Lew Hodgett wrote:


The chain jerking continues.

Alternate energy anybody?
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"Richard" wrote:

I feel your pain, Lew, but really, this accomplishes nothing.
You need to better understand your (our) situation.

Deregulation of the oil and financial markets brought us to this
brink.
snip

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An interesting point of view; however, the free market is
operating as it should.

Right now demand exceeds supply and as a result, market level
prices are volatile and tend to increase more than decrease or
remain stable.

The only way to drive down prices is to reduce demand.

Basic law of economics.

The only way to reduce demand is to develop alternate energy
sources to replace hydrocarbon fuels for transportation uses.

Short term (30-50 years) that would appear to be natural gas.

Long term solutions have yet to be developed into viable products,
but fuel cell technologies appear to have some hope.

Increased development of battery technologies is probably key
to any real advances in alternate fuel development for
transportation applications.

As far as gasoline pricing in California is concerned, we have
created our own problem by specifying gasoline blends that
reduce smog, but are not sold outside California.

As a result California produces all it's fuel using California
refineries.

NBD except there is very little excess refinery capacity.

When one of the refineries has an accident or
a refinery does a "turn around", demand exceeds supply and ergo,
prices increase.

When gas starts approaching $6-8/gallon nationwide,
we will start getting serious about solving our energy problems.

Off the box.

Lew