Forums → WEPR → Rising Gas Prices ?

i.e war in Iraq led by George W. Bush. Iraq has been one the USA's oil providers.
Bush's fault ?

Iraq was barely a provider of oil to the US during Saddam's reign after the Gulf War. I think that oil production in Iraq is almost back to the levels that they had before the war. So that has little to do with it. And people want to blame Bush all the time. Yes he's a moron. No, he has nothing to do with oil prices.

The major cause is a massive increase in demand from China and India as they expand their economies. Of course, OPEC has a major part as well as they have not increased supply while demand is rising sharply. They are making some big bucks.

Presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain on Monday proposed a $300 million prize to develop a car battery that will "leapfrog" today's plug-in hybrids.

In an energy policy speech at Fresno State University in California, McCain also called for an overhaul to existing policies that favor domestic ethanol production--one of the biggest differences he has with his expected opponent, Senator Barack Obama.
John McCain

McCain said that, if elected, his administration would issue a Clean Car Challenge that would give give a $5,000 tax credit to people who purchase "zero-emissions cars."

There would be a sliding scale so that vehicles, regardless of type, with lower carbon dioxide emissions will have larger tax credits.

His $300 million car battery prize is meant to spur creativity among automakers to make energy-efficient products.

"This is one dollar for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.--a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency--and should deliver a power source at 30 percent of the current costs," he said.

Diverging ethanol plans
In the same speech, McCain repeated his opposition to policies that encourage corn-ethanol and said the U.S. should eliminate a tariff on ethanol from Brazil because it hinders free trade.

He said he would provide incentives to automakers to manufacture flex-fuel vehicles that can run on ethanol or gasoline. He said Brazil, which gets about half of its auto fuel from sugar cane ethanol, has shown that a country can change its fuel mix in just a few years.

"Instead of playing favorites, our government should level the playing field for all alcohol fuels that break the monopoly of gasoline, lowering both gasoline prices and carbon emissions. And this can be done with a simple federal standard to hasten the conversion of all new vehicles in America to flex-fuel technology--allowing drivers to use alcohol fuels instead of gas in their cars," he said.

By contrast, Senator Obama is in favor of continued supportive ethanol policies.

The New York Times on Monday detailed the Illinois senator's close ties to ethanol, including maintaining Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader who now serves on the boards of three ethanol companies, as an adviser.

Domestically producing ethanol "ultimately helps our national security, because right now we're sending billions of dollars to some of the most hostile nations on earth," the Times quoted Obama saying during a campaign stop last August.

Inflation and the Australian Government.

In Australian the Petrol Tax and GST adds at leat 40c on petrol Prices.

It is very bad...but sometimes it cannot be helped.

Maybe we should all move to Saudi Arabia where petrol is 17c a litre! Cheap Cheap Cheap!

KingRyan

Wittman, once again I'd like you to cite and summarise rather than copy-paste. This is getting tiresome.

The link you've pasted from is this one.

Now my own two cents: I'm aware that there is an emergency summit in Saudi Arabia regarding what can be done with these oil prices. The plan seems to be (as far as I can tell) to release several billion more barrels of oil onto the market, but it seems clear to leading analysts that this is a last-ditch effort. There is no where to go for petrol prices to go except up, and exponentially at that, as it is clear that there is simply no more supply, and this release comes from squeezing every last drop out of the marginal and difficult sources of oil.

It has been entirely evident that we needed to investigate non-oil-dependent sources of energy for a long time, and it is essentially a lack of economic incentive that has pushed the situation to where it is now. Therefore if you want me to blame something, I blame free-market capitalism, not any single person, as game theory (correctly) predicts that no one party is going to take a cut of their profits in order to work towards a greater good as the results are not favorable: insofar as the oil trade is a closed game (I guess I'd argue that it is), we've been sitting in a kind of Nash equilibrium.

But the conditions of the game have changed: soon there will be no more game at all if it remains in the state it is now- but this belongs to the threads regarding alternative energy sources.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Savinganddebt/Saveonacar/P98745.asp

That site will give you some information on what I am about to say. What I am about to say is that, gas prices are raising because the cost of gas a barrel has sky rocketed into the $150.00 pure barrel. So because the barrel is so costly, th gases here go up because the government needs to have enough money to pay for the next barrel so we can stay "alive" with things. But the way we can solve this is by making other types of fuel, like ethanol. This site will help you understand what other ways we can make a difference or get other fuels.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/354742/different_types_of_fuel_alternative.html

@Futuro, the gas prices are increasing because of the barrel price increase? Duh! We are trying to figure out WHY the price for gas is increasing. And this thread isn't about finding an alternate feul, read the original post.

I totally agree that the prices are increasing because of China's and India's rising economy. You also have to take into account that the oil companies are a bit corrupt. They are raising the prices becuase they KNOW that in this present day, we depend on oil.

@Estel, it is not because because of China and India's rising economy, it is because the places that we get our fuel (Saudi Arabia, Israel, Irag, etc...) needs the money and since the United States depends on it, they raise the gas prices to get more money from us. Because they know that no matter how high they raise them, we are still going to be getting it so that we can stay "alive" and be able to do things. So they are raising the prices so they can get money to pay them.

I have heard that Gas Prices have been rising because the search for oil has been getting harder, whether this is true or not, I do not know. Oil mining, presumably is a costly job. I would assume they get paid a lot. Gas prices go up because of this as well.

Three oil companies Tuesday announced a landmark test of a deep-water well in a part of the Gulf of Mexico that could swell the nation's oil reserves by as much as 50% if production goes forward.

The project, far off the Gulf Coast and miles below the sea floor, could be the best prospect for new domestic crude oil in 38 years. And experts say it raises fresh hopes for abundant production in a region plagued by falling output from wells closer to shore.

"It shows there's still a lot of opportunities here in the Gulf of Mexico," says David Dismukes, associate director of the Louisiana State University Center for Energy Studies. "The lower-hanging fruit has been in other parts of the world."

Chevron (CVX), Devon Energy (DVN) and Statoil said the test at the Jack field, about 5 miles deep in the Gulf, yielded more than 6,000 barrels of crude oil a day.

"It's encouraging to know there's a large source of oil," in the deep waters of the Gulf, says Devon President John Richels.

The field is about 270 miles southwest of New Orleans. Chevron has a 50% stake; Devon and Statoil each own 25%. The field is part of an ancient rock formation, known as the lower Tertiary, which the companies estimate holds at least 3 billion barrels of extractable oil and gas, and as much as 15 billion. If the upper estimate is borne out, extracting that oil would boost the nation's oil reserves of 29 billion barrels by 50%.

You also have to take into account that the oil companies are a bit corrupt.

TMG: I seriously doubt that's cause for celebration given the long-term prospects. Such finds only impact maybe the next few years, even months, and will do little to affect the ultimate direction of oil prices. In fact, it may do little, given the supply/demand dynamic, to even dent them.

@Strop, you are right. But I think that it later years, they will increase production of oil and then since they have more, the demand will go down and when that goes down, the oil prices go down.

Hm, not really. Hopefully demand will go down, because demand has to go down. But until the bitter dregs, the oil companies will, until they switch their interests into other sources of energy that are commercially viable, milk that dollar by controlling the supply to match demand to charge optimal prices.

After all that's one part that drives competitive pricing: people want to buy something and they need a certain amount, but there isn't enough to go around, so it goes to those who are willing to pay more for it.

These gas prices are just ridiculous... I believe it was Exon (is that the name of that place) that is thinking about stopping their sale of gas, because they only make about one to two cents each gallon they sell.

I think gas prices are a scam.