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Gas prices keep climbing even as oil prices drop

May 29th, 2008 . by TexasFred

NEW YORK (AP) - The gasoline price record keeps getting broken with each passing day. AAA puts the national average for a gallon of regular at a record $3.95. It’s jumped 35 cents in the past month and is 76-cents-a-gallon higher than a year ago.

If you need premium, it’s also never been more expensive. The auto club says the national average for premium is $4.35. That’s an 84-cent-a-gallon jump over last year.

Oil prices fell back Thursday ahead of a report expected to show U.S. inventories of crude and petroleum products grew last week.

Prices remained volatile, though, buffeted about by threats against Nigerian oil facilities, worries about falling gasoline demand in the U.S. and a strengthening U.S. dollar.

By midday in Europe, light, sweet crude contract for July delivery was down 65 cents at $130.38 a barrel in electronic trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

In London, July Brent crude fell 86 cents to $130.07 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

Full Story Here:
Gas prices keep climbing even as oil prices drop

There are many things that can be said regarding this oil and fuel pricing crisis and much of it can be summed up in 2 words blurbs that are so easy to understand that even the dimmest of libbers should be able to comprehend their meaning…

Not the real cause: oil shortage, short supply, high demand

The real reasons we have incredibly high gas prices: price gouging, greedy bastards, Big Oil, rich Arabs, profit taking, record profits, price fixing, consumer abuse, rich executives, massive bonuses, tree huggers, spotted owl, snail darter and the list goes on and on, but I think you get the idea…

I don’t begrudge any company the opportunity to make money, that’s what free enterprise is all about, but when the oil companies sit back on their butts and tell us how much they are doing for us, and what it’s costing them to do it, well, I am astounded that the American consumer is falling for that line of BS.

I know a little bit about business, and you don’t have all those operating costs that Big Oil is saying they have and those supposed costs being what is driving them to record levels of profit, BILLIONS of dollars in profit, look folks, profit is figured in AFTER all costs of doing business are taken out, these record profits are just that, profit, financial gain, money in the pockets of the Big Oil executives, profit is what’s left after ALL operating expenses are covered…

By ALL, I mean exploration, drilling, production, transportation, refining, marketing, all of it, those costs are, or should be figured in before so much as a dollar of profit is figured into the equation, otherwise, if Big Oil was laying all that money out there and not making anything in return, it would be called losses, record losses, and I don’t recall hearing of any Big Oil companies that were recording record losses

We’re being taken for a ride my friends, and the Big Oil companies aren’t even greasing it before they stick it to us…

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Gas roars higher, pressuring holiday travelers

May 23rd, 2008 . by TexasFred

NEW YORK (AP) - As consumers began hitting the road Friday for the Memorial Day weekend, they faced the sobering reality that it now costs $87 to fill a Ford Explorer SUV, up $14 from last year, and $72 to fill a mid-sized Honda Accord, up $12.

That’s because gas prices, which took another jump higher overnight, are up nearly 20 percent, or 65 cents a gallon, over the past year to average nearly $3.88 a gallon nationally. But unlike this time last year, when gas prices were at their peak for 2007, pump prices now show no signs of halting their daily assault on the record books.

“Four dollars (a gallon) is a done deal now,” said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill. “We could go significantly above that.”

On average, drivers in Alaska, Connecticut, California, New York and Illinois are already paying more than $4 for gas, and an increasing number of stations around the country are posting prices higher than $4. In Alaska, where the average price of regular gas stood at a national high of $4.181 Friday, it now costs $94 to fill an Explorer, and $77 to fill an Accord.

Nationally, the price of a gallon of regular gas rose 4.4 cents overnight to a record average of $3.875, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Prices are headed even higher in coming days because of oil’s dramatic rally this week to a new record over $135 a barrel.

“We’re going to see some more significant increases here in light of what we’ve seen in the last few days,” said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J.

Oil prices fluctuated Friday after as investors placed bets before the long holiday weekend. Light, sweet crude for July delivery rose 34 cents to $131.15 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, but alternated between gains and losses.

“This is just pre-weekend volatility,” Ritterbusch said.

Full Story Here:
Gas roars higher, pressuring holiday travelers

I have an idea, let’s call the big oil companies bluff, ALL Americans stay home for the long holiday weekend, just stay home, spend time with the kids, cook out on the grill, chill a melon, do the holiday in your back yard, and don’t buy any gas for 3 days, that’ll cast the gauntlet down, and throw the oil folks into a tailspin as we slap them back to reality…

It’s the perfect time folks, have a safe Memorial Day, enjoy it and be frugal!!

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Oil surpasses $135 on new supply concerns

May 22nd, 2008 . by TexasFred

Oil prices rose above $135 a barrel for the first time Thursday, with supply worries, global demand and an ever weakening U.S. dollar driving crude futures up.

Also on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the world’s top energy watchdog is preparing a sharp downward revision of its oil-supply forecast.

Light, sweet crude for July delivery rose as high as $135.09 before falling back. By the afternoon in Europe, the contract stood at $133.35 a barrel in electronic trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 18 cents on Wednesday’s close of $133.17.

Don’t you just love a man-made faux crisis that’s designed with the specific intent of taking as much money from the working public as possible??

With gas and oil prices setting new records nearly every day, analysts have begun to wonder what might stop prices from rising.

I can’t speak for the prices in Europe but I can tell you exactly what will curb the prices here, drill for the oil that we know we have, the untold billions of barrels of oil that are beneath the surface of the USA and her coastal waters…

We’re not out of oil folks, we won’t be out of oil a hundred years from now, just like the so-called oil shortage of 1975, we weren’t short of oil then, production was at the highest levels imaginable, we had just pulled out of Vietnam and military usage of fuel and oil was drastically cut, every oil storage facility in this USA was full, every refinery we had was operating at full capacity, there were many oil tankers, FULL of crude oil, anchored off the coast of Texas and Louisiana, waiting to unload, waiting because there was no place to store their cargo…

The tree huggers have this nation by the shorty’s, and they are pulling hard, we have an EPA that is run by tree huggers, we have a government that is administered by wimps that won’t stand up to the tree huggers, we don’t have an oil crisis, we have an ineffectual government, and they know as well as anyone, we are not out of oil, we just need to increase OUR production and allow the oil companies to build a few more refinery facilities…

We’ll never go back to the days of gas being less than a dollar a gallon but we could very easily see gas not much more expensive than that, this crisis is of our making, and we can make it go away, but 1st we have to censor the tree huggers…

Spotted Owl isn’t very tasty, and snail darter isn’t one my menu, but gasoline and oil are on ALL of our agendas, and our pocket books can’t take too much more of this, and one other thing, if you like to eat, think about what these prices are doing to the trucking industry, because if buy your food from a store, if you eat it, a truck got it there…

The trucking industry can’t keep on doing what they do with these unrealistic fuel prices, you’re going to take a hit in that market too, grocery prices, and I haven’t even mentioned the fuel that farms use in the production of our food, this story has no end, but I am guessing that you get the point…

Full Story Here:
Oil surpasses $135 on supply fears

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Bush asks Saudis to increase oil production

May 16th, 2008 . by TexasFred

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - President Bush is appealing to oil-rich Saudi Arabia to increase production just as oil prices have hit another record high.

As U.S. consumers cope with rising prices at the gas pump, Bush is on a one-day visit to Saudi Arabia for another burst of diplomacy with King Abdullah.

When the two met here in mid-January, the president asked Saudi Arabia to raise production to ease high prices at the pump. Bush got a chilly response to his plea. The kingdom said it would increase production only when the market justified it, and that production levels appeared normal.

Oil prices climbed to a new high Friday, above $127 a barrel. At the pump, gas prices rose to a national average of $3.78 per gallon, according to a survey of stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.

When Air Force One landed in the Saudi capital on Friday, the president got a red carpet welcome on the tarmac and was warmly greeted by Saudi leaders as a military band played the U.S. national anthem, slightly off-key.

Full Story Here:
Bush asks Saudis to increase oil production

EDIT TO ADD:
Saudi Arabia Refuses to Increase Oil Production

Of course he got a red carpet welcome, Bush and the Saudis are big buddies, even if it was Saudis that carried out the attacks of 9-11 and NOT Iraqis, but that is a fact that seems to slip the minds of many people…

The American president goes to Saudi Arabia, hat in hand, asking them, much like the Dickens character Oliver Twist, “Please, sir, can I have some more?” and I don’t know about you but I find that to be a despicable act…

We should OWN Iraq, otherwise, all of our efforts there have been in vain, and before anyone gets the wrong idea, let me spell it out for you…

I never thought that Iraq was where we needed to go, there have been far too many disclosures that back up the opinions many of us hold, Iraq wasn’t part of the attacks on 9-11, our own DoD, CIA and Congress have said so, but the Saudis were very much involved, perhaps in an indirect manner, but involved nonetheless and so, here we are, sitting on top of HUGE reserves of oil here in America that we can’t drill for, sitting on top of huge oil reserves in Iraq that by right of victory should be ours for the taking, to the victor go the spoils, but we won’t even do that…

But our president can go to Saudi Arabia, kiss-up to King Abdullah and beg them to save our economy by producing more oil, thus giving the Saudis BILLIONS more of American dollars…

I am firmly convinced, we are just about down the tubes, and it’s people like George Bush that have taken us there with his globalism ideals and what I believe is a hidden agenda for a ‘One World Government’…

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McCain on ANWR

May 13th, 2008 . by TexasFred

This piece was posted here: McCain on ANWR by one of my blog readers and comment makers, a great guy that is also a member of The American Conservative Forums, great post BobF, and way too close to the real deal I am afraid…

Last week, Bill O’Reilly interviewed John McCain on the O’Reilly Factor. Bill O’Reilly really grilled McCain about his opposition to drilling for oil in the ANWR and McCain got visually upset with the questions.

Bill O’Reilly is a professional TV host and interviewer, so in order for the common people to understand what John McCain was really saying in his answers, we hired an every day American Citizen (AC) to explain what he really said.

O’REILLY: You voted against ANWR drilling. You voted against ANWR.

MCCAIN: Yes, and I’ll vote against drilling if they want to drill in the Grand Canyon, and I’ll vote against it if they want to drill in the Everglades. And I will try to make it more attractive for Florida and California and other states to have drilling off of their coasts, but I’m not going to force them to because…

(AC) Even though comparing ANWR to the Grand Canyon and the Everglades is lame, I don’t want any drilling in the United States.

O’REILLY: But no one lives in ANWR.

MCCAIN: No, it’s pristine beauty.

(AC) Yes, I know it’s a frozen wasteland but to me it’s pristine frozen wasteland and I want it to stay that way. I think it’s pretty and what I think is all that matters.

O’REILLY: So what? Who sees it?

MCCAIN: Well, all I do is believe that we have to preserve some of the great natural treasures of this earth…

(AC) I don’t care, we’re not going to drill there!

O’REILLY: In the Arctic Circle?

MCCAIN: …no matter where they are, my friend. And I…

(AC) Listen jerk, didn’t you hear what I said? You’re pissing me off now by these questions. I don’t care where ANWR is located, I said no drilling!

O’REILLY: You know, a lot of people aren’t going to like that.

MCCAIN: I know a lot of people don’t like it, but I am also an environmentalist. And so was Teddy Roosevelt, my hero. And I believe that there are just some things that you have to…

(AC) I don’t care what the American people say or want; they’re not me. I follow the teachings of the Gormonites and its high priest, Al Gore. Teddy Roosevelt loved the outdoors and I love my frozen waste land on top of the world because that’s where I’ll be when I win the White House, on top of the world looking down at you little people.

This commentary and analysis of (AC) was posted in an attempt at a bit of humor, and it’s funny, no doubt about that part, but there’s a really sad part too, that humorous little commentary is a lot closer to the truth than anyone in the McCain camp will ever admit…

When McCain gives you that “my friend” line, you know you just made the angry little man even more angry, I’m waiting patiently for the McCainiacs to arrive and blast me like the Bush Bots did, and tell me what a pitiful excuse I am and tell me I’m a bad American…  :mrgreen:

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