Re: when will the gas stop hiking?

[dd]

"Inner Vision" <inner...@nexos.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.1d6ed9d12...@news.individual.net...
> Defender of Enormous Manhood <Defenderofen...@rogers.com> wrote in
> message: news:<3r-dnfx4kfN...@rogers.com>
>>"grape" <j@s> wrote in message
>>news:BMmdnZ2dnZ1YU_OKnZ2dn...@mycybernet.net...
>>> what price will the gas eventually settle? I am even started to think
>>> about hybrid cars....
>>
>>
>>Boy you are a funny guy!
>>Gas is running out while at the same time demand is growing.
>>
> From Wednesday's Globe And Mail
>
> OTTAWA -- Q: What is the price of crude oil?
>
> A. Figure it out. It's two-thirds of its price in 1979-80 and
> two-thirds of its price in 1864.
>
> Q. What was the price of oil in 1979-80?
>
> A. In 2005 dollars, $90 a barrel.
>
> Advertisements
>
> Q. You mean oil is cheaper today than it was 25 years ago?
>
> A. Absolutely. And cheaper than it was 140 years ago, too. In 1864,
> inflation-adjusted, it spiked precisely to $86.19. Three years
> earlier, oil sold for $9 a barrel.
>
> Q. So, with oil at $65 a barrel now, it's 20 per cent cheaper than it
> was in 1979-80?
>
> A. No, no. It's much cheaper than 20 per cent.
>
> Q. How can that be?
>
> A. Because, BTU for BTU, oil does twice as much work now as it did in
> '79-'80. On average, cars got 15 miles a gallon back then. They get
> 28.5 now.
>
> Q. Are you saying that, 25 years ago, people were essentially paying
> $180 a barrel?
>
> A. BTU for BTU, vis-à-vis 2005, absolutely.
>
> Q. Why, then, is oil now so cheap?
>
> A. Two reasons, really. First, people don't use oil for all the
> purposes they used it for in the past. In the States, the proportion
> of homes heated with oil has fallen by 50 per cent. In absolute terms,
> even with the millions of houses built in the U.S. since the '70s, the
> numbers of homes heated with oil fell by 25 per cent. And, of course,
> people are using less energy in general. Second, oil prices are
> halfway between peacetime and wartime. We have fear of a supply
> crisis. We don't have a supply crisis.
>
> Q. Yet the price keeps rising.
>
> A. Many people are sure that there will be a supply crisis. Some of
> them think it will be soon. Some think it will be some day.
>
> Q. How can you tell who's right?
>
> A. You'll know for sure when oil hits $180 a barrel.
>
> Q. Fear is really expensive.
>
> A. The Canadian Energy Research Institute figured a couple of months
> ago that the oil itself is worth $30 a barrel. Everything above $30 is
> fear.
>
> Q. So, roughly, half of the price of oil is oil, half is fear?
>
> A. Precisely. The increases now are 100-per-cent fear. It's a bit
> different at the pump. In the gas tank, it's one-third oil, one-third
> fear and one-third tax. On a global basis, the world economy is paying
> $2.8-billion a day for fear. By the way, two years ago, fear sold for
> only 40 cents a barrel.
>
> Q. What are the chances that the fears are rational, that oil supplies
> will run short?
>
> A. The chances are very small. Oil inventories are 10 per cent higher
> than a year ago. Higher prices are already working.
>
> Q. So the higher prices are a good thing -- even without a shortage?
>
> A. They have a job to do, and they're doing it. And the higher the
> eventual spike, the further the price will fall.
>
> It's unfortunate that, until then, the punitive cost of fear falls
> indifferently, on the just and the unjust alike. Like taxes.
>
> Q. Well, let's say you're right. How far down could oil go?
>
> A. You probably wouldn't be far wrong to say $20 a barrel.
>
> Q. Why $20?
>
> A. That's the average price of crude, adjusted for inflation, for more
> than 100 years. Crude was $20 a barrel in 1899, when world consumption
> hit 150 million barrels. It was $20 a barrel in 1999, when world
> consumption hit 24 billion barrels.
>
> Q. But you do remember the cars lined up at gas stations across the
> U.S., don't you? The shortage must have been real.
>
> A. All of the six or seven quote-unquote crises that we've had have
> been political crises, not oil-shortage crises. Most often, it's war.
> Richard Nixon caused the first oil crisis, though, when he imposed
> price controls on U.S. retail oil prices in 1973. The price went up,
> and kept going up, until it spiked in 1970-80. Ronald Reagan got rid
> of price controls in 1981 and oil prices plunged.
>
> Q. You mean that the crisis of '79-'80 wasn't really an oil crisis at
> all?
>
> A. It was a policy mistake. Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter didn't
> intend it. Neither of them understood the importance of honest prices.
> Carter thought he was helping when he put a wood stove in the White
> House.
>
> Q. But everyone knows that we're now heading toward a real crisis. I
> read warnings about it all the time.
>
> A. You are right. The first warning came in 1915, exactly 90 years
> ago, when the U.S. Bureau of Mines determined that crude oil would run
> out in 1924.
>
> Carter said that the world would run out of oil by the end of the
> 1980s. In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez now says that oil reserves are
> running out. For Chavez, it's more a wish than a prediction. Some folk
> want the end times of oil because they think that we're mostly bad
> people who deserve economic calamity. It's an article of faith.
>
> Q. An article of faith?
>
> A. Exactly. For the doomsters, the people of the apocalypse. It's a
> fashionable creed in certain circles. They are secular
> fundamentalists. They believe you can only get to paradise on foot.
>
> Q. And you?
>
> A. Truth is found in honest prices. In premium-brand apple juice, for
> example, which sells for the same money, per barrel, as crude. In
> discount-brand body spray, which sells for $5,628 a barrel. In a
> no-name shower gel, which sells for $3,805 a barrel. In perfumes and
> scented water that sells for $8,000 a barrel, or more.
>
> Q. But people don't use as much perfume as they do gasoline.
>
> A. No? Sometimes, close up, it's hard to tell.
>
> Neil Reynolds is an Ottawa writer whose columns on national economic
> issues appear Wednesday and Friday. He is the former editor-in-chief
> of The Vancouver Sun and the Ottawa Citizen.
>
>

[popepomp...@yahoo.com]

The gas will stop hiking as soon as the quarterback stops yelling, "Hut
hut hut"

Man, I kill me...

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