Fuel price per barrel

[James Deuce]

It appears to me the only crock of shit is your ability to have misread my post completely.....
I say nothing different from what you come up with...apart from having a brother in law in Jakarta working in oil.....
(incidently I work in oil to.....in NZ)

Oh by the way Indonesia subsidises fuel........thats why its cheaper there

Oil companies are greedy indeed, but that has nothing to do with the government.....(ours is 100x better then Indonesia's anyway)

He doesn't work for an Indonesian company. He's worked all over the world. I didn't misread your post. You made the tired old claim that NZ's oil is purchased months in advance.

It has everything to do with the Government. If oil prices stay up they get free money for nothing and do nothing with it except employ civil servants.

[Horse]

How does the govt make oil companies put prices up or down? I'm confused.


Go read up about peak oil. It's never getting cheaper again (well, for medium-term definitions of "never").

[Toaster]

Fuel retailers wear the losses from drive offs, not the oil companies - the ones making big bucks off us.

The Oil producers - now that is were the real profits are. You only have to look at the wealth displayed by the oil barons in the middle east to see that.

Visit Kuwait or Dubai to see what the non-warring oil countries are doing with our petrol money. Incredible displays of goverment and public wealth.

[Toaster]

By visit, I mean Google. Avgas is too expensive to afford to fly over there now!

[The Stranger:Me]

To offset all the drive-offs of course...

I saw a listing of drive-offs for the west Auckland area a short while back (damned if I remember where I saw it) but was struck at how few there were and what a tiny percentage of acutal volume pumped was stolen.

NOT supporting theft at all. But reality is, every business has to deal with theft and/or bad debts (which isn't usually a problem petrol stations have), like it or not.
You don't see Foodtown requiring you to pay prior to entering the shop.

They should stop their fucken whining and take some lessons in customer service - start by not calling their customers criminals.

[Roki_nz]

How does the govt make oil companies put prices up or down? I'm confused.


Go read up about peak oil. It's never getting cheaper again (well, for medium-term definitions of "never").

Peak oil hmm... they thought we were going to run out of oil in the 30s, that never happened

[Dodger]

I was sort of hoping that petrol was going to hit $3 or more per L.
At the moment with it over $2 the reduced amount of traffic on Wellington's motorways is noticeable. (school holidays have also helped)

I'm really enjoying the daily commute, and at $25 for 300km+ the bike doesn't cost that much to run. (and I'm commuting with the wife as pillion)

Even if gas was costing $4/L the bike would still be affordable, and the amount of cars on the road would be low (IMHO)
The only problem are the run on costs, eg. the price of food goes up due to transportation cost increases.

[The Stranger:Me]

How does the govt make oil companies put prices up or down? I'm confused.


Go read up about peak oil. It's never getting cheaper again (well, for medium-term definitions of "never").

How old are you Horse?
Remember the 70's?
Petrol was in such short supply that we had carless days right.
Petrol wasn't sold on the weekends in order to conserve critical supplies for essential use.
In short the world HAD run out of oil according to numerous reports.

Oh I know this is different! - just remind me how again will you.


Never say never.

[Swoop]

Question: is the goverment still going to introduce that fuel tax

Do you really need to ask that question?
Gubbinment thinking = "If in doubt, TAX it. If there is already a tax on something = INCREASE the tax rate!"

[Horse]

Petrol was in such short supply that we had carless days right.
Petrol wasn't sold on the weekends in order to conserve critical supplies for essential use.

Correct.

In short the world HAD run out of oil according to numerous reports.

Wrong.

From the most inaccurate source on the Internet (apart from all the other ones):

1973 Oil Crisis

The 1973 oil crisis began on October 17, 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC, consisting of the Arab members of OPEC plus Egypt and Syria) announced, as a result of the ongoing Yom Kippur War, that they would no longer ship oil to nations that had supported Israel in its conflict with Syria and Egypt (the United States, its allies in Western Europe, and Japan).

1979 Energy Crisis

The 1979 (or second) oil crisis in the United States occurred in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Amid massive protests, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled his country in early 1979, allowing Ayatollah Khomeini to gain control. The protests shattered the Iranian oil sector. While the new regime resumed oil exports, it was inconsistent and at a lower volume, forcing prices to go up. Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations, under the presidency of Dr. Mana Alotaiba increased production to offset the decline, and the overall loss in production was about 4 percent. [2] However, a widespread panic resulted, driving the price far higher than would be expected under normal circumstances.

Now go read up on Peak Oil. And remember that the optimists, the organisations like CERA who are in the tank for the oil producers, say everything's fine because we won't reach Peak Oil until 2040 or so (they don't deny PO, they just say it's constantly far enough away that there's no problem and we can continue Business As Usual - and for God's sake, don't stop buying Oil!). Of course for that to be true you'd have to believe KSA when they say they can increase production from 8.5mbpd to 15mbpd, despite the fact they've been trying and failing since mid 2005.

Peak oil may not have been in 2005 - it might be 10 years away. But it's going to happen, and sooner than you think - it's not the 1970s any more, and there aren't any more "easy" super-giant fields to discover. I think this graph is the most telling:

[Horse]

And if you don't like to read, watch this doco. Bloody Australians, doing way too good a job of making TV.

[Forest]

The price of oil has not dropped.

The price of a futures contract for the future delivery of oil has dropped.

[swedencamilla]

They will end up shooting themselves in the foot if the fuel price stays too inflated. People will have less money to spend and will look at cheaper options such as motorbikes, scooters, pushbikes, smaller cares, hybrids, public transport etc. Better for the environment. I think that in the next couple of years we are going to have an explosion of two-wheelers on the street. It is already much more common than it used to be, at least I think so, maybe I am noticing it more now that I have my own. I just wish now that I had gotten one earlier, much earlier, it is really fun to ride, even as a newbie.

[The Stranger:Me]

Correct.

Wrong.

From the most inaccurate source on the Internet (apart from all the other ones):

I think you miss the point Horse.
Again - were you there?

I aren't going to be bothered reading the links, my apologies if this sounds like I am arguing without the evidence. The reason I aren't going to read the links is that they have the benefit of hind sight, which wasn't available at the time. As with so many reports that are complete fuck ups, they never find the light of day again - for some strange reason you don't see authors standing up saying 'Whoa, look, I fucked up big time, here's the evidence to prove it", so no, you wont see what we saw at the time. IF you manage to find those authors and their fucked up reports and read them you will see a big case of deja vu.

It is only NOW that you can see what really happened back then - at the time you could not, so the reports like peak oil etc had credibiliy when released too and zealots to push the barrow and henny pennys running around proclaiming the sky was falling down (Y2K anyone)

So what's changed?

[Horse]

So what's changed?

We've spent another 30 years extracting oil out of the ground, at an ever increasing rate. It's simply not an infinite resource - there's good evidence to suggest that we're at or about to reach peak, but if we're really lucky it's a few decades away and the world has time to investigate alternatives.

Saying "someone said peak oil in the 70s and they were wrong so there's no such thing" isn't a compelling argument.