Gas Prices

[Terry D.]

Re: Gas Prices

Verne

I don't know what the alternative to the oil companies is, but I don't think they are helping our economy, which isn't in the best of shape anyway, by raising prices as soon as they can. I believe that is called price gouging.

As for cost of exploration, 21 Billion dollars in one quarter pays for alot of exploration. This in a time when lots of corperations and companies are struggling to stay above water. As to the risks, every business venture is risky. The government never allocated me any money to start any of my business
ventures. Some made it some didn't, that's the "risk" you take.

As to the profit problem, maybe if world wide trading was on a more even playing field these companies could not charge us so much. Try to remember the government doesn't care about me and you. There concern lies in the big companies and what they can do for their coffers. I believe the last poor President was Abe Lincoln. Anyway you touched on a possible solution when you mentioned "high premium on imported products". Why don't we charge the same high premium for our exported products? Or as has been suggested before, shut down all our help to other countries and see how they like that. The US does do to others as they do to us. It has become a global economy and our leaders are not helping us out.

We are losing jobs daily to other countries, why because the government makes it too easy for big business to do this. If we raised import duties inline with other countries it would help keep jobs in the US.

In closing I'd like to thank everyone for their imput, I didn't expect it to grow as it did. But in keeping with the forum of this board maybe we should end it here.
Terry
PS Anyone wanting to continue to let of steam please feel free to e-mail me.

[Dave Suesz]

I guess y'all have never been to an auction...

"oil" is a commodity, and as such it is traded on the market to brokers, who must bid against one another for shares with which to fulfill their contracts. Now, these folks are screwed if they don't provide enough to meet the contracts, so they bid against one another to assure they each have adequate supply. This makes them fairly paranoid, if not downright panicky, when there is a rumor that the leader of an oil-producing coutry has the mumps, or when a natural disaster knocks out 25% of the refining capacity of the United States. Ever notice that when frost hits Florida, the price of orange juice goes up? There are a lot of factors at work here, such as the USA has not built a refinery in three decades, which means the gas for your 2005 'Vette has to come from the exact same capacity plants as did the gas in your then-new 1975 'Vette. Add to that the lack of standardization, which means there are, like, 37 different products called "regular gas", and if there were a shortage in, say, Mississippi, it is actually illegal to ship fuel there from many other states.