Fuel Prices….

[jac]

I suppose the Amish communities could be termed as some of the islands of humanity that Carl mentions..Individuals working alone might feel as tho they dont make a difference but as a group or community the concept of sustainable life begins to look a lot better…Was reading a bit on algea and how the boffins recon its the answer to our fuel needs.. I often wonder how a farmer using horses or oxen to produce energy for his farm compares to a farmer that produces bio fuel to power his tractors.. is natures energy production actually more efficient than anything we can make…
John

[Marshall]

@jac 23660 wrote:

.. is natures energy production actually more efficient than anything we can make…
John

Like the therapist told me with my first knee replacement “God made is better than man made”. I suppose that could hold true with energy production to.

[dominiquer60]

John,

“I suppose the Amish communities could be termed as some of the islands of humanity that Carl mentions”

Just to shed a little light on the Amish, not all Amish communities/families are equal. Some spray crops with horses, use GMO’s, buy lots of foreign goods at Walmart and hire a neighbor with a vehicle to drive them everywhere (only using the horse for church). There are so many variations in the Amish community. You have David Klein who is an organic grass based dairyman and then you have some of my friends Amish neighbors that will buy in and sell anything as “Amish” for a buck. As with any group of people there are good and bad.

I would wager that even with their autos, Carl and his family have quite a few of today’s Amish beat as far as energy conservation and self sufficiency. Just remember that it takes all types, and even the Amish have their bad apples when it comes to making it in the future.

Erika

[jac]

Erika thank you for that. We over here seem to get the tourist image and you guys have the real picture. I think I have probably held the Amish up as the ideal horsemen and good sustainable farmers when as you say there is good and bad in there too..
John

[goodcompanion]

My uncle hails from the finger lakes region of New York State and has taken upon himself the life mission of disabusing the world in general of any idealized vision of the Amish, or Mennonites for that matter. Just about any human failing you can imagine….same as anyone else I suppose.

Still, I would bet that they are quite a bit better at working as a team for the common good than we are. Just by necessity, since other secular-world options are more-or-less cut off to them. Art through adversity.

[mitchmaine]

good or bad, my money is on the amish. they are survivors.

[Mark Cowdrey]

Got The Resilient Gardener, by Carol Deppe for Christmas. Seems excellent so far with a definitely “let go of what you can’t control and do what you can perspective. Anyway, on her recommendation for where she is coming from, took a break from reading it to read Collapse, How Societies choose to fail or succeed, Jared Diamond. I find it interesting and germaine to this discussion.
Snow here today. Finally. Come on sleigh riders, come to Papa!
Mark

[near horse]

Hi Mark –

I went to a talk with Jared Diamond as the invited speaker a few years ago. He was interesting to listen to. One point he made (and I think makes in the book) is to learn from the experiences of others (good and bad) to address a problem and therein lies the “hope”. With modern communication technology we can talk to people on the other side of the world (like VT/NH) and perhaps find solutions – if only people would quit texting “what they’re having for lunch etc!”

Guns, Germs and Steel by J. Diamond is the precursor to Collapse and is his attempt to determine why “western European culture etc” has come to dominate the planet. Funny, he mentioned that it was a question posed to him by a friend in New Guinea that started him thinking about this – essentially “Why do you guys have all the stuff?”

I know I’m the “gloom and doom” sayer with regard to some of this but, in fact, it is almost a relief to know that I’m just here now and then I’ll be gone – like billions of people and living things before me. In between, hopefully, how I spent my time provided me with some level of satisfaction?.

I’ll take a look at The Resilient Gardner – nice title for life in general, don’t ya think? Example – I’m finishing up some work on my sled and the big snow storm/cold temps have now changed to 40F and rain for the next week. Resiliency! Arrgh.

[Ed Thayer]

Just recieved a delivery of #2 fuel oil at the house today. 200 gallond cost me $687.00 dollars. I almost fell out of my chair. I have been considering an outdoor wood boiler and buying wood from a local source.

[Michel Boulay]

My daughter had 100 gallons(imp) or 450 litres delivered and it was .93 cents a litre tax not included. That is here in New-Brunswick. Here tax is 13%so that 100 litres was $468. Diesel here is $1.23/litre, gazoline $110/litres.
Every week on thursday they have a readjustment of prices, which could vary from 1 to 4 cents or stay the same. As everywhere else in North America we all complain about high prices, so in our province they play with this readjustment thing. Don’t really understand the formula but its based on the barrel of oil price at the NYSE.
So they play with everybody’s mind every week. On wednesday via media they let you know if the price is going up or down, an estimate . If you go by the gaz tanks on wednesday and see poeple gasing up you know price is going up.
I guest you could go from state to state or province to province and find some difference everywhere you go(taxes and prices). And all that time those gaz companies are making mil.. huh billions. Its not as if where going to stop buying oil or gaz tomorrow so why play with us this way????
Guess I could go on and on and……:mad::(:confused:

[OldKat]

@boulami 24526 wrote:

My daughter had 100 gallons(imp) or 450 litres delivered and it was .93 cents a litre tax not included. That is here in New-Brunswick. Here tax is 13%so that 100 litres was $468. Diesel here is $1.23/litre, gazoline $110/litres.
Every week on thursday they have a readjustment of prices, which could vary from 1 to 4 cents or stay the same. As everywhere else in North America we all complain about high prices, so in our province they play with this readjustment thing. Don’t really understand the formula but its based on the barrel of oil price at the NYSE.
So they play with everybody’s mind every week. On wednesday via media they let you know if the price is going up or down, an estimate . If you go by the gaz tanks on wednesday and see poeple gasing up you know price is going up.
I guest you could go from state to state or province to province and find some difference everywhere you go(taxes and prices). And all that time those gaz companies are making mil.. huh billions. Its not as if where going to stop buying oil or gaz tomorrow so why play with us this way????
Guess I could go on and on and……:mad::(:confused:

Never was involved in any crude marketing or refined petroleum products either for that matter, but I have been involved in marketing natural gas. It is done in a manner similar to crude & refined products. Not sure about pricing in Canada, but in the US it is based on an index of bid prices at a specific regional terminal. Transportation costs are added to that so that if you are closer to the point of origin (called a basis) it is cheaper than at the terminal, if you are near the terminal it will be the same and the further you are from the closest regional terminal the more it will cost. This is wholesale pricing; the distributor and/or retailer will mark the product up for their services.

The cost of getting a barrel of oil to the surface includes legal expenses, lease costs, exploration & production costs among other things. These are collectively referred to as “lift costs”. When I worked on the production side of the business some 15 to 20 years ago our lift costs were about $30.0 per barrel. (We benchmarked that to the other majors. We were generally in the middle of the pack; some could do it cheaper, some spent more. That would translate to about $60.0 today.) Anyway, from there the product incurs transportation costs and refining / processing and storage costs and then after refining / processing more transportation and storage costs to the end use market.

As you said, taxes are added to that. That would be the local and state (province, etc) taxes. In the US there is also a federal tax. I forget the exact figure, but I think that in some areas the taxes add something on the order of 25% to 33% to the cost. In the US, the total taxes often (nearly always) exceed the profit made by the producer, transporters, processors / refiners, distributors and retailers combined. Canada may tax less, I don’t know. I’ve heard that in Europe it is taxed much higher, but never looked it up myself so I can’t say for sure. When you look at the whole sliced pie, the biggest slice is for taxes. No single component adds as much cost as the taxes do collectively. So I guess my question is: who is really profiting the most off of you?

BTW: On an earlier post someone questioned why diesel prices are so much higher than gasoline prices. On a seasonal basis the biggest factor that impacts this is that diesel and heating oil (bunker 6 maybe?) compete for the same resource in the refining chain. That is nothing new; it has always been that way. It does help explain why diesel prices spike in the winter. The reason it has outpaced gasoline recently is that about 4 or 5 years ago or so there was a new requirement put in to reduce the amount of sulfur in the fuel, which essentially amounted to the diesel now having to be “cooked” two complete times and further refined to remove the sulfur and some other paticulates as per an EPA mandate (maybe part of the Clean Air Act?), not an industry requirement.

May not be what most people want to hear, but there it is.

[jac]

Hi OldKat.. I am afraid I have been a real cynic when it comes to the oil and gas companies.. I always thought the rise in price of diesel compared to petrol coincided with the rise in diesel car sales and the winter spike was to cash in on folks having to crank up their oil and gas fired heating systems:D…
John

[OldKat]

@jac 24565 wrote:

Hi OldKat.. I am afraid I have been a real cynic when it comes to the oil and gas companies.. I always thought the rise in price of diesel compared to petrol coincided with the rise in diesel car sales and the winter spike was to cash in on folks having to crank up their oil and gas fired heating systems:D…
John

Well, you would be right about that too. There is no doubt more demand now for diesel than there was 25 years ago, simply because there are more autos and light trucks burning it than there use to be. The first diesel pickup truck that I bought was the result of seeing people, including me, standing in line to buy gasoline during the oil embargo(s) of the 1970’s and seeing people in a diesel vehicle zip up to the pump and buy fuel that was 10, 15 or 20% cheaper. That is not the case now and I’m not sure I would buy a diesel today if I were to replace my current (17 year old) pickup.

Just saw a show about home prices in different parts of the US. A home that would cost you $1.8 Million (US) in Newport Beach, Ca could be bought for $68,000 in Detroit, Mi. I don’t want to live in either city, but that shows you how much more demand there is to live on the beach than there is to live in Motor City. Same thing happens when any product or commodity sees an increased demand.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons to move away from oil. I am no spokesman or apologist for the industry. I’d like to be able to tell the OPEC countries where they can stick their oil & it ain’t in a tanker. However I hear things all the time in the media and elsewhere about oil / gasoline prices that I know are inaccurate. I don’t want my friends on this board to fall into the trap of making inaccurate statements because they happen to have a dislike for oil companies. Hate ’em all you want, just make sure you know what you are talking about first.

BTW: A couple of years ago there was a real trend for the media to talk about the record profits that oil companies were making at a time of high prices. There was a near constant buzz about so and so oil company made so many BILLIONS of dollars in the previous quarter. Those were probably accurate statements. What went unsaid was that the return on investment in the oil industry typically runs about 8% and almost never tops 10%. In most industries a company will not invest in a venture unless they can earn 12% and many want 14% or better before spending a single penny. One of the reasons oil companies have such high revenue is that they are investing massive amounts of money to do so. Fact is many other companies would idle their production lines for similar returns. Never thought of it that way before, had you?

[jac]

I have to admit OldKat I hadnt thought of it that way before:o.. Over here we have the crazy situation where you can buy your electric from the gas company and the gas from the electric boys !!!??? their reason is they can sell gas/electricity as a lump to each other and offer better deals… well Im sorry but the British people as a group are a massive customer so why not sell US the goods at the price they sell it to each other ??.. next thing you know we will be going to the green grocers to buy nails !!:D
John

[near horse]

Oldkat – I have a hard time swallowing the “oil companies operate on marginal profits” scenario. Do you expect us to believe that they’re out there doing this for “the good of the humanity” or something? If it was marginally profitable, they’d either raise prices or get out – that’s how markets work. No decent profit = no incentive to stay and invest, period.

And, oil companies know we have no other choices, for the most part. Our infrastructure was designed and developed to operate based on cheap petrol.

In my most recent experience here, the reps of Conoco/Phillips and Exxon/Mobil have been nothing but underhanded and deceitful, misleading the public with bogus advertisements and slandering local residents who are opposed to their actions in this area – in fact, actually telling our state troopers they felt there could be “terrorists” trying to stop their trip. So local citizens who were honest and above board about saying they were going to make sure the loads were in compliance with the agreement, were pulled over by ISP and harassed in the need to thwart terrorism.

Now those knuckleheads are stuck in the mountains in a snowstorm – after already sideswiping a guardrail and rocky outcropping enroute.

I’ll post this excerpt again so we can see just how poorly those companies are doing in this struggling economy. Not a tear from me will be shed for the poor oil companies and their investors.

Excerpt from: Exxon’s Profit Rises in Quarter, Helped by Higher Oil Prices By Clifford Krauss, The New York Times, Jan. 31. 2011
>>
>> HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil, the largest American oil company, reported a 53 percent increase in its fourth-quarter profit on Monday,…
>>
>> Exxon Mobil’s profit in the quarter was $9.25 billion, or $1.85 a share, compared with $6.05 billion, or $1.27 a share in the quarter a year ago. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected $1.63 a share. Total revenue in the quarter was $105.2 billion, up from $89.8 billion in the quarter a year earlier.
>>
>> For the year, Exxon Mobil made $30.46 billion, or $6.22 a share, compared with $19.28 billion, or $3.98 a share, in 2009. Revenue in 2010 rose to $383 billion from $310 billion the previous year….
>>
>> “Exxon Mobil remains well positioned to maximize shareholder value,”….

BTW – As I drove across the country last fall, I can’t count the number of signs I saw in the rural areas of different states saying “No Fracking …..” But our Energy gods tell us now they’ve found more than 100 yrs worth of natural gas, so no power worries – Right, guess where?

[Author]

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