How good are the odds our gas prices will level off once Haliburton's biggest supporters leave the white house?

Credendovidis

PP : it has little to do with Bush or Cheeney/Haliburton in or out of the White House.
We are encountering shortages of oil supply. Permanent shortages. Worldwide shortages.
The best one can do is decrease oil/energy consumption : drive smaller cars, drive less, use less electricity.
Remember that the average American uses double the energy of the average European with a similar lifestyle.
So it can be done!
Remember that you gringo's are not too bad off at all : we pay here in the EU over 2 US$ for one single liter of gasoline. Americans should pay the same : with 1 US gallon = 3.78541178 liter that means 7.6 US$ for one single gallon of gasoline! Not the current 3.2 to 3.5 US$ that you pay at this moment. That will teach them to reduce energy consumption and conserve natural resources !!!

jstrike

Oil supplies are running out...some estimates are as short as 50 years.
I think it's much more likely that the prices will level off once we find a cheap and efficient means of alternate energy. As easy as it is to blame the government, the prices of oil are dictated more by competition with countries like China and India than anyone at the White House. Both of those nations have emerging economies and are consuming more and more oil. If you think gas prices are high, please take a trip overseas ...in the UK gas is over $8/gal Ireland gas is over $7/gal.

tomder55

The truth is that gas prices are rising because of futures market speculators. Possibly the price will drop under them and they will take a beating but the reality is that there is a growing world wide demand for petroleum.

I think prices will rise with a Democrat in office ;at least on a temporary basis. Why ? They want a drastic increase in the pump tax....up to 50 cents a gal. They like Credendovidis think that would reduce consuption ;and maybe they are right on that . You see already that the major auto dealers are featuring some kind of hybrid vehicle ...responding to market realities . Freemarketers know that rising prices increases incentives to invest in emerging technologies .

The vicious cycle is that if they were successful there would be a glut of oil;the price of crude would again drop ;and most likely we would return to some form of gas guzzling.

Galveston1

I agree with Tom, but those who think that they are going "green" by buying hybrids are not properly informed. The mining, processing, manufacturing, and disposal of those batteries produces pollution. Add to that the expense of replacing those batteries. I expect to see a high percentage of these hybrids in the salvage yards at an early mileage when the owners find that it costs less cash to replace the vehicle than to replace the batteries.

purplewings

That's what we're being told. However, the gasoline prices jump upward steadily even when they are stable in the middle east - so it's more than just that.

tomder55

I think if Cheney had such an influence on things we would be drilling for oil in ANWR already .

tomder55

Galveston you are probably correct about the hybrids. Even if they were reliable I would wait a few generations of vehicles for the manufacturers to iron out defects.

As for alternate fuels I have my doubts about ever finding a subsititute for oil that is as reliable. Ethanol has many negatives as has been explored in other postings and you make a excellent point about the drawbacks to electric power. Most people are not educated about even the proper disposal of the AA s in their cameras .

Purplewings

My point about alternatives is that no one is going to put the resources into developing them until it is economically viable to compete with the exisiting means of power (oil) . Government mandates in things like ethanol production has been an unmitigated disaster full of unintended consequences .

I know I am right on the biggest cause of the price hike is commotities speculation. Here is what is happening . Investors do not want to put their dollars into the stock market and interest rates are so low that it is not worth investing in tresuries or even putting the money in the bank. So commodities like oil ;gold etc. are the investment option they choose. That is driving up the cost of all related commodities .

purplewings

Ok Tom. The commodities idea makes sense too.

Did you know that Ford Motor Co was going to come out with ethanol ready cars a couple years ago and the government prevented them from doing it?

I'm really bugged that every quarter we have to watch Exxon gloat about their huge profits. It's coming from our pockets and at the worst time possible.

BTW since Cheney was CEO of Haliburton, why would you think he didn't use some influence for and with them?
*************
Halliburton, Cheney, and Wartime Spoils
By Lee Drutman and Charlie Cray - 2003
Excerpts..........
However, of all the administration members with potential conflicts of interest, none seems more troubling than Vice President Cheney. Cheney is former CEO of Halliburton, an oil-services company that also provides construction and military support services - a triple-header of wartime spoils.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers awarded a no-bid contract to extinguish oil well fires in Iraq to Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. The contract was granted under a January Bush administration waiver that, according to the Washington Post, allowed "government agencies to handpick companies for Iraqi reconstruction projects."

tomder55

Do you know that most bids awarded by Bill Clinton in the Kosovo campaign was also to Haliburton's KBR even though DynCorp out bid them ? ? That is because they provide a service that is pretty unique . They have in fact divested themselves from their Kellogg Brown Division because it is jusrt not profitable . Now what service do they provide ? It used to be in the past that the military did alot of things like cooking and trasport for themselves . Now most of that type of work has been outsourced to private companies. But there just aren't too many of them willing to send in cooks and truck drivers to a war zone . Hence KBR provides that service. It has nothing to do with the price of oil.