Scary article in NY Times about petroleum supply. Very, very scary.

Anybody else read it in the Sunday magazine?
The gist of it is that we've reached the point when demand will outstrip supply and it's not the fact that oil will run out that will cause global chaos, it will be a descent into the valley caused by rampant consumption.

It's pretty much unavoidable and it's not going to be just our precious old cars that are affected, every aspect of our lives will be in turmoil.

Without getting into politics too much, I have to say that we've been lied to by administrations past and present, the writing was on the wall and the powers that be did nothing, or next to nothing.

Cars were more fuel efficient in the early '80s than they are now, or at least got better gas mileage.

I think we have to come to terms that our fat cat ways and our unreasonable affection for automobiles has led us down the path to ruin.

I can speak for Orlando and say that it's virtually impossible to live here without owning a car. I just spent a weekend in NYC and it occured to me that because of their excellent public transportation you can easily get by without a car. I wish it were the same in LA and here, but it's too late now.

These high gas prices have made me change my ways, as much as I can, and I can tell you that future road trips might be history for me.

I don't know if I can reasonably afford the $1000 in gas it's gonna take me to go to the Roundup next year, a dream of mine.

I don't want to be a Chicken Little about this, but I think we have to face reality, and it's not too bright.

 

I didn't read that story but I think you are being fed BULL crap.
Since when did early 80's vehicles get better mileage?
My 2000 Chebby pickup gets 20 or 21 mpg and it's got 160,000 miles on it.My 1980 Chebby pickup got 8 to 10 mpg.
My buddys Windstar van just got 31 on a road trip ,my van in 1985 got 11 or 12.

The truth is this . We have not built a refinery for over 30 years.The tree huggers and such have made sure of that . No-one wants a gas refinery in their backyard so we helped countries in South America and all over the world build them.

We paid thru the nose to build the Alaska pipeline and every drop of that oil goes overseas,( mainly Japan and China).


There has been a Morotorium on Offshore Drilling for almost 20 years, Blame the same tree huggers.

They also have stopped the building of Nuclear Power PLants.

I would like to blame certain political leaders for these problems but we did it to ourselves.

One thing speaks loudly about us and our culture, There is no reduction in the use of gasoline when prices go up.It's strictly supply and demand. Hemi Cudas wouldn't sell for a half million if no-one wanted to buy them.T-bones wouldn't sell for $8 a lb if someone wasn't buying them every day.

As long as we are willing to pay for it ,they will sell it for that.
I just this spring started mowing my neighbors yard,$30 a week makes up for the increase in gas costs for me .No big deal!!

 

The article is mostly scare tactics and bullshit. It makes several good points on consumption though.

H2's and other SUV pigs driven by soccer moms getting 8mpg as they careen down the fast lane at 80mph. You should have to demonstrate a need to buy a vehicle like a heavy SUV or pickup. Something like you tow a car trailer, travel trailer, have a large family, etc for the big SUV's.

They miss several points though. How government subsidised ethanol in gasoline (up to 10%) is saving hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil.

The reason gas prices is so high is because china has gone from being an exporter of energy to an importer. Coupled with the damage to gulf oil operations from the worst hurricane season in record, a "peace-keeping action" in the middle east, Central American refinery strikes, and the US president pushing the US emergency oil reserve to new unprecidented heights, and you have a situation where supply has fallen short of demand. This make a bull market.

Also the tree huggers have not allowed a new refinery to be built in the last 25 years in north america, and the existing ones are running at at a combined 98% capacity. We cannot make enough gas fast enough.

Central american pays $0.12 a gallon average. In canada its currently around a buck a litre.

Funny thing is that the oil sands and oil shales in the central plains of Canada and the US are the largest source of oil in the world. It just costs $50 a barrel to actually get the oil out. For the oil companies its not worth it when it costs them only a few dollars to extract the light crude from the middle east or texas. Or how about how there are billions of gallons of oil in national parks that noone is allowed to touch (saving for a rainy day) in the US.

When everything becomes settled down again in central america and the middle east, prices will drop, but not to $25 a barrel like a few years ago. I doubt we will see below $50 a barrel ever again.

Haven't you every wondered why the oil prices shoot way up anytime there is an oil man in office?

 

You know I've been saying that about 80's cars to people for years now. With all this technology, fuel/power efficiency has really improved. They've just become better at masking the ineptitude. Sure cars get higher horsepower now, but only because they can achieve it through higher RPM's and fuel efficiency is worse because fuel injection has been used in the wrong way - bigger power instead of fuel management. No research has gone into making a reliable, strong fuel efficient car, any that get decent mileage just look "cute", while ultimately being 5 years disposable.

Take into account the Toureg. VW has always had a foot with wise fuel usage or at least attempts at it. My fiance wanted a Toureg when they first came out (she's a VW stalwart), until she saw the mileage. A dinky V6 that gets average to better HP, does it at 15-17 MPG !!!!!! That's ridiculous. And the fact that a better emissions device than the cat converter has never come about is ridiculous. That technology is just ludicrous and solves very little.

What's this spell for old cars. In a way not much if their pre-late 60's, because you're not getting that worse gas mileage as a new car (granted no emissions and less HP).
But all in all they'll all be resigned to collectors items one day, because driving them anywhere a lot is going to cost as much as buying them. Seriously if you want to continue driving an old car, I say go with a decent diesel engine. The restructuring of the current soybean agri/economy is going to eventually provide alternatives to petrol, that you'll be able to take advantage of. Hybrids are johnny come lately stop gap measure. And the first nuclear plant/hydrogen fuel cell (yes NRC commissions are in consideration for new nuclear plants that can produce hydrogen fuel cells as well, and this has no connection to the Bush administration) are still ten years off.

Off my pedestal. This is all old news anyhow.

 

Exactly, Thats why there was so much Sex in the office while that Prick Clinton was in there!!

 

The New York Times has their own agenda and before I'd believe anything they wrote I'd check a few other sources.

 

Nope, they're just waiting for the Arabs to run out of oil and then they'll start digging up Australia.

Who knows, maybe fuel will be cheaper in the future and we WON'T have to all drive around in black Falcon coupes making statements like "I'm just here for the guzzle-line."

 

Racer Rick what I think it really comes down to is the oil traders basicially use many of those instances as excuses to raise the price of oil. Kind of like when they raise the price of OJ because Florida got hit by a hurricane, when so much OJ comes from Cali or South America. They claim its because the market becomes strained, but when you microanalyze the market, the Florida OJ and SA OJ are almost completly independent of each other. The similar can be said about the oil market. Different demographics receive their oil from different sources. And microanalyzed are independent of each other financially. Oil shipments are not offset to accomodate shortages in different demographics.

And while the Times is usually full of bullshit, its old news and other far more reputable news sources have reporting similar for years. But it really shouldn't be something that is just easily dismissed.

 

The problem is not supply, but production bottlenecks, and speculation driven by political events. The big threat to our old cars will come when we finally move to hydrogen or some other alternative fuel source. That's going to take a while because it requires a huge investment in infastructure. But it will happen over time. And when it does, gasoline will be scarce and expensive. And they'll probably be some severe restrictions on running the old cars on public roads. It'll be very interesting to see what that does to the prices of the big dollar collector cars.

 

A good rule of thumb is to NEVER believe anything printed in the New York Times, Washington Post or LA Times.

 

exactly!

why is it that nowadays, a husband and wife with a newborn (one child) has to drive a seven or eight passenger suv?!? mostly, you see a vehicle like this being used as a commuter car, one person driving an eight person vehicle just to go to work everyday, wtf?

joecool, think outside of your own vehicles/experiences. how many large suv's did you see on the road in the eighties, and how many do you see now? tons of 'em!

fuel economy is definitely worse. for example, a 1983 honda accord (i know, i know, it's just for the example) got 41 miles to the gallon, and a 2005 honda accord is rated for 34 miles to the gallon. fuel economy is definitely worse now.

 

yeah only read the wall street journal............but im biased as it pays my bills haha.

i think the article meant that cars in the 80's POUND FOR POUND had better gas milage.

 

Personally I like to read info from non mainstream news sources. You want the best all around news outlets. Scan through Google news. As far as my opinion formulated on the fuel situation, most of that is from non-specific, non-agenda articles from Popular Science, Scientific American, Popular Mechanics, etc. distill the facts and couple that with experience and you get pretty good foundation. News is good to get an idea in your head, but its important to do research beyond as well.

 

Nads my man, I'm hear to ease your mind a bit

The NYT was refering to a theory called "Peak Oil" and you can search for it if you like. But it will make your blood boil and you palms turn sweatier than ususal.

Then when you are tired of the FEAR MONGERING read the reports from www.eia.doe.gov and the tension will release itself.

Peak Oil is bogus, it does operate on the theory that we are at our PETRO MAX right now. Ludicrus, we aren't even close to the maximum ammount of oil pumping capcity. Want proof? In that EIA report it lists the number of capped oil wells in it, it talks about the ammount of oil in reserves and production numbers, very thourogh.

A few small countries with a lot of Petro Clout have been tinkering with the world oil supply and value. These countrys come no where close to the oil production of the US itself but by artificially restricting themselves to the ammount of oil they can produce the put a stranglehold on the worlds nutsack.

 

Whatever happened to hot rodders being at the forefront of developing and improving technology? Somebody needs to build a bio-diesel car and break some records at Bonneville.

 

You go to the car rider line at the grade school and there are moms(and dads) driving crew cab dually 4x4s that don't have a scratch in the bed or even a trailer hitch. Same with those Hummers and big suvs. Safer? maybe but if they'd get off the phone and put down that big mac a nd slurpee it would be even safer.
The oil supply? The media molds all our ideas and perceptions. Special interest groups use it as a tool. Our currant oil fields are on the decline, past their peak in production but this planet still has a bunch of oil. Siberia has more oil than we can imagine and as soon as gas hits a high enough price you can bet there will be a trans-Siberia pipeline. I'll probably be too old to work that one, got in on the Alaska one though. Lots of oil offshore. They are just barely touching what's in the Beaufort sea. I was on a man made island out there 20 years ago and they hit a good payzone, then pulled out.
And besides all that, we don't even need fossil fuels to run cars. We can run them on recycled garbage. I suppose it has been supressed by now but I read of some technology about 3-4 years ago that allowed them to pull what was basically a high grade of crude oil from just about any waste. In the article they were using chicken guts. I can't remember where I read it, Scientific American maybe.
And new cars verses old- I had a 72 F-100 stock 302-C4 with a couple weak holes. It got around 15 mpg. I recently had a 96 F-150 302 with AOD 16 mpg with a low milage healthy truck.So for all the port injection, roller valvetrain, mass air flow blah blah I gained 1 mpg? Wow, that's some technology.

 

A slightly different take -

I just read an article regarding a new Lexus 430, it is a hybrid - a 325 hp gas v8 and a little electric something or other to crawl around town - they claim its going to get 30 mpg (we'll see) for the paltry sum of $60k.

I had an honest 275 hp car back in the mid 80's and it sure as hell didn't get 30mpg! maybe 10 or 11 driving off idle.

I think its just a matter of who youre gonna pay - Japan for the technology or OPEC for the oil

swdobbs....

 

Then QUIT believing everything you read...remember the "Gas Crunch" of the 70's? It, too, was bullshit...

Check all the sources before you panic and sell everything you own!

R-

 

Seems like I saw and read all the same articles, heard the same warnings, and watched everybody buying smaller and smaller cars, back in the 70's.

They swore by the year 2000 we'd be out of gas and all driving eletric cars.

 

The thing is petroleum is never going to disappear. It has been said that gas can be made from garbage, and it indeed can (there are varying processes). And there is much crude left, just not easily accessible. And as such hotrodding will never disappear. Even if all the gas disappeared by some twist irony, hot rodding would find a way to live on. There's no issue there. The issue at hand is how is it going to change? What are you going to be willing to trade off?
Adaptation.

 

the thing about peak oil, people are NOT saying that the oil will just RUN OUT, they are saying CHEAP OIL is a thing of the past. people get that through your heads! no more CHEAP oil! the supply will slowly be depleted, but as it goes down, the price will skyrocket. the facility being built in canada just doubled in projected price due to the rise in price of steel and concrete.

we are the most wasteful users, and i am all for individual countries doing whatever the fuck they want with their oil. it's time for us to learn to get by without it. imagine if oil was rationed worldwide, by population, not by political power. wouldn't we be suprised when china and india get all the oil!

fearmongering and hysteria or not, i say keep it up until the people that say they would rather not EAT than save a gallon of gas get the fucking point.

 

Valid point, and the lesson to learn is the problem was never addressed after it. We just bought smaller cars, instead of looking for alternatives. Continuing to develop the gasoline engine, bottom line, is beating a dying horse. There will always be petrol in one form or another, yes. But for modern transport, its not the end all, be all. There are better answers.

Just because we'll always have plastic, we'll always have gasoline. Gasoline hot rods will live on, don't worry about that.

 

As a general rule I try to avoid these kinds of post but........

This is a trend you may as well get used to because it isn't going to stop anytime soon. Gas prices aren't the least of the problems we are going to be facing economicaly but it isn't the only one and all of them will be traced back to what our country is becoming and indeed what the world is becoming. A liberalistic society can not and will not stand. Take Rome and Greece for example they collapsed upon themselves due to what on the outside looks like noble ideas and policies. The problem is that noone in power in these cases can stop the rolling train that begins. Look at it this way we have tree huggers in litigation against animal rights activist right up north because of a windmill project that the state wants to put up to make electricity. We have regulated ourselves to death. Businesses in this country have to employ whole staffs of lawers just to combat possible lawsuites. This drives up the cost of the products and heaven forbid a company lose a law suit then the cost have to be recooped this means lose of jobs or cost reductions that compromise the quility of the product. Too many regulation+too many regulators+too much paper to process= big loses to the end consumer in quality and in cost effectiveness. Let me say this and you can begin to flog me publicaly...This country has it entirely too easy, noone apreciates anything, there are too many professional protesters with nothing better to do than make life hard on those who have nothing all the while professing to want to stand up for whats right. If these people would apply themselves to finding answers to the problems rather than condiming those who have them maybe they could make a difference but thats not there agenda, they don't care about anything but themselves and the challenge of messing someone over. If these people who care more about saving the whales and less about saving unborn babies would have to plant peas and beans in their yards so that they could eat then maybe they'd be able to better prioritize their own lives and get out of ours. Oh and lastly these people and especially the ACLU need to get out of the school systems before they completely ruin the up and coming generations.

 

Blame the Chinese, huh? Just because they bought all the white Portland cement and scrap steel and excess gasoline on the market? Well, here's some news from World Net Daily, where I get my real news, about out oil supply:

"[font=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]Want to know why the United States is so dependent on foreign oil? California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is among those demanding cancellation of offshore oil leases in three California counties. [/font] [font=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]The environmental lobby, fearing oil spills, has blocked exploitation of the leaseholds for decades. As a result, that oil can't augment our domestic supply – nor does the state enjoy the petroleum royalties that used to pay for its educational infrastructure, highways and other public works."
[/font]

[font=Palatino, Book Antiqua, Times New Roman, Georgia, Times]'Nuff said about tree huggers.
[/font]

 

Why worry about forgien oil?
We can grow our fuel.
We have the biggest bread-basket in the world and could easily convert infrastructure to use methenol instead of gasoline.
It's easier on the enviorment and runs cooler, plus it's 100% renewable.

Why we don't do that puzzles me...
r

 

I rode my mountain bike 24-7-365 for almost 10 years. I built up my oil credits that way, factor that into todays prices and I dont have to complain about the price of gas for 5-10 years!

 

Don't like participating in these types of threads, but there is so much lurid bullshit labeled as "economic analysis" in the popular press these days that I couldn't let this pass.

I have known a lot of smart people in my life, but the smartest I've ever known was the late Julian Simon. In 1980, a famous Stanford biologist, Paul Erlich, had written a best selling book, "The Population Bomb" in which he argued that the world was headed to a permanent catastrophe state of shortages -- oil, steel, you name it. He "proved" there would be worldwide economic collapse, starvation and death -- in the 100s of millions to billions of people -- by 1990. The book was universally praised by non-economic intellectualoids, especially in the New York Times.

In the midst of this, Julian Simon called bullshit on Erlich and challenged him to a friendly bet. "If you are right," reasoned Simon, "the price of commodities will rise." He challenged Erlich to invest $1,000 in 5 commodities -- any ones he wanted -- and in ten years if the price was above $1,000, Simon would pay him the difference. If the price was below $1,000, Erlich would pay Simon the difference. Erlich jumped on the bet. Ten years later, in 1990, Erlich wrote out a check to Simon for $576. The price of the commodities had dropped 57.6% in ten years.

It was a complete sucker's bet. What Simon knew -- and what Erlich didn't -- is that commodity prices ALWAYS fall over extented periods. There has never been a metal or commodity that has seen an inflation adjusted 20-year price increase. For all of human history. Why? Because people find substitutes.

If you really believe that gasoline prices are inevitably going up, caused by a secret cabal of evil oil barons, I've got a suggestion for you: take off the tinfoil hat put your money where your mouth is. Drop a few bucks in the oil futures market...

http://www.refcoprivateclient.com/F...gcid=S15230x001-edu&keyword=future+market+oil

If you're so certain that prices are going up up up, then buy buy buy. Take my advice though -- don't leave your money in there 10 years or more, you'll lose your ass.

 

This is all very interesting to me to follow because in the early 80's I met and became friends with a newly retired Conoco (sp) executive. We of course discussed the higher cost of "unleaded" gas. I asked what was different with unleaded and the white gas I used to sell in the 60's for campurestoves? It cost me something like .25 and sold for $1. He told me that unleaded was less costly to produce because it required less processing and only smiled and said "profit?"

He also told me that even projecting gas needs in the future, the US had reserves for over 200 years. Oil companies were drilling wells all the time and capping them off so that they didn't have to pay taxes on them.

Here is the part I've been waiting for to see if he was correct.

Quote: "We will use the world's oil until gas prices get to $4 gallon then we will use our own as it will then be cost effective." Hmmmm, or did he mean profit effective? LOL

Just passing on a conversation and don't claim any accuracy in the data.

I do feel that the gas crunch is entirely ALL my fault as I just finished a 2300 hour build of my 40 dlx and have it on the road. They must have seen me coming.

Fourdy

 

Only 5 days to HAMB Drags!!!!

It's the HAMB's fault gas prices are up!

1) Drive to Joplin- burn gas
2) Cruise on Saturday rt 66- burn gas
3) Drag race all evening- burn gas
4) Drive home Sunday- burn gas


Woohoo!! I can't wait!!!