The Gas Prices We Deserve

Well Steph if I am not being realistic I guess it is fair to say you are being simplistic.

Just forget it is Sherm who is saying this ok? Pretend it is Ron Paul.

Does it not make sense to do a methodical plan?

Start with the area where production can come online quickly.

And btw you ignored my post that there are not the labor and other resources to just jump in and do the shotgun approach you suggest.

The quickest way to lessen the gap between demand and supply is to conserve and use less energy.

And the second quickest is to increase production here in the lower 48.

And I would not be surprised if even the benefits of alternative energy sources could be realized before ANWR reserves could be brought online.

(even if ANWR reserves would be used here, which they won't be for the most part.)

Even if Al Gore were to become dictator of the universe tomorrow, and all his grandest alternative energy schemes began forthwith, we would still need a whole lot of oil 10, 20, 50 years from now. And yes, that includes the oil in ANWR.

OK Sherm,

I'm going to finally come forth and fess up to where I disagree with Ron Paul...in a probably futile attempt to demonstrate it matters little to me where the idea comes from or who is supporting it.

I favor the income tax. I'm not stating that to get into a huge debate over taxes. I believe the tax code needs to be simplified, and spending dramatically cut. Still, I believe the fairest way to tax people is on income. I never spoke of that publicly before because I had an agenda...get Ron Paul elected. I don't see that happening.

Is it possible? Sure, it's possible. McCain could die, get embroiled in scandle, develop a threatening illness. Anything is possible. However, as unlikely as it was a year ago, it is much less likely now that Ron Paul will be our next president so I'm more comfortable discussing areas where we disagree. I believe in the federal income tax.

So, I don't care who is telling me we can't drill in ANWR quickly enough. We can obtain oil in ANWR a whole lot more quickly, safely, and efficiently than most other locations.

Labor....is labor a problem? Why do you think it would be so much more of a problem in Alaska than anywhere else? The people who are experienced and skilled in these operations are going to go where the work and the money is. They will go to Alaska just as they will go to North Dakota when the work is there.

I hardly think advocating for drilling for oil in ANWR is a "shotgun" approach. Alaska has quite a bit of experience in this endeavor. It's not like they haven't been producing billions of gallons of oil every year from that state, not to mention all of the natural gas.

Conservation is important and I don't personally know anyone with any sense at all who doesn't favor conservation. However, we don't have the ability to be free of petroleum products in this decade. We probably won't have the ability to be oil free in my lifetime.

In addition to the new technology required for producing alternative energy, we also need to create vehicles and furnaces and hot water heaters etc capable of running on the alternative fuel. We need to distribute not just the "greener" energy, but also all those machines to all these households and all these schools and factories and everything else you can think of (not to mention a buttload more you can't think of) to run on whatever this new miraculous energy will be from.

This isn't going to happen any time soon. So I don't care what John McCain's plans are, or what your plans are, or what the Mountain Party's plans are. We need to get through. My parents need to heat their home. My grandmother needs to stay warm this winter. My son needs to be able to take hot showers. My husband needs to commute to Charleston each day for work. Sam needs his Social Security check delivered.

Drilling in ANWR won't take care of these things this month, or this year. It will help in the coming years. It will help ease us off foreign oil. That's another little truth you don't care to discuss. We need to be energy independent.

We need to be as free from OPEC as possible. We're not going to get there through conservation alone in my lifetime. We won't get there by alternative energy combined with conservation in my lifetime. We stand a pretty darn good shot of being energy independent before I'm pushing up daisies if we take advantage of all the natural resources we have available to us right here in America......including Alaska and off our coasts, in conjunction with alternative energy sources and conservation.

I say drill in ANWR. We should have been doing so a decade ago.

Well I did not say absolutely never drill in ANWR.

I just said be methodical and do it in logical order.

From the quickest results to the slowest.

And hopefully (at least from my perspective) it won't be necessary.

We will have the problem solved and no longer need to.

Anyhow I gotta go back to the salt mines.

So you guys can just all agree and talk about how great it will be to destroy the wildlife reserve...

Be safe, Sherm. Try to stay cool.

Nobody wants to kill the wildlife. We just want to be able to live too.

shermangeneral wrote:Like Sam says above, transportation/distribution of wv gas is a lot cheaper to the northeast US than gas or oil from Alaska.

If only there were a method to connect oil fields in northern Alaska to a sea port where the oil can be shipped to the Lower 48 states for refining.

Sherman, how would ya like to be heating your home with fuel oil?

Weekly Average Home Heating Oil Prices
Source: NYSERDA, "New York Home Heating Oil Price Monitoring Program"
(Posted #2 Fuel Oil Credit Price)
(last updated 5/14/2008)
Latest Surveyed Home Heating Oil Prices

5/12/2008 Cents Per Gallon
New York Statewide 430.3 ....... (that is .... $4.303 per gallon)
Long Island Region 445.6
New York City 445.4
Lower Hudson Region 440.3
Upper Hudson Region 428.1
Capital District Region 417.9
North Country Region 421.3
Central Region 411.4
Western Region 416.6


New York Statewide
Weekly Average Home Heating Oil Prices (in cents per gallon)

Date: Price: Price: % Change:
05/12/2008 430.3 264.4 +62.7
04/28/2008 410.9 264.3 +55.5
04/14/2008 404.2 263.6 +53.3
03/31/2008 397.6 263.6* +50.8
03/24/2008 391.9 260.0 +50.7
03/17/2008 392.6 261.0 +50.4
03/10/2008 375.9 261.2 +43.9
03/03/2008 363.5 261.0 +39.3
02/25/2008 355.1 259.8 +36.7
02/18/2008 349.2 258.7 +35.0
02/11/2008 343.9 258.4 +33.1
02/04/2008 343.6 255.2 +34.6
01/28/2008 344.3 251.9 +36.7
01/21/2008 345.4 250.5 +37.9
01/14/2008 347.6 251.3 +38.3
01/07/2008 350.0 253.3 +38.2
12/31/2007 342.5 255.8 +33.9
12/24/2007 339.6 257.2 +32.0
12/17/2007 339.2 257.4 +31.8
12/10/2007 336.3 257.8 +30.4
12/03/2007 337.6 256.5 +31.6
11/26/2007 337.3 251.6 +34.1
11/19/2007 329.4 251.3 +31.1
11/12/2007 327.7 251.7 +30.2
11/05/2007 316.5 251.5 +25.8
10/29/2007 302.8 253.0 +19.7
10/22/2007 295.9 253.3 +16.8
10/15/2007 287.7 254.1 +13.2
10/09/2007 286.1 255.8 +11.8
10/01/2007 284.9 257.8 +10.5
09/17/2007 278.8 263.5 +5.8
09/03/2007 271.1 272.7 -0.6
08/10/2007 271.1 274.2 -1.1
07/16/2007 272.5 272.0 +0.2
06/18/2007 267.8 270.1 -0.9

We should see some relief once Congress gets a load of this:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=66557&6=7

Well now, I'll be damned.

Ohio, that the 1st time I've see anyone mention "fuel oil" prices as a real concern.

Congress, get off your gas, and drill!

Last Thursday oil prices increased $5.50 per barrel in one day. Last Friday marked the biggest single-day surge in oil price history, rocketing $11 more to $138 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In just two days, oil costs increased 13 percent.

Average Americans are literally driving to the poor house on financial fumes. With gas at more than $4 per gallon, roughly two cars in every household, and the average annual gas usage at 700 gallons, you do the math. Americans are being forced to use their hard-earned money that once put food in their stomachs to now put petroleum into their tanks, but to drive the exact same distances they drove a decade ago for four-to-five times the price.

As oil and gas prices skyrocket, Congress continues to play the blame game. In April 2006, with the Democrats poised to take over Congress with Nancy Pelosi at the helm, she released a statement saying, "With skyrocketing gas prices, it is clear that the American people can no longer afford the Republican Rubber Stamp Congress." She followed that with the commitment, "Democrats have a common sense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price gouging." So has the Democrat's commonsense plan worked? Average gas prices were about $2.50 a gallon at the time. Now they're $4 a gallon and rising. Some crack-down plan.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, they are going to discuss this week a cap-and-trade system, something that Obama and MCain both support. The main problem is official estimates say that it will increase gas by another $1.50 a gallon. Or as Newt Gringrich said in an interview recently with Glenn Beck, "It should be called 'Raise prices and destroy jobs' because that's what it will do. It's going to raise the price of gasoline; it's going to raise the price of diesel fuel for truckers. It's going to raise the price of aviation fuel for an already ailing airline industry. It's going to raise the price of heating oil. It's going to raise the price of natural gas, and it's going to raise the price of coal."