Ok, this has nothing to do w/ what engines will get what mpg in the next f150, but I figured due to all of the recent arguments in here, this would be the best forum to start a discussion about gas prices.

It seems there's a great misconception that Bush is blocking oil drilling in alaska/north dakota/florida coast/etc.

Here's why gas is expensive. It's all Bush's fault... yeah right. This stuff has been going on for years...

2002:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE7DA153FF93AA25757C0A9649C8B 63

"
Undercutting President Bush's energy policy, the Senate sided with environmentalists today and blocked oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
With eight Republicans breaking ranks with the president, the decisive vote probably ended, at least for this year, the longtime dream of many Alaskans and conservatives in Washington that the protected wilderness could be opened for development, an issue that has pitted Democrats and environmentalists against Republicans and petroleum interests for more than a decade.

"

2005:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/dec/22/usnews.oilandpetrol

"
Environmental campaigners were celebrating an improbable victory last night after the US Senate narrowly blocked a Republican plan to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
...
Most Senate Democrats and some moderate Republicans believe the icy wilderness and its wildlife, which includes polar bears, caribou and peregrine falcons, should be protected. But the Bush administration has said the refuge must be opened up to drilling to halt a steady slide in US crude production and reduce dependence on foreign oil.
"

These were just a couple of articles years apart that stand true to today, google can confirm this... This stemmed up from an argument with my sister, who's a die hard democrat but owns a mustang and a jeep commander; and as you guessed it, complains about gas and blames it all on Bush. I think she'll be voting republican if gas hits $10 or whatever the rumors have it :-)

Discuss.

 

its basic economics...supply and demand...there is no conspiracy

 

Food for thought: We could be paying more for our fuel because our President has engaged our military in a six-year, two-front war with no obvious exit strategy, has racked up ungodly budget deficits and debt to China which, in turn, has devalued the American dollar against the Euro. Even if the crude in the areas you mentioned could be tapped today, the effect on prices at the pump would have less effect on you or I than a return to the former (pre-war) value of our currency.

 

WRONG WRONG WRONG,

Goverment has a lot to do with it and congress is mostly to blame!!!!!!

 

I think he meant it as in, if we drill, supply will be higher, price will go down.. and yes, the democrats in the congress are to blame for denying the supply part to happen.

do you remember what economic stimulus got us out of the great depression? Was it not a war that created jobs and stimulated the economy enough to get it going again?

economy has it's own ups and downs, it's a perpetual cycle created by the very nature of the economy. if the economy is going good, people are gonna spend more than they can afford, until they can't pay out anymore, when that happens, banks are losing money, people stop spending, companies start losing sales, economy starts going bad. once spending habits are reined in and the people start being able to afford purchasing goods slowly, companies start picking up business/sales, more people get jobs, and the whole cycle restarts. There are very few stimuli that the government/president have control over; the war that followed the great depression did force manufacturers to produce and thus employ people; which in turn jump started the economy. Fortunately, the Iraq war is not as large as that war and neither is today's recession as great as that one - the bad part about it is, the effects are smaller thus not as strongly felt, and not as easily correlated.

 

The united states were not even part of that war until a few years after the depression had officially ended, so it really didn't play that large of a role, although of course they would have been gearing up for it so that may have helped a bit.

 

The Great Depression didn't end till after WWII(pretty close to the same time really), actually I've been taught that the war saved us from depression, maybe your thinking of proabition which did end in the mid to late thirties or early fourties(can't remember). I don't think the war is causing our currency to drop in value, in fact war is historically proven to actually be good for a countries economy. I am not going to claim to know why gas prices are so high, I just wish they weren't, but I'm not going to blame political people for it, the more blame we give them for things they shouldn't be able to control, the more they will think we want them to take control, and we sure as hell don't need a bigger government, in fact it could downsize a lot as far as I'm concerned.

That being said I think it's just greed on the part of the oil companies. I know someone will say that they only make close to 10 cents on the gallon, but a small percentage of a huge number is still a huge number, and all but the Amish buy gas so they got us by the *****, and they know it, and I belive they are taking full advantage of it.

 

Very very well said.....the value of our dollar sucks now....and ya all know what oils traded in....oh yes....the dollar...


The value of the dollar has far more to do with it than congress not allowing drilling in anwar....

 

Also unregulated futures trading in oil:

More on the real reason behind high oil prices

Now if you think the current administration had nothing to do with the prices, think about Cheney's "secret" energy meetings with oil execs early on when setting energy policy. Do you think for a minute that there was any concern about keeping energy prices low for everyman? Pffft...

The shrinkage of the dollar is, in large part, cause by the huge deficits being run up by the current administration. These are not Republicans or Conservatives in any kind of traditional sense; they are Neocons who are completely in cahoots with big business and haven't the slightest interest in the welfare of the working man, or of the future of our country. (True "Conservatives" believe in balanced budgets, not huge deficits piled on the backs of our yet-unborn grandchildren.)

Likewise, WWII boosted American industry by putting workers to work building war machines. The Iraq war is all about moving large sums of money to Halliburton and other "private contractors" while starving the military, the veterans, and the rest of the country while enriching corporate cronies.

 

The drop in the dollar is a result of high oil prices, not vice versa. Drilling in Anwar or other areas in the US may not decrease the price as much as one would hope, but it would decrease our dependence on foreign oil.

The enviromental lobby has not only kept us from drilling, but kept us from building new refineries, the main culprit in all of the high prices. If the supply of oil is doubled, the refining capabilities are almost at maximum capacity so there will still be a HUGE bottleneck there.

All of this being said, this is going to turn out like the ENRON scandal, oil is artificially high and HAS to crash. when it does the fallout will be brutal for people whos savings and retirment funds are heavily invested in Oil.


One side says we should drill as much as we can and one side says we should be developing alternatives to oil. They act like they are mutually exclusive. We should be doing both.

 

The problem with the conspiracy theory about Cheney and the "secret policy meetings" is that even if it happened, Congress has not allowed the administrations policies to come to fruition.

 

oil isn't artificially high, oil is valued with our current lousy currency, take a look at what our currency has done, and then look at what the price of oil has done. Our currency's value is directly related to the amount budget deficits that our country is producing, and i have to say I find it sickening that the current administration has allowed it to get so out of hand......Oil isn't going to crash....so don't hold out for that. What i'm going to predict that eventually opec will decide to switch to oil trading in euros and then we'll really be screwed. Oil will stabilize, and we'll just keep paying more as our dollar continues to decline.....

Bespoke Investment Group: Oil Price Chart Since 1990

U.S. Dollar to Euro Exchange Rate - Yahoo! Finance

 

that war helped us out of the depression even before we entered it, the US supplied a lot of the equipment used in the war. The difference between now and then is that we do not produce much in this country. Everything has been outsourced and off-shored. We are partly to blame, every time we go to Wall-mart or any most stores for that matter. Everyone wants the best deal possible so retailers cut prices to save the customer money. To do so they have to get their products from out side the US. We hurt ourselves by this to. The U.S. now imports more than it exports and this causes the value of the dollar to drop. Everyone wants to blame the government for their problems. Citizens have as much or more control over what happens in this country that politicians. If you don't like what the politicians are doing don't vote for them and stop re-electing the people that have been in the game for years, they are more worried about themselves then their constituents

 

amen. the articles were all about how democrats undermined bush/the administration/republicans...

That's debatable but we won't find out until we figure out just how much oil we have. in the end, it is all supply and demand, right now, the opec has no competition, they know we're forced to buy it, so there's no reason for them to keep the prices low.

yep, didn't even bring that up, that's waaaay too complicated to explain to my sister

yup...

agreed. on top of that, i'm all for freeing ourselves from the dependency on oil, but doing so forcefully (aka CAFE 35mpg requirements by 2020) is not the way to do it. demanding a certain technology advancement by a certain point in time isn't going to do anything except hurt the consumer in the end... we're gonna be the ones supporting all of the fines if the manufacturer of choice doesn't meet the standards, and we're gonna be the ones supporting the consequences of driving underpowered/too light(from the unsafe point of view)/etc, whatever corners the manufacturers would have had to cut if they weren't able to otherwise meet the CAFE standards.

 

so then, is the oil in europe artificially high? and is the oil in venezuela artificially low (if that's even possible?)?? Europe pays 2x what we pay for gasoline, and the euro runs circles around the US dollar. Venezuela, whatever rocks they trade for gasoline, I have no idea, but I don't think their currency is a force to be reckoned with...