Gas Prices

https://www.yahoo.com/makers/it-work...000053205.html
OPEC sees oil prices exploding to $200 a barrel

$200 a barrel really!?!

Not on your life would we see 200/barrel oil here in the states for at least 25 years, barring macro inflation. I used to be in the oil and gas industry, I've heard it all and seen more. These news outlets and analysts are not the people working the fields, checking production numbers, carting off train loads of light sweet crude. Fact is, it's yet another OPEC scare tactic, first they threaten us with rock bottom, door buster production. I remember just a few months ago they made claims they could pump seventeen dollar oil. NBC Nightly News did a story on it. It turned out to be a load of garbage.

Facts:

Saudis lie about their production numbers and their costs.

UAE claims they can outproduce us...right sure, and it's never happened.

Middle East oil requires extra refining processes because of it's high sulfer and heavy metals content. It's called SOUR for a reason.

Our oil, called light sweet crude pumped in the good ol USA is so good you could run it in an old diesel truck. (I mean it's not gonna be great but it'll run and drive)

We have developed processes to produce "alternative gasoline" products based on our natural gas production...we have so much methane we burn it off just to keep the pressure down...

Yes it is true some of our oil costs more than saudi oil, for instance, anwr and alaska reserves, our rigs that are beyond the shelf in the gulf, deepwater basically and some smaller operations in arkansas and oklahoma. BUT most of our oil is relatively cheap to produce and while it was expensive the oil companies invested in more than 80,000 wells all across america. We have more capped wells per capita than saudi arabia, so they can go ahead and stick a fork in it.

Oh and someone recently discovered oil in the upper peninsula of michigan...There are some indications (including finding hydrocarbons in water wells there may be oil in the copper falls region of wisconsin, previously undiscovered because nobody was drilling below granite bedrock. I can't imagine it would be a large amount or not costly to drill, however, goes to show you oil is not the rarity we were all lead to believe when we were kids.

In the last two days gas in my area has gone up .05 each day. This strike would be the cause of the rise.

Union oil workers go on strike - Feb. 1, 2015

Already up to 2.39 a gal/ here

Oil is one of those things...what did people think would happen when we consume more oil per capita than any other nation? Let's be realistic about it, we should have gone full bore into modern nuclear power but 3 mile island and chernobyl scared most of the politicians off...now there isn't a new production reactor to speak of and the reactors we do have are all 30 years old already.

Nobody wants to hear nuclear power is the only way out of this mess. Electric cars are meaningless when renewable energy accounts for less than 3% of our power grid. We need real solutions to real problems.

For us scrappers that requires more outside the box thinking.

Route planning, by appointment only pickups...etc.

Converting your truck to propane, or even diesel and then running a wvo or biodiesel mix.

Ethanol: There are tax breaks for owning a flex fuel vehicle and actually USING ethanol over gasoline.

Change your driving habits. Let me help you there, I get 13.5 mpg in what's probably the biggest truck on this forum. Think about that for a second, how? Pretty simple, I changed the way I drive, I anticipate, I ride hills different, off the gas going up, on it going down. I go a little slower, 68 instead of 72. Tire rotations and pressure checks, using newer tires...almost everyone overlooks the tire but it is the single source of bad mileage over anything else.

Change your cap and rotor, wires and plugs, seafoam the truck, run synthetic gear oil in the rear end, especially in the winter. If you have a truck newer than 1993 and your not running synthetic oil you are throwing away gas money, that's an absolute fact. I don't want to hear all the naysayers about synthetics, they are so advanaced now over dino oil its unbelievable.

Stop running around with the hundred pounds of tools you never use in your truck. Oh and keep the snow and ice off the truck too, it kills mileage on the highway.

^tips of the day

if my truck aint loaded, im riding my bike
i do gotta say, those cargo bikes make me ****ing laugh

When gas prices bottomed out I talked with the wife about selling my truck and getting a better vehicle for hauling. I know prices will eventually return to $4 or higher, but every Joe and Jane around me are now driving Hummers, Suburbans and giant trucks with paper tags thinking gas going to be cheap for a while.