines fighting agressivly to combat it while the rest of the world was on pause the dollar rose causing commodity prices to drop and here we are. When that money left it quickly deflated as most bubbles do. It is now oversold and will rise at some point in the relatively near future. Again, supply and demand will not have a huge impact on this although signs that the recession has bottomed out may be a catalyst its not the primary reason for the increase the fact that its oversold on emotion is. Demand swings of 3% are not going to impact prices by 70%.

The USA is losing its financial dominance in the world and our ability to control world resources as other developing countries will be expanding far faster and consuming much more than are puny 300 million people could possibly consume. That means that us cutting back on our driving or oil use over the long run is NOT going to impact prices much at all considering the rest of the world 5.7 billion people are just now getting thirsty for the stuff.

[Eomer]

Minor nitpick, but there's been at least a billion or so people that are on a similar developmental rung as the US. But yeah...

[Aetos]

Originally Posted by kedwyn

Its also priced in dollars causing the currency exchange rates and federal reserve actions to vastly affect price, it also is subject to wild swings due to pure emotion and these were the primary drivers in the huge increase we saw. Not just oil but other commoidites as well. It was not a supply and demand event, it was a financial event.

So explain to me why the huge run up had anything to do with supply and demand until then please STFU and stop quoting one line of an entire post and taking it out of contex.

The final line you quoted is in reference to someone, perhaps you saying that all we have to do is cut back to drop prices and its not going to make much of a difference in the LONG RUN. Other countries consumption is growing far faster and our ability to control prices simply by cutting our demand is very quickly going away.

So to sum it up:


The recent run up in prices had nothing to do with supply and demand.

The recent plunge had very little to do with the drop in demand although that perhaps brought the issue in the lime light. Oil was over bought due to people hedging a free falling dollar and a lack of any other place to put money. With the world in recession and the USA more or less on the front lines fighting agressivly to combat it while the rest of the world was on pause the dollar rose causing commodity prices to drop and here we are. When that money left it quickly deflated as most bubbles do. It is now oversold and will rise at some point in the relatively near future. Again, supply and demand will not have a huge impact on this although signs that the recession has bottomed out may be a catalyst its not the primary reason for the increase the fact that its oversold on emotion is. Demand swings of 3% are not going to impact prices by 70%.

The USA is losing its financial dominance in the world and our ability to control world resources as other developing countries will be expanding far faster and consuming much more than are puny 300 million people could possibly consume. That means that us cutting back on our driving or oil use over the long run is NOT going to impact prices much at all considering the rest of the world 5.7 billion people are just now getting thirsty for the stuff.

You can clean the sand out of your vagina in another thread, I simply meant that supply and demand does have an effect on the price.

[AladainAF]

I filled up twice (once to my destination and once on the return) for $1.15 a gallon during a price war between two stations this xmas break.