What surprises me most is that despite fuel prices rising and so much complaining the public continues to pay whatever the oil companies want to charge.
Oil company profits have doubled since a year ago, consumer debt is increasing. Why not reduce consumption? As gasoline supplies increase prices should decrease.
Please avoid political references and political themes in this thread and throughout our forum.
Respectfully,
Referencing oil company profits (9 cents per gallon) to a year ago is a bad reference since overall consumption was down because of the virus crap. That’s like saying how good the economy is now compared to a year ago.. What is needed is to look at the profits from say 2018, and of course the overall consumption, and then the gdp. And why do we use a lot of oil? Because we are a rich country by and large and we can afford to pay for the oil related products in our daily lives and our recreational lives, and we deserve it. The United States produces goods at 1/4 of the energy that other countries do, why? Because of capitalism. The United States, by and large uses this oil in a much cleaner way than other countries do, we have so many pollution controls on our emissions where other countries do not. Just look at Beijing, it looks like So Cal did in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
I do think that there is really no reason for oil prices to be high… we are literally standing on oceans of oil. However policy makers have the power to influence oil prices, reference the energy secretaries comments from a few months ago “we are unable to move our green new deal forward so we are making gas prices higher so that people will use less”. This is no bs, saw it on a live press conference. Cancelling oil production infrastructure projects has drastically increased the cost of oil via speculators. Some may consider that a political reference, but it is nothing more than the truth.
In the past it was always some excuse, a hurricane in the gulf of mexico, war in the Middle East, peak oil, a refinery fire far removed from your locale influencing prices.. its all nonsense. Most all oil prices are set from one location in Texas, think about that.
Had the U.S. proceeded with the expansion of nuclear energy there would not only be an over abundance of electricity there would be an overall total glut of oil. Instead there has been a push towards so called “renewable energy” with the exception of hydropower and geothermal, the main forms of renewable energy are from wind and solar, those forms of energy are a net carbon gain. In other words, it takes more energy to produce those forms of energy than those units will produce in their service life. The only reason those forms of generation are even happening is from massive govt subsidies aka tax payer funded corporate welfare, and those types of energy are 70-80% more expensive than other forms of fossil fuel produced energy, and 95% more than nuclear energy as well as their issues with intermittency. And as far as electric cars go, where is the money going to come from to construct and maintain the highways which are mostly made of oil? California residents know this all too well as the ultra high mileage hybrids and electric cars are now paying a $200 a year surcharge on their registration .. so that is not the answer either. And furthermore, the interconnected grid in this country as well as other countries is in no way shape or form able to support an all electric vehicle fleet, not without trillions of dollars of infrastructure upgrades in the transmission and distribution systems, let alone the generation facilities that it would take to provide the watt hours to charge electric vehicles. For example, California’s all time electrical consumption record was set in June of 2005, 50,205 MW’s for one our, specifically HE 17 or hour ending 17, 4-5PM. If you took half of the 34 million cars and made them all electric, at the end of each day when they all got home and plugged in the load would be 59,000 MW’s. Currently California cannot keep all the lights on in the afternoon during summer at system loads of 48,000 MW’s. Why? Because they got rid of their fossil fueled generation and are too dependent on solar, 11,000 MW’s worth, so when the sun starts going down in the afternoon they loose 11,000 MW’s and the CAISO has to initiate load shedding, otherwise known as rolling black outs.
So whats the answer? It certainly isn’t pleasing lies, its going to be unpleasant truths, truths that were not all that unpleasing some 20 years ago. I’m reminded of a quote from one of my favorite writers, Thomas Sowell, “There are those that base their policies in reality, and then there are those that try to make reality fit their policies, the latter of which is responsible for the greatest horrors of the 20th century“. The most important thing that needs to be done is to expand our nuclear energy generation from the 20% it is now to 88-90% like some countries in Europe, like France for example. That will provide the clean / cheap energy that will make it possible to electrify a lot of our daily usage, such as domestic water heating, comfort heating, etc.
