That's similar to the jump we get in the UK. Normally 2p per litre each month. Which is 15c per US gallon. It will happen in one go over night.
Fuel is constantly going up! :banana:It seems really unfair at the moment, especially with all the other price rises. It's about time (in the UK) the Government announced a reduction in tax on fuel to ease the pressure.:bang: The sums probably don't add up but it would be a nice gesture.
anyone see the massive increase in profits announced by the oil companies recently? Its all about greed.
They are all full of ****. With 'shortage of oil'. Bastards are only price gaging everyone up the ass. They doing it all just for money. And theres not a whole lot we can do.
1) supply Oil states have a limited supply of oil. It is finite. Not infinite. When their oil runs out, they are going to be back in the stone age playing in a giant sand box and herding around camels. They need to invest in their countries to modernize and make industries for themselves, so that when the oil runs out they won't be dead. Currenty, oil wells are becoming more expensive because the 'easy' oil is running out. They have to drill in harder places and use more energy to recover oil than they used to. 2) demand India and China. Seriously. Those countries are improving drastically. If 1 in 8-or-so people there get a crappy little car, you will double the world's demand for oil. This is happening people. Twice the demand = half the supply = twice the price. China's stock market doubles each year. Their government is actually disallowing trade at times of the year to _slow_down_ their markets. Both China and India's economy is growing so well that 1 in 8 people having a car is not a stretch at all. China : 1.3 Billion people India : 1.1 Billion people USA, Largest user of oil on the planet : 0.3 billion people Oil states are not going to keep selling cheap if the demand is going up like crazy. They have to slow down how much oil the world uses, otherwise they will run out before they are ready. 3) Oil companies are not making new refineries. Demand goes up as population goes up, but no more refineries are made to cover the needs of population. Refineries are running at max capacity. Oil companies have made a decision : Don't make more oil, just sell it for more. There is a reason why Oil companies are posting record profits. In the end : Rising demand + Running out of affordable resources = Prices go up.... (AS THEY SHOULD) You can't expect people to sell you something cheap all the way until it runs out. It will get expensive. Basically, Everything is fine. Move along. -scheherazade
Meh we brits get ripped off, you americans are getting a sweet deal I know its because of the exchange rates etc....
Why the hell do people say the oil companies are greedy? Aren't we the ones who want what they have? Doesn't that, by definition, make us the greedy ones?
I'm not sure if you know just how sweet the deal is... Oil producing countries sell their crude at oil exchanges. Oil exchanges only accept US Dollars as currency (Even though they aren't in the US). If you want to buy oil, you first have to buy dollars. Doesn't matter who you are. US can just print dollars and hand them over. All other nations have to make goods, exchange, buy dollars. The world subsidizes the US economy by buying oil, and also makes oil cheap for the US. Iraq tried to open an exchange where they would accept euros. 2 weeks after that the anti-Iraq tv campaign started. They were invaded a few months later. Iran decided to accept euros. Russia decided to accept euros. Venezuela decided to accept euros. Indonesia decided to accept euros. Anyone noticed what happened on tv? Iran is CRAZY, ZOMG! They will get nukes and kill us all. WE GOTTA DO SOMETHING ABOUT EM! Russia is going back to totalitarian commy town. We gotta keep an eye on those bastards. Venezuela has that insane-o Chavez guy. He's all kinds of nutts. He's a commy bastard. Indonesia is TERRORISM-ville. They have crazy terrorists crawling everywhere. And they are MUSLIMS. (shock shock). Notice how everyone who doesn't play on the US side in the oil game gets lambasted on tv? There's so many places on earth where atrocities are going in, but they get no coverage. A few things aren't as we would like in Venezuela, and it's all over the tv. IMHO it just makes it easier to later come up with an excuse to invade em. People will /want/ to invade those countries if they think they're ~E~V~I~L~. The US government isn't stupid. They'll make sure to keep countries in check when they need to massage the world market in their favor. Iraq is a great location to bump some shoulders. So goes life. l'sigh. -scheherazade
If people buy more dollars and then use them to buy more oil, that would weaken the dollar, not strengthen it. Please explain why oil sold in dollars benefits the US? If there are less dollars in the US then more need to be printed, if more are printed then the dollar value is lowered.
Oil is only sold in dollars. Countries buy dollar reserves so that they can purchase oil. That creates *demand* for dollars. Dollar demand increases dollar value. Remeber, dollars are *finite*. The only nation that can get more dollars at any time is the US (i.e. US can elect to print dollars). Everyone else has to purchase dollars. Keep in mind that the dollar is fiat currency. Dollar value floats in the international market. Exchange rates are a function of 'demand for the dollar' and 'supply of the dollar'. See : http://www.chicagofed.org/consumer_information/strong_dollar_weak_dollar.cfm for info on how dollar value is influenced. The US economy effectively is immune to collapse because the value of the dollar is immune to collapse. So long as everyone wants dollars. Because the value of the dollar is propped up, international demand allows the US to be more liberal with how much money they print. I'm not saying that the US 'prints money like crazy'. What happened with dollar value is that the US international credit rating has fallen. Fiat currency only has value by decree. There is no physical value to the dollar, the value is a function of supply and demand. Too much US international debt leads to lack of faith in the US government. If the US can't repay debt, then the tender of the US government loses value. Countries bought large dollar reserves of dollars for 2 reasons : 1) for purchasing oil 2) stable currency is best for storing national wealth Oil producing countries use dollars for purchasing goods, but the lower value of the dollar means that they need more dollars if they want to purchase the same amount of goods. So they charge more dollars for oil. You take the falling US credit rating, and the falling dollar, higher oil dollar costs, and you have a lot of upset countries. Their national wealth has suffered, and they can buy less oil. Dollar instability causes oil producers to be even more attracted to euro markets (they want to be paid in a stable/valuable currency). As euro oil markets are open, the demand for euros rises and the demand for dollars falls. Lower international demand for dollars reduces the dollar value even more, and makes the euro even more attractive and more valuable. US exporters love the weak dollar, but it's not good for the US. Strong currency means you can afford to buy more than foreigners can. Weak currency means that foreigners can afford to buy more than you. Next time someone says "oil countries are charging too much for crude", consider how much the dollar value has fallen. Adjusted for international value, the cost of crude hasn't actually gone up much at all. Edit : The US being hard on "countries that sell oil in currencies other than the dollar" is actually very important for the US economy. De-stabilizing nations that offer oil in anything but the dollar helps the dollar stay desirable, and it helps keep the US stable. The US sending troops to the middle east IS protecting the safety of the US. Just not in the way that they advertise on tv. This isn't the 1700's anymore. No nation fights over land and BS like that anymore. It's all about capital. You don't need to take anyone's land or oil, just make sure that _YOU_ profit when they profit. Let them have their land and the problems that come with it. Printing more dollars does not in itself lead to reduced value. Think about this : Person A puts $1000 in the bank. Bank loans $500 dollars to person B. Person A has $1000 Person B has $500 Total wealth is $1500. A total of $1500 of goods can be purchased. But there really is only $1000 worth of capital. This multiplying effect cascades throughout the economy. The quantity of dollars grows all the time, even if none are printed. The important aspect is that the demand for these dollars (people wanting to buy) grows as fast as the dollars can multiply. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply " The operative notion of easy money is that the central bank creates new bank reserves (in the US known as "federal funds"), which let the banks lend out more money. These loans get spent, and the proceeds get deposited at other banks. Whatever is not required to be held as reserves is then lent out again, and through the "multiplying" effect of the fractional-reserve system, loans and bank deposits go up by many times the initial injection of reserves. " I did a quick google search to find something on the oil exchange topic and this came up : http://www.teamliberty.net/id199.html
its simple mathmatics...........there are 10 million new cars going onto china's roads every year........india has 7% more cars going on there roads every year............at this rate the oil companies cannot keep up. yes they are making billions from oil, but that is because of the new demand,oil and food prices will never go down, its all going to get a lot worse,and the people who suffer will be tho's who drive the big cars,and thats how it should be. and one thing is for certain,you guys in the usa better hope that the oil producing nations don't start selling there oil in euro's,because with that low dollar you will all be riding bikes. sadam started selling his oil in euros rather than dollars , and that was one on the reasons the usa attacked them, and what did the usa do ??,as soon as they could they switched iraq's oil from euro's back to dollars. and another thing about china......up untill now the british have had the richest middle class (as for spending power) in the world, china will soon overtake us, that means bigger and more cars, it only going to get worse. i remember years ago, britain and the usa saying something along the lines of, we want to see a richer world, a world that can live like the uk and the usa,because a richer world is better for trade and everyone wins. i don't think they really believed in what they were saying, because had they thought it through they would have seen that this planet could not sustain more than one super power, at a time. to have 4 or 5 countries consume what the united states consume , you would need two more planet earths, we will have tho's 4 or 5 countries very soon and something is going to give. i don't believe in the bible, but if you think about it , the meek might one day rule the world,you see the poor have never had anything, so have nothing to lose..............................
Gas is a joke! If we ever went back to h2O, they would say we have a shortage and jack up the prices! Who every believes this planet has a shortage of oil has lost common sense. They just say there's a shortage so the jack up the damn price and get their pockets loaded.
There's plenty of oil left. It's just not cheap to extract. You got tar sands, shale, etc. What's running out is the easy drill-n-spill stuff. Oil is not literally close to being out any day soon, it's just that the rate of finding new cheap/affordable oil fields is not keeping up with the rate demand is growing. That difference in rates is calculated to reach a reckoning point roughly in the next lifetime. -scheherazade
i think some people are missing something here, when the US "prints more dollars" as someone says, they are cutting interest rates of the dollar, that means giving banks and people direct gains in interest costs and increased PP. Although oil is sold in dollars its fixed reference price used to be (and i think still is )gold, so if one applies basic maths (and this is an area i know) the increase in oil prices in comparison to the weakening of the dollar is a non existing factor, sure its there but its small in comparison to the hike of prices justified by other means. So this whole construct of the usual US haters is plain stupid, the FED cuts interest rates to give banks and consumers more PP and to keep the cycle of consumption running. On the other side of the pond what did the BCE do? its been increasing the cost of money (because Europe is known to have high inflation rates) this makes people have LESS money and consume less (latest euro stat indicators give less consumption and a smaller GDP growth this year) and that is why nearly every single european government is talking about attacking the cost of living. I think all one has to do is look at the last quarters Economic result, if i recall correctly US economy is still growing even with the massive alarmism while countries like Italy are experiencing zero growth. Given the fact that all currencies are relative i dont think it would make a difference in price in what oil is traded, given the fact gold is generally the referent cost (just look at gold./oz its over 1k USD). People just dont get into their head that the price is rising, fullstop. There is no massive US plan to rape people in the ass and stuff, people should really lay off the cake.
I think the Sheherezade`s point was that the requirement to trade oil in US dollars is an artificial way to give more stability to the US currency, because it`s a relatively constant and very substantial demand globally. If oil could be traded in Euros, then a lot of oil importers would start getting rid of their US dollars, which would not only cause an immediate effect in the dollar`s value and therefore the whole American economy, but it would also make the US economy much less bulletproof in the future. A stable currency is absolutely vital for any nation`s economy, because it makes the future predictable for businesses.
Except man fights wars for resources. Has from day one. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, i.e. can we "share and share alike" or bang heads:biggunver domination of the resource. I wish I had more faith in the former. Good thing I ride my bike most of the time. Truckers are already getting shafted big time. This whole issue will change everything imo. Ban SUV's unless you can prove one's needed, that's a start. Waste is idiotic.