Our local pump prices have been dropping to lows unseen in, what?, ten years?? Why?

reply to post by tovenar


Great post.

The only point, and it's a small one, is the third most populated country. China and India are neck and neck, Russia has more as does the "European Union", around 450 million...keeps going up with new members/immigrant states. LOL.

The media isn't covering this well at all, is it.

Question. Does this change in the oil dynamics reduce the need for the Keystone pipeline?

Canada seems to be continuing it's northern pipeline to the west coast. Is that a replacement for the Keystone or can there still be both?

Prices should keep falling all the way until 2017. The US is on pace to produce more oil than the Saudis, which won't be too hard since we alone have almost sucked them dry. They've resorted to tricks for short term gains on fields that are falling in production, which isn't good, because it will kill the field off earlier than it normally would cease to produce.

Who knew consumer consumption could be a potent military weapon.

The Saudis had plans to dump the petrodollar by 2018 anyway, so I guess this is the way the US repays the favor. Never bite the hand that feeds you comes to mind.

reply to post by nwtrucker


Lets not forget taxes on fuel

Federal2 . . . . . . . . . . . Gasoline 18.40 Diesel Fuel 24.40 Gasohol 18.40
then you add local
Average State Tax . . . . .Gasoline 22.68 Diesel Fuel 23.18 Gasohol 22.62

eia gov plubished taxes for the US

reply to post by nwtrucker


My apologies! I guess I was confusing diesel prices with gas prices.

10 years ago, all my attention was on diesel, not gas.

I hate getting old.....

Been slowly dropping in the Dallas/Fort Worth area over the past 6-8 months. Started shortly after the last round of "$7.00 a gallon gas coming" fearmongering. I don't care why it's dropping, but if it means less money in the coffers of Exxon executives and the like, I'm all for it!

reply to post by HardCorps


Part of what is going in Texas is the big developers are scrambling to extract as much as they can and sell it before the price collapses.

There are so many rigs going up in Fort Worth that you can practically play frisbee-golf from one rig to the next. Several fort worth schools have gotten offers from drillers to give give the school a portion (like, half!) the proceeds for getting 'one more' rig up in Tarrant county.

Part of it is problematic: the environmental wreckage as the boom makes people crazy.

On the upside, almost all the frackable areas in Texas are where mineral rights are original to the property owners. meaning that exxon and chesapeake have to cut a contract with someone's family farm to get the oil. The actual owner of the well is the homeowner/ranch owner, not the developer. I have heard the number given that about half of the new wells are owned by someone who owns fewer than five wells--in other words, often small-time farmers/ranchers. Many are elderly, whose kids moved away to the city, because they couldn't earn a living by farming the family place.

I am sorry for the environmental crapping up of the landscape. But I do appreciate the mom & pop dimension of this oil boom. For some folks, it has been like winning the lottery.

Also the specter of electric vehicles looms large over the horizon. The hopes of cheaper gas may put that off a little longer, but not forever.

reply to post by CAPT PROTON


Good point.

Although it's my belief, not sure about this, that it's the Euros that have sucked Saudi Arabia dry more than the U.S.

Currently, we import from Canada the most, then Mexico, then Chavez's crude. The Saudis are fourth.

I even believe that despite Saudi involvement in 9/11, that we have backed off from that retribution partially due European economic consequences.

just a guess though.

reply to post by CAPT PROTON


That reminds me, I just saw Top gear "America" where they tested Tesla's top of the line, fully electric car that generates 440 horsepower!

It beat a 580 horse Camaro in the quarter mile and beat it on a race track by 2 seconds!!

Fully load with all the bells and whistles. it's a luxury car that goes like a raped ape!!

You tube it! Amazing!

100K for the top of the line. Looks like the electric car is much closer than we thought....

Either way, 5 or ten years ago, our prices are still much higher.

I live in a province that has regulated gas prices and I think it's insane. Funny enough, the prices starting rising steadily after the regulation came in. When it first started back in '06, gas was about 80 cents/litre. Now it's up to 1.21 or so/litre. It has gone as high as 1.42. They say it prevents volatility but it really reduces competition on prices. Costco opened a gasd bar a few years ago in one of the cities here and were charging almost 12 cents/litre less than every where else. Guess who had all kinds of business?

And some how, it never seems to go down as fast as it rises, regardless of market forces. @@ The only time we have any real drop in prices was when the Global Financial Crisis hit, then the prices dropped off a cliff. Just before regulation started here, Katrina had hit and prices skyrocketed, not really coming back down to anything resembling normal until the GFC.

There have been lots of retailers that have gone out of business as well since gas price regulation has come in.

CAPT PROTON
Also the specter of electric vehicles looms large over the horizon. The hopes of cheaper gas may put that off a little longer, but not forever.

Ahaaa The awesome sound of the 739 horsepower SLS AMG "Silence" it's the Mercedes SLS AMG Electric Drive also set a Nürburgring Lap Record [7:56]

Has crappy range and triple the price of the gas version but what the hey

nwtrucker
reply to post by tovenar

 

Question. Does this change in the oil dynamics reduce the need for the Keystone pipeline?

Canada seems to be continuing it's northern pipeline to the west coast. Is that a replacement for the Keystone or can there still be both?

Still both. The fact of the matter is, Keystone is a total boondoggle for the major refiners. It won't help the US consumer, other than to lower global crude prices over decades. The pipeline is designed to get canadian crude down to Houston, so it can be exported. That's all. Most Americans wouldn't burn it themselves, or get many jobs from the pipeline.

The real problem, the ONLY problem for the US in the last 40 years, is a refining bottleneck, not a production limit.

The EPA has not allowed a new refinery to be constructed in the USA since 1976.

Most US production is extremely wasteful and polluting. I know of one refinery in Texas that was originally designed in ... 1929 !

But the EPA will not allow modernization or expansion, because their doctrine is the less oil the better for the environment.

SHELL and EXXON have both begun building "barge refineries" and anchoring them off the coast of Africa, where they can refine oil out of the reach of the EPA. If the governments threaten to nationalize the refineriers like Ghaddafi did, they just sail away. They ship the finished product to the US and pipe it back in through the same piplines.

reply to post by tovenar


A small state tax or a set-aside from the huge revenue boon by the state might be in order for environmental expenses...

The number two supplier to the US is Norway, behind Canada.

PEMEX fields have been failing because of infrastructure problems. US companies drilled them ages ago and the Mexican government took them over not long after, booting out the US companies. Now the problems are coming home to roost. The US will help them when they knuckle under.

reply to post by tovenar


Yup.

The Oil company that owns the refinery near here was planning on building a second one in partnership with Royal Dutch Shell and BP back just before the GFC hit. The plans went out the window at that time but they did build a LNG plant and are expanding it with plans in the works for a second.

The talk of that second refinery has started to reappear here as well.

reply to post by tovenar


.there is one new one and several plants have been expanded...

all in all production is up while demand continues to fall

There were a total of 143 operable petroleum refineries in the United States as of January 1, 2013.

The "newest" refinery in the United States began operating in 2008 in Douglas, Wyoming. However, the newest refinery with atmospheric distillation capacity greater than 100,000 barrels per day began operating in 1977 in Garyville, Louisiana.

Ground was broken in March 2013 for construction of a new refinery in North Dakota. The 20,000-barrel-per-day (bbl/d) Dakota Prairie facility is scheduled to be built in 20 months.

Capacity has also been added to existing refineries through upgrades or new construction. The most recent examples include:

•In 2012, Motiva upgraded its refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, making it the largest refinery in the U.S. with a capacity of 600,250 barrels per calendar day.
•In 2009, Marathon upgraded its Garyville, Louisiana refinery. As of January 1, 2013, the capacity is more than double its original 1977 capacity.

Source eia gov

I point this out to once again reiterate... it's not the laws of supply and demand at work price wise... it's the commodity traders up there in Chicago who are every bit as greedy as the day traders on wallstreet

reply to post by tovenar


Buffet and his railroad is the major block on that pipeline, if I read it correctly.

The railroads have done heavy investment in oil depots at their rail terminals in anticipation of increased rail transportation instead of pipelines.

Goes back to Rockerfeller-Vanderbelt fight back in the day.

The refineries don't care how the oil gets to them from what I can see. Railroads have always had the "inside track" when it come to the feds...just ask a "trucker"..LOL

reply to post by CAPT PROTON


Hmm, didn't know that. wheels within wheels...

nwtrucker


The refineries don't care how the oil gets to them from what I can see. Railroads have always had the "inside track" when it come to the feds...just ask a "trucker"..LOL

The refineries in TX have multiple suppliers, and take bids; they have to get in line to see who gets their batch refined next.

I don't know, but I have heard that the railroads killed coal, of which the US has 25% of all reserves, because coal was unionized and oil was not.

nwtrucker
reply to post by Mikeultra

 

Is that "3.07" price a drop from the last few months?

My understanding is Pa. shale NG is going to go into N.Y. at a far cheaper rate than current prices. If people start converting from fuel oil burners to NG that would take pressure off of the pump prices nation-wide, at a guess.

A drop in Natural gas prices might also revive the conversion of fleets to CNG, a fairly cheap process, from my understanding.

Yes, a few months ago it was about 3.50

Earlier this year Hess announced that they were closing their refinery in Port Reading, N.J. They say that they're going to focus on distribution rather than refining. I don't think it's a good idea.
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