I thought price fixing was illegal

[ruffryder]

Uhhhhh.....ummmmmm... Socialism, huh?

Since WHEN is it governments job to try and fix all the economic problems of this great land? People act like it's a crime to let anyone endure a hardship. And lest you forget, no one's forcing anyone to buy fuel. You can't have a free market only when it suits you.

I was hoping this point would be made sooner than this. I thought this was a republican dominated website?

 

[Sxrlar]

Ollie is right. Get oil off the unregulated commodities market. I voted for Bush TWICE, and in the above link I have found this:

" Both studies concluded that the energy price climb to $128 and beyond is driven by billions of dollars' worth of oil and natural gas futures contracts being placed on the ICE. Through a convenient regulation exception granted by the George W Bush administration in January 2006, the ICE Futures trading of US energy futures is not regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), even though the ICE Futures US oil contracts are traded in ICE affiliates in the US. And at Enron's request, the CFTC exempted the over-the-counter oil futures trades in 2000."

Well, after I read that, I am even more pissed. Looks like this should be an easy fix. If your going to have oil on the commodity markets, REGULATE THEM!!

Looks like Mr. Bush has some explaining to do, but of course, none of the main stream media would ever ask Mr. Bush that question now would they?

 

[ruffryder]

Ollie is right. Get oil off the unregulated commodities market. I voted for Bush TWICE, and in the above link I have found this:

" Both studies concluded that the energy price climb to $128 and beyond is driven by billions of dollars' worth of oil and natural gas futures contracts being placed on the ICE. Through a convenient regulation exception granted by the George W Bush administration in January 2006, the ICE Futures trading of US energy futures is not regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), even though the ICE Futures US oil contracts are traded in ICE affiliates in the US. And at Enron's request, the CFTC exempted the over-the-counter oil futures trades in 2000."

Well, after I read that, I am even more pissed. Looks like this should be an easy fix. If your going to have oil on the commodity markets, REGULATE THEM!!

Looks like Mr. Bush has some explaining to do, but of course, none of the main stream media would ever ask Mr. Bush that question now would they?

Or ask him why the guy they appointed at FERC wouldn't look into his buddy Ken Lay over at Enron.....

 

[weetee]

AH HA, I knew it. It all makes sense now. Ken Lay is GWs buddy. Things are much clearer with my tin foil hat on.

 

[ruffryder]

AH HA, I knew it. It all makes sense now. Ken Lay is GWs buddy. Things are much clearer with my tin foil hat on.

bush's and lay

 

[weetee]

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/bushlay1.html
Ya forgot about this link. This stuff has allot to do with the high price of oil. Another piece of the puzzle falls into place.

 

[Dogmeat]

I'm going to post this response that somone made from another forum mainly because it puts together nicley pretty much everything I've been saying on here for the last several months.

Click on the below link and then come back to this message wouldja?

http://www.spe.org/spe-site/spe/spe/jpt/2008/05/2Indices.pdf

Note in the lower right hand corner table where world demand is about 1
million barrels/day more than world production. Including a boat load of
federal, state and local taxes, that is where you and your fellow "liberals"
$4.00+/gal gas is coming from, not Exxon or any other entity referred to as
"Big Oil", who control less than 3% of the world's oil production.

Instead of mindlessly ranting and raving, study the production tables the
above link provides. Far too much of the oil produced in this world is owned
and produced by quite unstable governments. Contrary to popular political
rhetoric, the price of oil is controlled by DEMAND, which right now, due to
growing economies world wide, exceeds supply. Think about what the price of
gasoline would be if a bunch of filibustering, grand standing democrat
senators had not shut down the 2001 Bush/Cheney energy bill. Most likely
you'd have 2 to 4 million more barrels of domestic oil to work with, which
would have greatly reduced your _personal_ gas prices. But hey, better to
use the standing 40 year old mindlessly naive, Scoop Jackson, Jimmy Carter,
Ted Kennedy, Al Gore left wing rhetoric about "Big Oil" and "Oil Executives"
and keep re-electing the self serving moron's we have in the Senate, who,
other than to generate 15 second sound bytes, could give a rat's hind end
about this nation's economy or the price you _personally_ pay at the pump.

Note that Iraq is producing over two million barrels/day, which is about 1
million more barrels/day than it was producing when Sadam was in power. If
we are going to blame Halliburton and Brown and Root, then we also need to
give them credit where credit is due. They doubled oil production in a war
zone, having their employees (totally volunteer) shot at, with some being
wounded and killed. Can you imagine what the price of oil would be if we
weren't producing that extra 1 million barrels/day from Iraq? Better yet,
looking at all the oil that is produced in the middle east, can you imagine
what would happen to the world economy if the US pulled it's troops out?
Without some other major power coming in to stabilize the region, how long
would it be before the Israelis and the Arabs got into a war? What would
that do to your $4.00/gal gas and the world economy? What would happen if
the inevitable conflict breaks out, and the Jews use their nuclear weapons?
There is no way in the world, in spite of their rhetoric, Hillary, Obama or
any other Democrat is going to be able to pull the US out of Iraq. No matter
which political agenda is in power, Just as we have been since the 70's, we
are still going to have to maintain a presence in the middle east for quite
some time.

ANWR, some 40 miles east and on the same artic plane as Prudhoe bay, where
we've produced 20-25% of our domestic oil since 1977, has been shut off and
kept off limits to drilling by the democrats since 1980. It is estimated
that ANWR could produce between 1.5 million to 3 million barrels/day. In
2001, amongst many other things to improve our domestic oil supplies,
Bush/Cheney tried to open ANWR up to drilling just a few extended reach test
wells and the Democrats shut it down, along with the rest of his energy
policy. If you will recall, it has been in all the news papers for the last
4 decades. Democrats saving our sorry hind-ends from "Big Oil" by blocking
every attempt to drill anything substantial anywhere in the US (Alaska, east
coast, west coast, Gulf of Mexico, Rocky Mountain Overthrust, etc etc). For
the last 40 years, even though the left has made a lot of noise about it,
they have _never_ brought any kind of national energy/environmental policy
up for national debate on the Senate or House floor. They have only blocked
every thing by anyone else who tried to formulate any kind of coherent
policy.

It was an embarrassment watching the Senate interview oil company
executives. Instead of trying to communicate and formulate intelligent
energy/environmental policy, all most of our Idiot senators did was
grandstand and try to come up with 15 second sound bytes to be captured and
mindlessly re-gurgitated by the national press. We get what we vote for I
guess and to paraphrase Will Rodgers can "Only know what we read".

If you want to see the philosophy behind high energy prices, just read the
crap your fellow left wingers have been heaping on the US, as spelled out in
Al Gore's book "Earth in Balance", published in about 1988. All the Goran
did was mindlessly regurgitate the radical left wing environmentalist's
dogma. In that book, Al Gore urged that we shut oil and natural gas
exploration down every where we could, which Democrats and their minion
environmental groups have quite successfully accomplished, pushing the price
of gasoline and natural gas extremely high, forcing us to go to
"alternative" energies. For a scientific/technological/economically
illiterate divinity school dropout, it was a wonderful and quite liberally
thinking plan. But sadly, it was steeped in junk science and technological
illiteracy and was completely incognizant of the economic impact such
actions would cause. All Algernon and his minion environmentalists have
accomplished is to make us much more dependent on labor union dominated
pulverized coal fired power plants, which by the way, democrats exempted
some 559 of them from the 1970 clean air act in 1977. 460 of these exempt
plants are still in operation. No where in Al's book "earth in balance" or
anywhere else in Al's rhetoric does he pro-actively advocate making
pulverized coal fired power plants, the most green house gas, mercury,
particulate, sulfate, nitrous producing/energy unit in the world, try to
live up to the same pollution levels that natural gas and fuel oil fired
power plants (some 25-45% less green house gas producing than coal) live up
to every day and have since Nixon's clean air act of 1970, and George Bush's
clean air act of 1991.

If you want to blame some one, blame the American people and the American
press. We are the one's who, for the last 40 years, have refused to even try
to understand, instead being happy to believe in irrational 15 second sound
bytes fed up to them by our left wing Politicians and a quite gullible,
technologically illiterate, head bobbing, ratings greedy robotic press.

I am personally sick of the whole "blame the oil companies" crap. If you wanna blame anyone, blame the dip****s we (the american people) elect into office. And yes, I do primarily mean whose of you who vote democrat.

I'll make this point again: The same ******* congressmen who shut our areas off to us riding in them are the same *******s who are the most responsible for gas prices being so high, it's that simple.

 

[mountainhorse]

To decrease our dependence on foreign oil, we need to decrease our use.

Simple, if you are talking Supply-and-Demand, cut the demand and prices will fall.... unless supply is cut as well....

The expanding nations of the world that are increasing their use of oil, namely China, are expanding their production as well.... in Mongolia and N. China... their estimated production will make ANWAR look like bathtub compared to a lake.

If ANWAR is drilled, the production of that field will go into the global oil market and be priced the same as OPEC oil. The production estimated from that deposit won’t even take the edge off the world supply/demand balance.

If all of these arguments for increasing domestic production in hopes of decreasing the price at the pump hold any water... why does Canada produce more oil than they use and pay so much more than the US does for fuel? Most say a messed up govt.... a common complaint that is valid 95% of the time... but what is the tax on their gas at the pump (a sincere question).

Does Canada import ANY oil from OPEC or any other nation?

If they produce more oil than they use, what is the sale price of a Canadian Barrel of oil and how does that differ from the price of an OPEC barrel? (Another sincere question) Why are they not insulated from the world price of oil if they produce 100% of what they use?

It's interesting the arguments that the extremists on both sides of the economic/political coin have and the stats that they drum up to support their arguments. Big oil money, in our own country, crosses the political party lines so much that line does not exist for them. The extremists on both sides justify their existence with the others actions. The ultra greenies argue that without their action the corporate developers will run over the environment. The developers argue that their pursuits and the economic prosperity of the country are limited by the greenies. Both have and spend a lot of money getting their points across. Both argue very intelligently in opposition of the other. We normal citizens get caught in the middle.

In my area for example, Lake Tahoe California, home of some WICKED sledding, If the developers were allowed to do what they had in mind in the 60’s and 70’s we would have high rise resorts, major airfield right at the lake and rampant development of one of the most beautiful lakes in the world… If the Sierra Club had their way, there would be no hotels or homes at all. To me, both are evil in their greed to get their own way and as a result, I LOOSE. The existence of the one extreme seems to warrant the existence of the opposition and in their “one upsmanship” of their game, us citizens get lost in the middle.

I snowmobile and hike all around the Tahoe area. It would suck to loose that AND it would also suck to see a chain of hotels and Multi million dollar homes keep me from enjoying the area.

There are corporate democrats and environmentalist republicans out there too. Lets not limit the discussion by labeling the important issues with a Demo or Rep affiliation.

Don’t vote for nutbags… I don’t care what party they are.

Bottom line... get used to the high price of gas... water will be next!

BOTH PARTIES USE THIS BOOK EVERY DAY I'M SURE!

 

[weetee]

Its a global market. Price has nothing to do with what individual nations produce, its what the world can produce. If it is true about China production, the price is gona crash.
Take a look a the party platforms. It IS a dem/republican issue. If the Republicans had a spine there would be a landslide in Nov.

 

[Dogmeat]

To decrease our dependance on foreign oil, we need to decrease our use.

Simple, If you are talking Supply-and-Demand, cut the demand and prices will fall.... unless supply is cut as well....

The expanding nations of the world that are increasing thier use of oil, namely China, is expanding thier production as well.... in Mongolia and N. China... thier estimated production will make ANWAR look like

If all of these arguments for increasing domestic production in hopes of decreasing the price at the pump hold any water... why does Canada produce more oil than they use and pay so much more than the US does? Most say a messed up govt.... a common complaint that is valid 95% of the time... but what is the tax on their gas at the pump (a sincere question).

If they produce more oil than they use, what is the sale price of a Canadian Barrel of oil and how does that differ from the price of an OPEC barrel?

It's interesting the arguments that the extremists on both sides of the political coin have and the stats that they drum up to support thier argurments.

Bottom line... get used to the high price of gas... water will be next!

I just looked around and searched for roughly an hour trying to find some stats on Canadian oil production, exports and demand.

I searched through the EIA (US gov), random google searches, etc ...

a quote from wikipedia ...

Over 99% of Canadian oil exports are sent to the United States, making Canada, not Saudi Arabia, the United States' largest supplier of oil.[19] The picture is complicated somewhat by the fact that Canada has a highly sophisticated energy industry and is both an importer and exporter of oil and refined products. In 2006, in addition to producing 1.2 billion barrels (190×106 m3), Canada imported 440 million barrels (70×106 m3), consumed 800 million barrels (130×106 m3) itself, and exported 840 million barrels (134×106 m3) to the U.S.[17] The excess of exports over imports was 400 million barrels (64×106 m3).

Other sources said Canadia consumption has averaged ~2.2 million BPD for the course of the last 3 or 4 years. I don't know which one is correct.

I looked on the Government of Alberta's website but apparently they don't publish much, they had some data from 2003 ...

Anyways, here's something that's interesting:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922041.html

According to that, in 2006 Canada produced 3.32 million BPD on average and consumed 2.22 MBPD ... yet that chart doesn't list canada as an exporter?

But, even if you take the number from wikipedia of 800 million BPD, given that there is probably a large margin of error in all these numbers because they're averages from what are possibly different years, it would appear that Canadian supply being produced is roughly proportional to the demand ... again, there are some fuzzy numbers here, but I can't really find an awful lot of hard data from the Canadian government on this ... maybe somone else wants to try.

With that said, there could be a whole plethora of reasons why the prices in Canada are "high" too. For comparison, here in the US there are still many places we can produce our own crude oil from, yet somehow magically every time an operating company wants to drill, it's shut down by the left-wing of the US government. Perhaps something similar is happening in Canada? I don't know ... I'm not that familiar with the Canadian oil field or government, but I have to assume there are some similarities to the US in that respect.

 

[Ollie]

Here is one for ya smarty pants, 500 family's a month in MN, have thier electric shut off. Why? Because they cant pay it because of the price increase in fuel to get to work. That my freinds, is one examply that is all you will need. Family's are suffering, and nothing happens. Oh wait, I forgot, Bush did make an effort, he went to the arabs and asked them to increase production. That was a futile effort, as the arabs themselves said it is not the amount that is the problem.
So, what happens now? Nothing of course, free enterprise has allowed oil company execs, the traders and politicians to benefit on the misery of the whole country, and yet....................Bush does nothing. He has power right? Aint he the president, or am I drinking kool aid again? DOH!

Oh yea, another thing for you einsteins, supply is high, demand is low, prices increase. Care to explain that the law of supply and demand has prominence here?

First off, supply and demand has nothing to do with it. It is pure speculation. The speculators set the prices. They discovered during Katrina that they could make a fortune and they are capilizing on it. Opec isn't going to do anything about it. The prices let them build their diamond covered cars.

What exactly do you think Bush could do??
He tried to open Anwar. It was blocked by the dems and enviro-zealots.
He tried to increase production at the refineries. It was blocked by the EPA and Congress.
He went hat in hand to Opec to get them to increase production to lower prices and was literally thrown out. They like their money.
He tried to increase domestic drilling and again was blocked by congress and the enviro-zealots.
He is trying to push E-85 and the enviros are pushing the gas or food bs and are trying thier best to stop E-85 production.

So what do you think he can do?? Should he wave his magic wand and produce gas??

 

[Dogmeat]

First off, supply and demand has nothing to do with it. It is pure speculation. The speculators set the prices. They discovered during Katrina that they could make a fortune and they are capilizing on it. Opec isn't going to do anything about it. The prices let them build their diamond covered cars.

What exactly do you think Bush could do??
He tried to open Anwar. It was blocked by the dems and enviro-zealots.
He tried to increase production at the refineries. It was blocked by the EPA and Congress.
He went hat in hand to Opec to get them to increase production to lower prices and was literally thrown out. They like their money.
He tried to increase domestic drilling and again was blocked by congress and the enviro-zealots.
He is trying to push E-85 and the enviros are pushing the gas or food bs and are trying thier best to stop E-85 production.

So what do you think he can do?? Should he wave his magic wand and produce gas??

Supply and demand has everything to do with it though, if the world demand wasn't so high and rising the speculators wouldn't have anything to speculate about so to speak. If the demand wasn't so high, then the "speculations" such as during the hurricanes would have been less intense, as there actually was relativley large kink in the supply ... however, that really only effected the US, not the rest of the world. ...

The whole damned thing is really complicated, but I still think that we're ultimatley reaping the results of failed US "energy policy" over the course of the last 40 years that apparently was braindead enough to never think the rest of the world would ever want to use as much oil as us.

MH did bring up a good point about Canada ... I can't seem to figure out how the gas prices would be so high there as well.

 

[winter brew]

The news was making a big deal about our (US) consumption making it's biggest decline since 1942.....so with the demand down and dropping, will we see the price go down? Or up?

 

[Dogmeat]

The news was making a big deal about our (US) consumption making it's biggest decline since 1942.....so with the demand down and dropping, will we see the price go down? Or up?

US demand is still roughly 20 million BPD, which is still about twice as much as China who is #2 on the list ... and China's demand sure as heck isn't gonna slow down any time soon.

It's not even gonna make a dent I'd wager.

 

[Ollie]

Supply and demand has everything to do with it though, if the world demand wasn't so high and rising the speculators wouldn't have anything to speculate about so to speak. If the demand wasn't so high, then the "speculations" such as during the hurricanes would have been less intense, as there actually was relativley large kink in the supply ... however, that really only effected the US, not the rest of the world. ...

QUOTE]

According to the talking heads 60% of the worlds oil is sold by speculators who set the prices. They speculators set the price and the rest of the market goes along with it.

It was noted that the supply of gas vs demand in the US is better now than 3 years ago, yet the price continues to go up.

It would be a piece of cake to get the extra oil the speculators claim is needed to meet demand, but noone is going to pump it.
WHY???

They like the money it generates and the power it gives them.

I TOTALLY agree with you about the whole broken energy policies in the US.
We should be building Nuke plants, we are now starting to do some serious research into hydrogen fuel but it will take years to make it affordable.

 

[Dogmeat]

Supply and demand has everything to do with it though, if the world demand wasn't so high and rising the speculators wouldn't have anything to speculate about so to speak. If the demand wasn't so high, then the "speculations" such as during the hurricanes would have been less intense, as there actually was relativley large kink in the supply ... however, that really only effected the US, not the rest of the world. ...

QUOTE]

According to the talking heads 60% of the worlds oil is sold by speculators who set the prices. They speculators set the price and the rest of the market goes along with it.

It was noted that the supply of gas vs demand in the US is better now than 3 years ago, yet the price continues to go up.

It would be a piece of cake to get the extra oil the speculators claim is needed to meet demand, but noone is going to pump it.
WHY???

They like the money it generates and the power it gives them.

I TOTALLY agree with you about the whole broken energy policies in the US.
We should be building Nuke plants, we are now starting to do some serious research into hydrogen fuel but it will take years to make it affordable.

I guess my question is, is this "speculation" a result of the oil and gas being traded on the "comodities" market I hear you guys talk about? What is the difference between a 'comodities market' and whatever it was on before it put there?

I am not very familiar with stocks and trading and that type of thing , but, it would seem to me that this would be a reason you see companies like Exxon trying to buy back as much of their own stock as they can ... it would give them more control over the price of oil and not "traders" ....?

I guess what I am curious about is who are the "speculators" and "traders" ... are these people who buy oil from foreign entities then effectivley sell it to US refiners? IE, middlemen? Corporations like Enron, etc?

Even with all this said it still seems to me like the high demand and tight supply/demand ratio is the vehicle these "speculators" would be using to leverage the prices ... were the supply/demand ratio not so close they wouldn't have any platform to leverage prices on?

I guess I need to research more about how oil is actually 'traded' on the market.

 

[joegoo]

The oil from the tar sands up here in Canada was considered a last resort many years ago, thats why very little came from here up until the last decade. It was until then considered unconventional oil or (too expensive to produce, and very unfriendly to the environment). Here we burn a barrel to make 2.
Speculators do make the prices unfourtunately, and it isn't helping things at all.
To live in Ft Mcmurray where most of our oil comes from is very expensive, $100,000 a year isn't enough to get by, the extraction plants to remove the oil from the dirt are in the hundreds of millions to build, what it cost to run them a year i haven't got a clue but it aint cheap. All the shovels and trucks to mine is also very expensive. In short if oil isn't above $70 a barrell the US won't get our oil cus we won't be mining for it. Wages and operating costs make the demand for the high price, And it is so dirty up there it is truely unbeleivable, toxic tailings ponds larger than most lakes, and rivers that run black. Tap water that anyone with a half a brain won't drink.
I'm not saying blame Canada, and i am in no way a tree hugging gearbox, but there was ridiculous amounts of money invested up there to get that oil to the US, and alot of it was American money. And they are gonna make it all back and then some, and there isn't a thing we can do about it.

You won't ever see cheap gas again (it would be an absolute miracle if we did, look at Sweden and other European countries, they have been paying through the nose for years and years allready.
I don't like paying $1.40 a litre for fuel, but like income tax I have to accept it and cough it up.
Paying $20,000 a year in income tax is way worse than paying $1.40 a litre for gas.
My 0.2 cents

 

[Wade]

I once read that when the oil companies report a profit of $40 billion, that's the profit left over after buying stuff. They know how it looks to the average public, so they spend as much money as they can, because it comes off the books before profit is calculated. So, if they made $40 Billion, it's a fair bet they made 3 times that. So, to make the numbers look smaller, they'll buy some big office buildings, or whatever they can find. I'm not positive, but they may be buying back their own stock, and subtracting that from their profit. Makes the stock holders happy, and makes the public profit number look smaller.

 

[snopropanther]

start drilling under the rockies. but hey with this bunch of idiots in control they would still increase the price of oil even tho there would be enough oil to drop the price to 10 bucks a barrel

 

[Dogmeat]

I once read that when the oil companies report a profit of $40 billion, that's the profit left over after buying stuff. They know how it looks to the average public, so they spend as much money as they can, because it comes off the books before profit is calculated. So, if they made $40 Billion, it's a fair bet they made 3 times that. So, to make the numbers look smaller, they'll buy some big office buildings, or whatever they can find. I'm not positive, but they may be buying back their own stock, and subtracting that from their profit. Makes the stock holders happy, and makes the public profit number look smaller.

If you don't re-invest into your business your business fails. They invest in R&D, new exploration, or in recent times they're trying to buy back as much of their own stock as they can.

It's more complex than a 15 second sound byte on the news is capable of addressing.