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RAY-NER
04-13-2007, 11:02 PM
If everyone owned a SEGWAY Model i2 as I do, they'd be travelling at the gasoline equivalent rate of 792 miles per gallon. SUV travel with only one driver going two or three miles on a simple errand is the biggest waste of money next to throwing it in the sewer. I'm getting 24 miles for a dime's worth of electricity to charge the battery. At $3.29.9 per gallon in California this morning (CHEVRON, OXNARD), the SEGWAY gets 792 miles per gallon. Beat that, Honda Hybrid! RAY-NER




cmonkey
04-13-2007, 11:26 PM
I like the fact that I average about 5 miles a day.
That's 5 miles that I'm NOT doing in my car.

And with the mileage my car gets, I figured that's about 100 gallons of gas per year that I'm not buying.

And looking here: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/co2.shtml

I figured I'm directly NOT putting about 2000LBS of CO2 into the air every year.

Granted, a portion of my CO2 is shifted to a power plant, but I'll let somone else do the math.

polo_pro
04-14-2007, 12:30 AM
cmonkey, I imagine the amount of CO2 generated to move 300 pounds 5 miles electrically is substantially less than the CO2 generated to move 2500 pounds 5 miles via internal combustion. Besides, your electricity may come from wind power or nuclear. I was amazed to see that only 1% of my electricity up here in Sac comes from coal (though 24% did come from natural gas so I'm not that green)!

Now as to safety, I think both cmonkey and rayner have both missed the important lesson that the authorities in Peachtree City, GA are trying to convey to us. The folks down there understand that you don't have to move 2500 pounds of metal around to do simple errands. They want to do the same thing with less mass. But they also want to be safe. So they settled on golf carts that weigh 500 pounds. And see, while golf carts are light, they still afford some protection. Have you seen the golf cart vs brick wall safety videos? Sure the people are a little banged up, but they walked away from head on collision.

See the segway is only 80 pounds...no safety. Did you see the segway vs brick wall video? Oh wait, that's right. The segway rider just steered around it. And then later in the video, the segway rider steered around the out of control golf cart driven by the drunk guy. And then towards the end of that safety video, the segway rider came to a screeching halt in only 2.78 feet when that kid ran out in front of him unexpectedly.

Hmmm....maybe Peachtree City, GA officials need to reconsider this safety issue with the segway, eh? 8^) 8^) 8^) Some one needs to explain to them IT ISN'T A GOLF CART...it's better!

Timezkware Tim
04-14-2007, 12:10 PM
Somebody please shoot me dept:

Yesterday on Pico Blvd in Beverly Hills I went to a Chevron station and paid 3.99 for high test (91 octane). My 20 gallon tank was already full before I noticed the price.

Tim

cmonkey
04-14-2007, 06:55 PM
I'm glad my little 'weekender' only has a 12gal tank, cuz it likes to eat 100 octane fuel, and last time I looked, it was $7/gal.
I don't drive it much.

Hwy1Glider
04-15-2007, 05:39 PM
Evidence mounts that the "sheeple" need to be slapped in the face before recognizing the reality of our shared situation. I see the increasing price of fuel as stronger incentive for more people to understand and, literally, buy into the wonderful world of gliding.

Question for my european friends: what's the current price of fuel in your area? If and when the US price reaches those levels, I believe you'll see many more lightbulbs over the heads of our neighbors.

Oh, and the price for a gallon of 100LL avgas at a recent stop in Oakland: $4.90. Let's see...if the tanks hold a little over 80 gallons of usable fuel...

Socrates
05-02-2007, 10:57 AM
Well, some European prices....
Today in Austria 1 gallon 95octane fuel costs 5.672 USD and 1 gallon 98octane fuel is at 6.185 USD and 1 gallon diesel is at 4.895 USD.

At the moment I don't know the rates of electricity.

Alex.

Desert_Seg
05-02-2007, 11:19 AM
Well, some European prices....
Today in Austria 1 gallon 95octane fuel costs 5.672 USD and 1 gallon 98octane fuel is at 6.185 USD and 1 gallon diesel is at 4.895 USD.

At the moment I don't know the rates of electricity.

Alex.

UAE prices range from $1.495 to $2.175 per gallon. It's cheaper in Saudi and Kuwait...much cheaper.

This is why there are lots of big engined cars on the roads here (myself included, unfortunately).

Steven

hellphish
05-02-2007, 01:27 PM
UAE prices range from $1.495 to $2.175 per gallon. It's cheaper in Saudi and Kuwait...much cheaper.

This is why there are lots of big engined cars on the roads here (myself included, unfortunately).

Steven



Well you need a big engine to run that A/C, right? ;)




Here's a picture I took on sunday.

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j273/hellphish9/Photo289.jpg

KSagal
05-02-2007, 01:39 PM
UAE prices range from $1.495 to $2.175 per gallon. It's cheaper in Saudi and Kuwait...much cheaper.

This is why there are lots of big engined cars on the roads here (myself included, unfortunately).

Steven


I am confused. Steven, are you saying you are a big engined car? I thought you were a segway dealer...

Desert_Seg
05-02-2007, 01:43 PM
I am confused. Steven, are you saying you are a big engined car? I thought you were a segway dealer...

Who says a car can't be a dealer? :D

Ok, ok, I guess I wasn't clear enough....I have 2.5 cars (own two and just bought an F150 today but don't take delivery until next week). All have v8s, all suck gas.

But on the flip side I do have 11 Segways at my house!

Steven

seglander
05-04-2007, 06:21 AM
Segway CO2 emmisions based on Irish Electricity CO2 emmisons per MW of power equates to approx 16g/km travelled. If you are buying wind generated power in Ireland its 0g/km.

I have done the math for commercial clients in case I get asked the question, took a bit of reasearch to get the average electricity emmisions figures.

Timezkware Tim
05-04-2007, 11:34 AM
Who says a car can't be a dealer? :D

Ok, ok, I guess I wasn't clear enough....I have 2.5 cars (own two and just bought an F150 today but don't take delivery until next week). All have v8s, all suck gas.

But on the flip side I do have 11 Segways at my house!

Steven

½ the week: Segway i170
½ the week: Mustang 302 V8 4bbl

The Mustang sounds bad, emissionwise, but I get there in ½ the time it takes a Prius, lol.

Tim

Desert_Seg
05-04-2007, 11:37 AM
½ the week: Segway i170
½ the week: Mustang 302 V8 4bbl

The Mustang sounds bad, emissionwise, but I get there in ½ the time it takes a Prius, lol.

Tim

3/5 of the travel - Segway
1/5 of the travel - X5
1/5 of the travel - 928

928 has the best sound and is running like a champ and, like you I can beat any Prius to the end line. Oh wait, there are no Prius here.

Steven

citivolus
05-04-2007, 05:40 PM
...like you I can beat any Prius to the end line.

I'm not up on corporate relationships, is "end line" a subsidiary of shell or mobil? :p

KSagal
05-04-2007, 09:47 PM
didn't I read somewhere that the carbon footprint of a prius (because of the zink in the batteries, among other things) is actually larger than the Porche, at the end line?...

GadgetmanKen
05-19-2007, 09:26 PM
UAE prices range from $1.495 to $2.175 per gallon. It's cheaper in Saudi and Kuwait...much cheaper.


Wow, that sounds so late 80's and mid 90's here. Do they tax the heck out of it too? How much of the cost of gas at todays rate here is just tax? Would it be near yours Steven?

With all this recent explosion of gas prices, its hitting my household hard. Two years ago we moved out into the country and its at least five miles to any grocery and at least double or triple that to our works. What in the world is our government waiting for to start using OUR reserves? If they wait for the middle east to run out it will be too late for us because the inflation will eat us alive. Cheap gas after the middle east runs out isn't going to help us, it will just fatten up the rich here that are already rich. Gee, isn't Bush in the oil business. Go figure.

cruiter
05-20-2007, 08:17 AM
I'm pretty sure we're way off topic here, but since we are.....

Talk to your congressmen/women about refineries. Every year they seem to shut them down just before the summer driving season and hurricaine season for "maintenance". Bull Hocky!!! We don't have enough to start with and when they shut them down for "maintenance", the glut of gas goes away and the price goes up. Oh, and we have many times more folks driving now then we did 20 years ago, but we have a fraction of the refineing capacity we had then. See the picture?

Wow, that sounds so late 80's and mid 90's here. Do they tax the heck out of it too? How much of the cost of gas at todays rate here is just tax? Would it be near yours Steven?

With all this recent explosion of gas prices, its hitting my household hard. Two years ago we moved out into the country and its at least five miles to any grocery and at least double or triple that to our works. What in the world is our government waiting for to start using OUR reserves? If they wait for the middle east to run out it will be too late for us because the inflation will eat us alive. Cheap gas after the middle east runs out isn't going to help us, it will just fatten up the rich here that are already rich. Gee, isn't Bush in the oil business. Go figure.

Desert_Seg
05-20-2007, 09:48 AM
I'm pretty sure we're way off topic here, but since we are.....

Talk to your congressmen/women about refineries. Every year they seem to shut them down just before the summer driving season and hurricaine season for "maintenance". Bull Hocky!!! We don't have enough to start with and when they shut them down for "maintenance", the glut of gas goes away and the price goes up. Oh, and we have many times more folks driving now then we did 20 years ago, but we have a fraction of the refineing capacity we had then. See the picture?



Well, that's an oversimplification of the problem. To whit:

1. All reports I've read, including both government and independent analysts, say that the main reason for these shutdowns is the large number of refinery accidents that have recently happened, including a huge fire in Feb at the 170K per day plant in Texas.



2. Another reason for the large number of maintenance shutdowns this year is because this is the FIRST time the refineries have been able to shut down since Hurricane Katrina. Remember that these refineries have been working double and triple time since Katrina knocked many Gulf refineries off-line

3. Finally, these same refineries have had to face increasing regulations which have made it harder and more costly to refine and more complicate as refineries have had to add more equipment and steps into the process. In order to do this the refineries have expanded their facilities instead of building new units (cheaper and faster).

So, while it may seem like collusion and good planning, there are actually great reasons for the shut downs.

Steven

pam
05-20-2007, 06:31 PM
This of course, doesn't address the question of why, given their huge profits, no new refineries have been built in the last - what - 30 years?
Pam

cruiter
05-20-2007, 08:21 PM
Pam
Thank you,
And how many have been shut down??? When I typed the above, as I was typing, a report came on Fox news talking about just that!!!

Pre-Katrina, the same thing was happening every year just prior to Summer drive season. Oh, and they were talking refineries then too. Yea, we lost a lot of stuff during the storm, but planning years ago could have eliminated this problem. By all accounts, the world is awash in the black stuff. And we haven't built the 1st refinery yet in this country for the massive amounts of oil shale we have. Reportedly more that could be processed than all the known oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. But the enviornmentilists don't want an ugly hole where they don't live anyway. Maybe it'll be a pretty hole at $7.00 per gallon.

Jim

This of course, doesn't address the question of why, given their huge profits, no new refineries have been built in the last - what - 30 years?
Pam

Desert_Seg
05-20-2007, 11:14 PM
This of course, doesn't address the question of why, given their huge profits, no new refineries have been built in the last - what - 30 years?
Pam

Ah, but that's an easy one.

On average it takes more than 15 years to build a refinery, a lot of this delay due to the extensive approval process and the NIMBY mentality. Furthermore, as I mentioned in my earlier post, refineries have been expanding their facilities and in doing so have introduced more capacity than if they had built the refineries.

Finally, oil companies have only had large profits in the last few years. I don't remember hearing anybody offer to give them more money during the years when they didn't have these large profits.

You also have to understand that these large profits are based on gambles they made many years ago, building contracts that allowed them to pull oil out of the ground at a cheap price for xx years. Could they have anticipated that oil would jump to more than $60 a barrel? No, but now is the time for them to reap their rewards.

It's easy to jump on the "chicken little" bandwagon but once you know the facts it all begins to make sense.

Steven

Desert_Seg
05-20-2007, 11:45 PM
...but planning years ago could have eliminated this problem.

How can you plan for a once in a lifetime storm? How can you build refineries when communities won't let you? You can expand, which is what they are doing.

By all accounts, the world is awash in the black stuff. And we haven't built the 1st refinery yet in this country for the massive amounts of oil shale we have. Reportedly more that could be processed than all the known oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. But the enviornmentilists don't want an ugly hole where they don't live anyway. Maybe it'll be a pretty hole at $7.00 per gallon.

I love it when folks talk Oil Shale. Yes, oil shale resources world wide are huge, conservatively estimated at over 2.5 trillion barrels with about 40% of that in the US.

However, crude oil (petroleum based) is still cheaper to extract and produce (at least as of now) because of the HUGE costs associated with mining and extracting the "oil" from shale. In fact, at present there are only a few financially viable oil shale deposits in the world, usually in places with very low labor costs (China and Brazil are two that I remember).

If I remember correctly, the last time oil shale was mined in the US it only produced around 35 gallons of oil for every TON of rock, making it something like 7 times more expansive than petroleum oil. However, since that time technologies have improved dramatically so...

Oil shale does provide a huge alternative to petroleum-based oil. We (the US) have, by far, the world's largest reserves and, by many accounts, the RICHEST deposits. However extraction is still expensive although there are some very intriguing new methodologies being developed.

The worst part of oil shale extraction is that it requires open-pit mining making it a huge environmental problem, both because of the "construction" pollution and the massive use of water. Extraction also creates a huge eyesore, and, most bothersome, a huge health problem since the waste rock is a known carcinogen. Are you sure you want this in your neighborhood?

But there is good news. Shell has been developing a process called 'in-situ' recovery wherein they build a freeze-wall (freezing the ground around a field) and then heat the ground inside the freeze-wall (the field) in order to recover the oil. While there are signs this will be cheaper to recover than petroleum based oil, (by about 40%), there remain environmental problems that have to be rectified that then increase the overall cost of recovery.

Simply put, petroleum-based oil is still the cheapest to recover and the US is still one of the cheapest places in the world to buy gas.

Steven

cruiter
05-21-2007, 08:46 AM
As the info copied from the Rand research page below shows, a lot is being done now. As Steven said, it's costly but more research is promising and could really reduce or eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. See below.

"The Oil Shale Resource Base
The Green River Formation, which covers parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil. Of that, roughly 800 billion barrels are recoverable — more than triple Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves. Present U.S. demand for petroleum products is about 20 million barrels per day, so 800 billion barrels would last for more than 400 years if oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand.

Oil Shale Technology Prospects
Two processing approaches are available for producing shale oil — mining followed by surface retorting and in-situ retorting. The current state of the art in mining appears to meet the requirements for commercially developing oil shale. The technical viability of surface retorting technology has been demonstrated, but large-scale testing will be required to develop scale-up information for first-of-a-kind commercial plants. As for costs, a first-of-a-kind commercial surface retorting complex is unlikely to be profitable unless real crude oil prices are at least $70–$95 per barrel (2005 dollars) over the operating life of the plant.

As for in-situ retorting — heating oil shale in place and extracting it from the ground — Shell Oil Company has successfully conducted a small-scale field test based on slow underground heating using electric power. While larger-scale tests are needed, Shell anticipates that this in-situ method will be competitive at crude oil prices in the mid-$20s per barrel.

A design base for a full-scale commercial surface retorting plant or an in-situ operation is at least six years away. Assuming the private sector decides to invest in oil shale development and production, we expect that an oil shale industry capable of producing more than a million barrels per day is at least 20 years off.

Benefits of Shale Oil Production
Assuming a national production level of 3 million barrels per day, direct economic benefits in the $20 billion per year range are possible, with roughly half going to federal, state, and local governments. Also, production at this level would likely cause oil prices to fall by 3 to 5 percent, saving American oil users roughly $15 to $20 billion annually.

A multimillion barrel per day industry would also yield a few hundred thousand jobs in the oil shale producing areas and in regions that contain industries that provide inputs to the production process.
As for national security, the principal value of oil shale production would be its contribution to a portfolio of measures intended to increase oil supplies, reduce oil demand, and weaken the geopolitical power of oil-exporting countries".

KSagal
05-21-2007, 09:30 AM
As with all things, there are politics to deal with.

There are many technical reasons that things happen, but there are far more political barriers than people think. The world is run, and this is far more evident in the United States than some other places, by beaurocrats, not engineers.

We can look right to our own Segway Inc for this. The engineering is king, yet the machine has not reached it's potential on this alone.

FInding oil technology is not enough. Good engineering is not enough.

When we watch a great performance, of any kind, the greatness is in the flow, in the seamless movement from what we know and expect to what we did not even know was comming.

When a magician does a good trick, it is seamless. We cannot separate the magic from the reality. When we see a good athlete, it is not that they are fast, or fearless, it is that they make it look easy and natural. When we hear really good music, it is not the notes, but the way the notes, and all the rest are seamlessly fitted to our moods and the the way we are made to feel. The more performers make it look easy and natural, the more we appreciate it.

When engineering is best, is when it is almost invisible. People in the fifties were impressed with big and fantastic. Now people are impressed with the subtle. That NIMBY thing is alive and well, everywhere. That is fought by hiding things. Make things look like they belong, and people do not rise against them.

At this point, shale oil extraction is not yet there. It will go there when the dollars are right.

I believe that one of the reasons that the segway is so special is because it looks so plain. It is a simple thing that works in a non-simple way, and does a technologicaly advanced thing, but does it smoothly and seemingly simply.

Just my two scents...

pam
05-21-2007, 09:47 AM
Well, you think YOU know the facts (and I believe that you take this on good faith), but I'm not convinced that this is true. It's good political-speak, and good oil-company-speak, but I'm not sure it's the truth.

I don't know of a single building it takes 15 years to build, or a company. And oil company profits have been excellent for years, not just recently. And people have been complaining for years. <G>

Chicken little? Not me. Just seeing it as it appears to be.

Pam


Ah, but that's an easy one.

On average it takes more than 15 years to build a refinery, a lot of this delay due to the extensive approval process and the NIMBY mentality. Furthermore, as I mentioned in my earlier post, refineries have been expanding their facilities and in doing so have introduced more capacity than if they had built the refineries.

Finally, oil companies have only had large profits in the last few years. I don't remember hearing anybody offer to give them more money during the years when they didn't have these large profits.

You also have to understand that these large profits are based on gambles they made many years ago, building contracts that allowed them to pull oil out of the ground at a cheap price for xx years. Could they have anticipated that oil would jump to more than $60 a barrel? No, but now is the time for them to reap their rewards.

It's easy to jump on the "chicken little" bandwagon but once you know the facts it all begins to make sense.

Steven

Desert_Seg
05-21-2007, 12:39 PM
Well, you think YOU know the facts (and I believe that you take this on good faith), but I'm not convinced that this is true. It's good political-speak, and good oil-company-speak, but I'm not sure it's the truth.

I don't know of a single building it takes 15 years to build, or a company. And oil company profits have been excellent for years, not just recently. And people have been complaining for years. <G>

Chicken little? Not me. Just seeing it as it appears to be.

Pam

Pam,

I take nothing at face value. I love doing research and will spend countless hours trying to prove or disprove something.

- Building refineries. I used to run the region for a company that was involved in the oil field business, including providing support for Saudi Aramco, British Petroleum, and a few others. 15 years for a new refinery build is nothing...and in the US is in no way untoward because of the approval process and number of lawsuits that accompany any refinery build application.

- Refinery production. At some point last year there were around 130 refineries in the US with the capacity to to refine ~17 million barrels of petroleum per day (this is not all refined into gasoline, mind you). Compare this to 25 years ago (1981) when we had over 320 refineries with a total capacity of just over 18.5 million barrels per day. In that time, we cut the number of refineries by approx 60% and yet only decreased our overall refining capability by less than 8%. Not bad, I say.

- Profits. Do you know how much it takes to build a refinery? Between $2.5 and $3 BILLION, not including any environmental impact fees that have to be payed or put in escrow. Furthermore, Morgan Stanley has estimated that it costs THREE times as much to find and develop oil fields as it did in 1999. They also estimate that, on average, oil companies will invest $1.5 BILLION per month EACH in finding new fields, money that they may never recoup.

- Production - Today I went to the Energy Information Administration website (http://www.eia.doe.gov/) and looked at the average weekly US refinery GASOLINE output for the last 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, and 20 years and compared them to the average over the past 6 weeks. The numbers are (in barrels of GASOLINE per day):

Last 6 weeks: 8,748,666
Last year: 8,866,846
Last 3 years: 8,735,936
Last 5 years: 8,616,524
Last 10 years: 8,357,450
Last 15 years: 8,027,434
Last 20 years: 7,697,032

A couple of things leap out. Our overall gasoline output has increased by more than a million barrels per week in 20 years and while the overall output over the past six (6) weeks is low compared to last year's average, this output numbers has going UP steadily over this period.

I then decided to compare the output for the second week in May during the last 10 years. The numbers are (I added the trailing zeros):

2007 9,053,000
2006 9,177,000
2005 8,965,000
2004 8,909,000
2003 8,610,000
2002 8,639,000
2001 8,475,000
2000 8,385,000
1999 8,319,000
1998 8,149,000

What do you see? You see a RISING number of refined barrels of Gasoline every single year except 2007. The decrease this year? It's virtually negligible and all "experts" tie it to the spate of refinery accidents that have occurred in the past year.

Sooooooo, the big scare factor being put out by the press isn't so scary after all.....and the sky isn't falling either.

Steven

KSagal
05-21-2007, 01:28 PM
Bandiing all these numbers about is one thing, but what is the real impact of all this expense on the US and other economies?

I recall when I was in Europe 20+ years ago, Gas was very expensive compared to the US prices. (I lived there for a couple years, so had the opportunity or need to be aware)

On subsequent trips to Europe, even though there for shorter trips and using rental cars (You really feel the impact of this kind of expense over longer exposure, in my opinion) I did not notice as much of a price gap...

Over the past 20 years, the price has surely gone up significantly. Far more than other expenses...

My question is this, when a commodity doubles in price, as gasoline in the United States has in the last 5 years, that money has to come from someplace.

The oil companies are posting record profits. Largest profits of any companies, any time, any where, in the history of the world. This money is comming from someplace...

I am not arguing that they are doing something wrong. IF they have traditionally had a 8% (made up number) profit on a gallon of gas at the pump, and are seeing that same 8%, but the cost has doubled, so the 8% is a much higher amount of dollars, so be it. This profit I am not complaining about.

So, I don't care if the Billions of dollars are fair, or earned, but they do exist, and they used to be in other parts of the economy. Are people cutting back in other areas? I believe the sale of SUVs are down. Is this so? Are people buying not only smaller cars, but cheaper ones? Is that where those Billions and Billions of gas profit dollars are comming from, the new car market?

Do people go out to eat less? Is the profit comming from the Restaurant food industry? Are people eating more Chuck steak, instead of sirloin? Buying clothes at Target instead of Neiman Marcus?

My concern with these prices, and the market manipulation to keep them this high, has to do with the redistribution of the spending capital of this country, and the world. What was a lot of money that was well dispersed, is pooling in a smaller space, that offers less return. The further that money is dispersed, the more people who derive value from it...

I am not a conspiracy guy. I like the open market. I don't think this is a game played to make people drive less, or make trains more profitable or any thing like that. I would not be too surprised if the government is trying to social engineer some changes, or to incite change thru forced pocketbook pressures, regarding green house gasses, or some other less than obvious objective, but that would not be my first thought...

I believe that there is not a clearly open market. There are cartels, back room deals, and lots of politicing.

One last point. I don't doubt for a minute that there could be 10 or 15 years involved in a new refinery...

I am on the Zoning Board in my town. It is typical for apartment complexes to be more than 2 or three years from site assignment thru permitting to construction. Often 3 to 5, and that is just for appartments. We have a medical lab that wants to make a very specific medicine for certain cancers, but there is a radio-active component, a very short halflife (Weeks) and they have been in the building and permitting process for 3 years now, and the building was already built. It just takes that long for clean rooms, congtingency plans, and all the agencies to weigh in. (This medical lab will make less than a gallion of product per week, and has less than 5 gallions of waste (Innert in 2 weeks) on site at any time and these are the times involved.

I can imagine the task involved in some adventure that includes millions of barrells of oil...

Desert_Seg
05-21-2007, 02:35 PM
As almost always, very well said. A couple of comments...

I recall when I was in Europe 20+ years ago, Gas was very expensive compared to the US prices....

Still extremely expensive, much more so than in the US

...The oil companies are posting record profits. Largest profits of any companies, any time, any where, in the history of the world. This money is comming from someplace...

I'm not sure about this comment. I keep hearing it but I also see other statistics that refute it. In fact, one of the articles I read today, stated that the oil profits, while large, were, on average, 5,9% and that all other industries were a combined 5.8%, meaning that some were higher than the oil companies (see more on this below).

Also, don't fall into the trap of looking at overall profits but look at profit MARGINS (Net Income / Total Sales). When you do so you see that the profit margin of oil companies is lower than the profit margin of the Pharmaceutical, Beverage & Tobacco, Electrical Equipment, and Computer verticals.

...IF they have traditionally had a 8% (made up number) profit on a gallon of gas at the pump, and are seeing that same 8%, but the cost has doubled, so the 8% is a much higher amount of dollars, so be it. This profit I am not complaining about.

Though there is a variance, it seems that the "traditional" profit is around 10 cents per gallon based on a price of $3 per gallon or around 3% per gallon (I think that is net profit but don't know for sure). I did find the following % makeup of each $ you spend on gas interesting:

54% Crude oil
19% Federal, State, and Local Taxes (Federal tax is 18.4 cents per gallon)
17% Refining
10% Distribution and marketing

So, I don't care if the Billions of dollars are fair, or earned, but they do exist, and they used to be in other parts of the economy. Are people cutting back in other areas? I believe the sale of SUVs are down. Is this so? Are people buying not only smaller cars, but cheaper ones? Is that where those Billions and Billions of gas profit dollars are comming from, the new car market?

Do people go out to eat less? Is the profit comming from the Restaurant food industry? Are people eating more Chuck steak, instead of sirloin? Buying clothes at Target instead of Neiman Marcus?

Good questions and though I don't have the answer I don't think so or the economy would be slowing down dramatically. This is research for another night.

My concern with these prices, and the market manipulation to keep them this high,...

What market manipulation?

....has to do with the redistribution of the spending capital of this country, and the world. What was a lot of money that was well dispersed, is pooling in a smaller space, that offers less return. The further that money is dispersed, the more people who derive value from it...

But I don't see that. I see China investing in the US, Europe, even the Middle East. I see Russians doing the same. I see Arabs doing the same. Maybe the rich are getting richer but there is lots of "new" money moving around out there.

...I believe that there is not a clearly open market. There are cartels, back room deals, and lots of politicing...

Yep, that, unfortunately, is capitalism and is why I really am not a fan of OPEC (they are a cartel, setting the price of oil, and in Europe and the US this collusion is illegal so why do we put up with it?)

I have another question, raised completely by today's research. Why do we have Strategic Oil Reserves but not Strategic Gasoline Reserves? It turns out that we are virtually alone amongst developled nations in not having SGRs and, in fact, during the Rita and Katrina we actually borrowed about 1M bpd from the European reserves!

Everybody I read recommends we have SGRs as these will have a much greater impact on lowering or stabilizing gasoline prices....so why don't we?

Steven

pam
05-21-2007, 03:21 PM
Ah, so then, if the refineries are actually making more gas (except for a a "negligible" decrease this year, then why is gas sooooo much higher this year than previously? Gas jumped 23 cents this week here. The gas companies say it's because of the refinery fires. Every year when gas prices go up (and up), the gas companies have a different "excuse" - usually based on refineries, which haven't been built in 30 years or so.

I"m afraid you haven't convinced me, Steven, but that's alright.

Pam




http://forums.segwaychat.com/images/icons/icon1.gif
Quote:
Originally Posted by pam http://forums.segwaychat.com/images/freshbluetemplate/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://forums.segwaychat.com/showthread.php?p=143539#post143539)
Well, you think YOU know the facts (and I believe that you take this on good faith), but I'm not convinced that this is true. It's good political-speak, and good oil-company-speak, but I'm not sure it's the truth.

I don't know of a single building it takes 15 years to build, or a company. And oil company profits have been excellent for years, not just recently. And people have been complaining for years. <G>

Chicken little? Not me. Just seeing it as it appears to be.

Pam

Pam,

I take nothing at face value. I love doing research and will spend countless hours trying to prove or disprove something.

- Building refineries. I used to run the region for a company that was involved in the oil field business, including providing support for Saudi Aramco, British Petroleum, and a few others. 15 years for a new refinery build is nothing...and in the US is in no way untoward because of the approval process and number of lawsuits that accompany any refinery build application.

- Refinery production. At some point last year there were around 130 refineries in the US with the capacity to to refine ~17 million barrels of petroleum per day (this is not all refined into gasoline, mind you). Compare this to 25 years ago (1981) when we had over 320 refineries with a total capacity of just over 18.5 million barrels per day. In that time, we cut the number of refineries by approx 60% and yet only decreased our overall refining capability by less than 8%. Not bad, I say.

- Profits. Do you know how much it takes to build a refinery? Between $2.5 and $3 BILLION, not including any environmental impact fees that have to be payed or put in escrow. Furthermore, Morgan Stanley has estimated that it costs THREE times as much to find and develop oil fields as it did in 1999. They also estimate that, on average, oil companies will invest $1.5 BILLION per month EACH in finding new fields, money that they may never recoup.

- Production - Today I went to the Energy Information Administration website (http://www.eia.doe.gov/) and looked at the average weekly US refinery GASOLINE output for the last 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, and 20 years and compared them to the average over the past 6 weeks. The numbers are (in barrels of GASOLINE per day):

Last 6 weeks: 8,748,666
Last year: 8,866,846
Last 3 years: 8,735,936
Last 5 years: 8,616,524
Last 10 years: 8,357,450
Last 15 years: 8,027,434
Last 20 years: 7,697,032

A couple of things leap out. Our overall gasoline output has increased by more than a million barrels per week in 20 years and while the overall output over the past six (6) weeks is low compared to last year's average, this output numbers has going UP steadily over this period.

I then decided to compare the output for the second week in May during the last 10 years. The numbers are (I added the trailing zeros):

2007 9,053,000
2006 9,177,000
2005 8,965,000
2004 8,909,000
2003 8,610,000
2002 8,639,000
2001 8,475,000
2000 8,385,000
1999 8,319,000
1998 8,149,000

What do you see? You see a RISING number of refined barrels of Gasoline every single year except 2007. The decrease this year? It's virtually negligible and all "experts" tie it to the spate of refinery accidents that have occurred in the past year.

Sooooooo, the big scare factor being put out by the press isn't so scary after all.....and the sky isn't falling either.

citivolus
05-21-2007, 03:48 PM
Yep, that, unfortunately, is capitalism and is why I really am not a fan of OPEC (they are a cartel, setting the price of oil, and in Europe and the US this collusion is illegal so why do we put up with it?)
Legality has nothing to do with it. They are a cartel of soverign countries and as such, laws of other countries don't matter. The best we could do is not buy from them but that really limits resources.

Everybody I read recommends we have SGRs as these will have a much greater impact on lowering or stabilizing gasoline prices....so why don't we?
Just to hazard a guess, but I would say that the US Gov't keeps a reserve of oil more for a defense purpose than to interfere with the open market. I grant that the oil business isn't exactly what I would call open, given the enormous barriers to entry, but it really isn't the Gov't's job to muck with prices and they generally bung it up when they try. When the SOR has been opened in the past it always seemed to me more like political pandering, done with a wink and a nod to pollsters, to quiet the squeaky wheels.

citivolus
05-21-2007, 04:07 PM
Ah, so then, if the refineries are actually making more gas (except for a a "negligible" decrease this year, then why is gas sooooo much higher this year than previously? Gas jumped 23 cents this week here. The gas companies say it's because of the refinery fires. Every year when gas prices go up (and up), the gas companies have a different "excuse" - usually based on refineries, which haven't been built in 30 years or so.
Pam,
I did see on the ABC news just the other night that demand for gas this year is much greater than last year even at these prices. The last time I checked, higher demand + lower supply = higher price. Given the inelasticity of this particular curve, we probably have another half dollar or more to go before people really back off the throttle.

As an aside, according to California (http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/statistics/gasoline_cpi_adjusted.html), adjusting for inflation shows this to be a peak but not much worse than 1981. I know, everyone screamed then too.

On the upside, many of my mutual funds are doing wonderful things at these prices.

pam
05-21-2007, 04:22 PM
Oh, I'm guessing we'll go $4 a gallon easily before the end of the summer (and even higher in California). We're higher right now than we were with Katrina, when we had whole refineries off-line big time. And oil companies will continue to drag in huge profits.

Pam

polo_pro
05-30-2007, 03:59 PM
Oh, I'm guessing we'll go $4 a gallon easily before the end of the summer (and even higher in California). We're higher right now than we were with Katrina, when we had whole refineries off-line big time. And oil companies will continue to drag in huge profits.

Pam

As I shot through my old stomping grounds (Santa Barbara) during last weekend's trip, I noticed that gas stations were already at $4/gallon. Sure, these were the higher priced gas stations, but the part that amazes me is how people actually fill up there with surprising regularity?!

citivolus
05-30-2007, 08:28 PM
...the part that amazes me is how people actually fill up there with surprising regularity?!

It really shouldn't. Assume the average fuel economy of any given vehicle to be 25 mpg and the average fuel up to be 17.5 gallons. The question is how far would you drive to save 5 cents or 10 cents per gallon?
Case A, 5 cents: a fill up saves 87.5 cents on what would be $70 so the break even distance is 2.75 miles out of your way or 5.5 miles round trip.
Case B: roughly... double it.
Add to that the fact that if you don't know for certain that the next stop is cheaper and it quickly becomes the futile exercise, often practiced by government, of sparing no expense to save a nickel.

What I do is check prices on the way out and fill up at the cheapest place on the way back. Also, if I'm travelling any substantial daily distance for any period of time and gas prices are on the rise, I fill up every day. That way I can "fill cost average" my fuel investment which minimizes the amount I spend on fuel.

outside
05-30-2007, 09:53 PM
I just got back from Prescott, AZ. Gas is $1.00 to $1.50 per gallon cheaper. Other than supply and demand in CA, how can the companies justify the price difference? If the price is higher here because of maintenance, reduced production, etc., I don’t understand why the cost isn’t the same one state over. Maybe I’m just stupid? Apparently, that’s what the oil companies think.

Five-Flags
05-31-2007, 11:11 AM
...What I do is check prices on the way out and fill up at the cheapest place on the way back. Also, if I'm travelling any substantial daily distance for any period of time and gas prices are on the rise, I fill up every day. That way I can "fill cost average" my fuel investment which minimizes the amount I spend on fuel.


Another way is to check http://www.gasbuddy.com for the best reported prices. It's becoming more and more popular these days. I've found it to be very accurate in my area, YMMV (pun intended).:rolleyes: :rolleyes:


Sorry.....:)

citivolus
05-31-2007, 01:59 PM
I just got back from Prescott, AZ. Gas is $1.00 to $1.50 per gallon cheaper. Other than supply and demand in CA, how can the companies justify the price difference?

Well, about $0.40 / gal is accounted for in just taxes. Have a look at the excise tax map (http://www.api.org/policy/tax/stateexcise/upload/GAS_TAX_MAP_MARCH2007_2A025.pdf) (pdf warning) and it shows about 21 cents more in CA. Now add to that CA's double dip with a percentage based sales tax to bring it up another 20 cents. I can believe a few cents per gallon might be due to a higher labor, utility, or other operating cost. In the end without knowing the specifics of business operating requirements of the two states, I wouldn't automatically assume they're "throwing a handful of sand into the vasoline" just because they can. It doesn't mean they aren't, I just won't assume they are.

Another way is to check http://www.gasbuddy.com for the best reported prices.

Great site, even better is that I know I'm paying only 5 cents more than the lowest price in the state... but I'm not driving to Wyoming for it, even at 62 mpg. :p