After what Katrina did our supply of gasoline is running a bit thin. In Tulsa, OK gas went up 20 cents 8 hours, and it's been rising steadily all week. Gas has risen about a dollar since Monday. Were at 3.20$ now. If our supply is this shaky, bad things are going to happen soon. China is going to start to need oil like crazy as it becomes modernized. Our refineries are running at maximum capacity. I just don't really see an end in sight. We've got to start using less gas and look for other viable options faster. If we ran out of gas for even one day our nation would be in deep, deep trouble.

As much as I hate government doing this, it might be necessary to get restrictions on SUVs and trucks that get less than 15MPG. People are buying them like crazy and only using them to commute to work. I can think of way better uses of that gas. Thoughts?

:-/

I hate to be the guy to say this, but.. duh.

People have been saying that for years, and it is only now that America is affected by it that the population en masse is starting to realize the true advantages of alternative fuels (or just plain alternative transportation) and the necessity of developing and deploying those technologies.

My only thought is that it cost me fifty-****ing-five dollars to gas my CAVALIER. It only has a 12-gallon tank.

Thank God I never use it. I only gas it once a month.

Public transport = teh win

I don't think that the supply is shaky - I think everybody panicked and filled everything at the same time - cars, trucks, lawnmowers, gas cans, etc. Even with good supply, such a dramatic and instant increase in demand is going to cause a problem.

Freaking hippie tree huggers, I'll drive whatever car I want

Yesterday we filled up at $2.99 a gallon, across the street was at $3.29, oh man oh man

Today I filled at $2.79 - hours later, the same station was at $3.02, and a guy there said he had passed fourteen stations that were out of gas..

*pops in a Mad Max DVD*

That's not good, because my stepdad works quite a few hours out of town. Not to mention when I get it job, it's likely to be out of town to, because there's almost no jobs available in my town. In fact, it's on a poverty alert, and (for the second time) one of our largest places of employment was shut down because they weren't making enough sales.

On Monday it was ~$2.39/Gallon for 87 Octane (Regular)

On Tuesday it went up to $2.79/gallon

On Wednesday (Yesterday) it went up to $2.99/gallon

On Thursday (Today) it went up to $3.19/gallon

I needed gas on wednesday, and every place I had passed thus far had gone up to 2.99 a gallon, except one station, so naturally I went to that one, when I had gotten there, they had ran out of 87 octane, so I filled up with 89 ($2.89/gallon at the time there), so I wouldn't push my luck for other stations that were down the road (that I usually go to), luckily I did, it was in fact the only one in the area that was still that cheap.

Tonight, on my way home my tank was half-full, and I noticed every station I passed was at $3.19, except 2 stations, one of which was the same, I kept driving to see what the stations closer to my house were at, unfortunately they were at $3.19 as well, so I turned around, and went back to the other stations I saw and I filled up at the other one (just because I like it better... it's newer too)

I have the feeling it's not quite finished going up... but who knows.

BTW I drive a dodge neon (2005)

Just eat beans and fart into the gas tank of your car.

It's not. It'll keep going up until the refineries shut down by Katrina open again, at which point we should see a decline.

$1.343/L here just 20 minutes ago. f that.

Don't you live in a hippe, tree huggin town? :p


The US has been absolutely spoiled with cheap gas for years. If you look at the rest of the world, gas has always been far more expensive.

I believe I heard that 20 oil rigs in the Gulf were taken out by Katrina and that they accounted for 25% of domestic oil production. If that's accurate, it is going to affect gas prices until those rigs are replaced.

Yeah - but you can get from one country to another in Europe in the same distance (or less) than it takes me to get out of Florida..and public transportation where I live is completely non-existant.

Man I can't wait for an alternative fuel.

Electric cars!

Actually, we already have them, but you know. There's also gas/electric hybrids that get something like 89 miles per gallon on average. But how can they survive in an industry that monopolizes exclusively with gas-fueled vehicles?

By running out of gas sources, that's how!

Oil isn't just used for electrical power, it's also used as a raw material in the production of many, many things, as well as a lubricant for machinery. Even if we get fusion running and covering all of our power needs, we're going to be oil dependent for a very long time.

And Mr. "I CAN DRIVE WHATEVER CAR I WANT YOU HIPPIES"... well, if I ever see you ***** and whine about the price of gas you'll never hear the end of it. I'm writing your name down, Thrawn42689.

But I thought Bush went to war for oil so it would lower our gas prices!!! Wait a second....*snicker*

I'm very fortunate that my father's employer pays for his gas. Now that Jeff is at college, he isn't driving much except on weekends. The only gas we are paying for is really for my mother and I to go to school and back, and as long as we take one car if possible, it shoudlb e okay at least for our situation.

Frankly, I'm with Brad (oSiRis) that we go hog all the oil we can get from the middle-east.

Not if the stupid hippies would let us build nuclear

FUTURE POST'D: this should appear after the second jon'c post where he talks about how we should have run out of oil decades ago if we were running electric cars

We just need to build more refineries. I hear that we have crude oil, but no way to process enough of it into fuel to boost supply enough to balance with demand.

At this point, a developer would be in a great situation to build one: The entire country is in dire straits for gasoline, and every refinery that we can get would be useful. that would be massive leverage to use to try to get governemnt grants to fund a lot of the project.

EDIT: FUTRUEPOSTED. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD FIX THE FUTURE POSTING PROBLEM ALREADY!

Uh. And where's that electricity coming from? Not only are you still burning gallons of oil to power your car, but that electrical current is traveling for miles in unshielded cables, getting transformed to different voltages, and finally converted to chemical energy (losing a significant portion of that power to straight entropy).

If everybody drove electric cars we'd have run out of oil decades ago.

I spent some time on lifeaftertheoilcrash.net again today, just to see what the news was about Katrina and oil futures. Here are a few good articles I came up with:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/01/business/oil.php
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050831.wrefineriez0831/BNStory/Business/
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/238699_oil31.html
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-04-29/cols_ventura.html

I'm starting to wonder if John Titor's predictions don't eerily ring of truth.

I have a M/AM powered car. It uses the proton-antiproton annihilation (p + ~p -> 4π+ + 4π-)

>.>

Fake edit: We should have some form of Latex plugin that allows us to use mathematical notations.

More Golgf Carts

I live in the Bay Area, and I last filled up for 2.79 at a Chevron. (That was Sunday, as soon as I heard of the 'cane I went and topped off in fear of what is currently happening). I havent looked at prices since, but i'm scared.

But is the flux capacitor working properly?

Stop moaning. Try living in England..

Your streets are only wide enough for one car.

AMEN. It's about time the US started to tone down its oil and gas usage. The US is the single most polluting country in the world. Kyoto. Now.

Heaven forbid! Three dollars a gallon! Whatever will the world be coming to? Soon, you might have to pay as much as we do, nearly $6.50 a gallon as of the August price increase! Oh noes!

The US government should start wantonly adding taxes on to things. And have stupefyingly high taxes on inefficient cars.

Only your huge american cars :p

Hydrogen cars might be a viable alternative too.

As long as they, you know, don't need to use tons of oil to produce all the hydrogen or something...

Mercedes have built a car that runs on hydrogen fuel cells stably. Only problem is, it costs £1000000 to build them.

I just gotta say this...

All those people that bought into all those Employee Sales on SUVs and Trucks... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I'm worried about China. Right now we're using up as much oil as we get every day. China has like 3x our population and it's starting to use gas. If gas goes up to 5 bucks a gallon no-one will be buying SUVs to go to work. I kind of doubt that has a huge impact on the gas supply anyway, but I could be wrong. It might be worth it to encourage more fuel efficient cars. I would hesitate to do any legislation unless there actually was an imminent supply shortage, and with out facts I don't really have an opinion on the matter.

Oh.... oh no.... the humanity.


And more fuel efficient cars are already encouraged, they have been for years.

Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. We need oil. We need oil for plastics, for the synthesis of food additives, for cooking, machine lubrication. The ability to settle out crude oil and get a variety of products - like jet fuel and gasoline - is peripheral.

Additionally, attempting to convert the bulk of the existing equipment to use batteries or fuel cells would carry an absolutely astronomical price. We don't need alternative fuel sources, we need the ability to synthesize crude oil in extremely vast quantities.

nuclear, nuclear, nuclear, nuclear, nuclear, nuclear, nuclear, nuclear [/chant]
i was so happy when bush announced he was going to look into increasing nuclear energy output.

alberta has a trillion barrels of oil. a trillion. 1,000,000,000,000. what the **** do we care about the middle east for?

as for the big status symbol suv's and trucks, those losers get what they deserve.

[edit] i saw a documentary about what jon c just said. so what if we stop buying gasoline. the oil companies don't care. stop buying lipstick and ziplock tupperware to store everything we can think of in. there's at least 100 products in my kitchen that are petroleum based. including some food.

[QUOTE=Darth Evad]alberta has a trillion barrels of oil. a trillion. 1,000,000,000,000. what the **** do we care about the middle east for?[/QUOTE]Because Imperial Oil, ESSO and ExxonMobil are the same company. And they also have a controlling share of Syncrude.

It's going to cost Canadians as much for oil as it does Americans.

This is also assuming we figure out how to more efficiently extract oil from tarsands. The bulk of our oil reserves are tied up in them. The only company that has the technology to extract the oil at an energy gain is Syncrude. It requires absurd amounts of water and gigantic crushing machines. And, as I mentioned, Imperial Oil controls it so it's never going to be a more lucrative oil source than Esso's middle eastern oil wells.