The AM Forum

Ok, now I'm just looking for some opinions here, and not a gubmint argument thread.

It's been the constant topic lately in over the road contractor circles regarding the ridiculous expense of fuel. (Personally dropping 400 a week per truck here at $4.25 a gallon) Last week was a bad example, but we did a large job that required a few trucks on site and a couple pieces of fuel guzzling equipment. I have my sunoco receipts in front of me right this minute, and they total more than $3000 for the 10 day job.

At a time when we need every penny possible to push this thrashed economy forward, high fuel is hammering people and causing them to pull back their spending either in fear of even higher future gas/oil expenses, or just flatly, no money left over from their weekly nut to buy anything but fuel for their vehicles.

So the question is: Should the Federal regulators take the fuel away from the oil speculators? Would this help to normalize fuel costs, or would it do more harm than good?

Nice easy question, right? I figure with the diverse and highly intelligent group here, this is a good one for conversation.

Please again, no political ugliness or I'll be the first one to ask Steve to slam the door.

J

   

Slam the door....There isn't anything good to say   it is very ugly politically....

The last thing you want is the Feds getting involved even more than they are. More than half the cost of fuel goes to taxes in one form or another.
Sure the Fed tax at the pump is ONLY $0.185/gal but the companies are also taxed for importing the oil, refining, storing and distributing. Everytime they move or deliver the comodity it is taxed.
Which, of course is passed on in the price.

Here in Ohio the pump tax is $0.28/gal. The State also adds transport taxes on the tankers using the highways.

So it ain't hard to see where the money is going and who/what is responsible for the major expense.


What is needed is a more sane tax structure.

There is a rumor that these price increases are not going away and we will be paying the magical $5.00/gal gasoline.......sorry for you diesel owners. It isn't because of Summer travel.
And agreed..........our economic recovery is shot and raising the debt ceiling is heading the USA to the brink.
The viscous circle begins............pass it on to the consumer.

try $9.50/gal as it is here in Greece.

No way for this not to get political.

Lower demand.

Car pool. Leave the SUV at home. Slow down 5 MPH on the highway.
Plan trips so less unnecessary ones are eliminated.

If the demand does not fall the price will continue to climb.

You're right to a certain extent, Dave.

But when those who explore, drill, refine and bring the comodity to market are pulling 9-12 cents a gallon profits and the govment, which does not a damn thing, is raking in $2+ a gallon something is wrong.
With a sane tax structure the free market would be able to regulate itself with the natural supply n demand laws.

Curious... if you know, why is it $9.50 a gallon in Greece?  Raw materials, taxes, price fixing, profiteering?

Speculators add liquidity to a market. Most speculators lose their asses in the markets, especially with wildly swinging markets like these. The futures contracts, options and cash market agreements are mainly for commercial users to hedge their product use and supplies. Without the speculators to take the other side of a transaction when the commercials/hedgers need to, the commercials would be trying to hedge against each other, creating much bigger price swings. This has been proven.

The bottom line is this... if it were so easy to profit speculating from these huge commodity swings, everyone would be doing it. But it is extremely difficult to predict market direction for a week,a  day or even the next hour... or the next tick.

There is a pattern when prices soar for the govt to over regulate the free markets. This will only cause more problems. Looking over hundreds of years of price data for any major commodity will show these "adjustment" periods when for whatever reason supplies are less and demand is big causing price to ration the supply. The real reasons are open to discussion, but the pricing mechanisms in the form of speculators are not the blame.

T

Our Rep told me Congress intends to study the problem.
My response to him, " that is just an excuse to do nothing, How about you guys grow some balls"

Try 8 trucks running full time, 600 miles a day.  4800 miles at 6 miles to the gallon....  That's 800 a DAY.

At 4 dollars a gallon.   My daily fuel receipts are more than your 10 day.

I feel ya.  Fuel surcharges in trucking are non-existant now...  Yeah, we HAVE them, but they are NOWHERE near what we need to make up for lost revenue.

Prices for freight haven't gone up much, either.  It's become a break-even game for me, after paying drivers, a million dollars worth of insurance on each truck, etc.


The price of fuel is ridiculous... And like others have pointed out, its not a seasonal spike...  This is the oil industry down to the station owners profiteering off the current events in the middle east.  Hasn't disrupted our oil gathering abilities one bit, but a station owner here ADMITTED he's raising rates due to the 'climate in the mideast'...  Yeah, he's from there somewhere.  I saw his fuel receipts for the last 3 months (not all, but representative), and his costs haven't increased much at all.  BUT, diesel HAS increased at the pump AT HIS STATION almost 75 cents a gallon.

And it's 9.50 or more a gallon in other countries because their government doesn't provide the subsidies that the US of A does.  The Feds subsidize our gas MORE than they tax it.  Fuel to the US Government is a net LOSS, after taxes.

--Shane
KD6VXI

Dave.....
It perfect sense.................but what do I see.............more SUV's ..............more HUGE trucks being sold that get a whopping 20MPG  and people driving faster than ever before.

My vehickel took a mileage  dive when they forced us to use 10% ethanol. So, higher cost at the pump, as i'm getting 10% less gas and paying the 'same' price, and less mileage so I have to pay for more fuel. As far as the tax subsidy, its $0.50 on the ethanol, so i'm getting screwed there as well.

And yes, it is all about me.

Your mileage may very.

klc

The discussion continues!
(Replace Adolph with Hugo Chavez or your favorite middle-east despot)

Bear got it right. 

The US spends a ton of military $ (a subsidy) to guard oil in one form or another on the way to us from the areas where it subject to damage.  Reason is there isn't enough to satisfy demand in 'friendly' places.  Plus off-shore wells are just as bad as nuke plants in terms of incipient danger to us & the environment.

Other countries just add the costs in so it is high compared to us.  That makes one hell of a difference in the pump price.

Ethanol added is just a gimmick to get more $ for corn producers like ADM, and doesn't do anything good for engines.

I run only vintage Diesels here, and get by a bit by adding in every form of used oil I can get my hands on to 'stretch' the mileage.  .  ATF. Hydraulic. WMO.  Fryer.

The herd with jillions of miles on 'em:
'67 Mack 10-wheeler
'80 Benz 300SD
'85  "      300TD
'90 Ford F350 7.3 IH.

The newer electronic/urea ones won't let you do that with either sensors or regulations.

73DG

Though very important, oil is just another major commodity. Right now the price of most commodities is approaching or greatly exceeding historic highs.   Soybeans, Wheat, Corn, Cocoa, Copper, Gold, Silver, Platinum, Cotton, Lumber, Hogs, Cattle, (Beef) Sugar and others have made new historic highs, some never seen before.  

No one has complained about the price of beef or cotton yet, but they are both about doubled from last year. Even coffee is approaching old 1970's highs.

Oil bothers us more cuz it's in our faces due to our driving and heating uses.

I think the overall cause is simply cuz it takes more US dollars to purchase commodities. The reckless $Trillion Dollar+ spending spree of the last two years (and earlier) is finally playing out.

It's strange how this economy is doing everything it can to screw the average consumer. Wages are lower and harder to get, while house prices are falling and commodities are soaring.  At the same time interest rates are so low the average old person or saver can barely get a return on their money when invested "safely".  


I've always believed the markets find a way to eventually screw the majority, but in this case it's doing it in spades.. ;)  We're seeing deflation in some markets and inflation in others... bizzare.

But this price bubble too will pass and we will be reading in the news of the great commodity crash in the  future. The froth has reared its head lately. It always seems like it will go on forever at the top.

Even today commodity prices are getting hammered down – the signs of a building top.


T

I heard an interesting news item this morning.  The US balance of trade has recently IMPROVED, despite our purchasing more stuff from overseas with the slight improvement in our economy.  The reason is, the hike in the price of fuel has caused consumption to drop.  Imported oil is the primary source of our trade deficit, far more significant than foreign made automobiles and consumer electronics combined, plus all the junk we "consume" from Wal O'ChinaMart and other retail outlets.

The majority of the price paid for fuel in Europe goes to taxation. The commodity itself should be about the same or slightly less than ours due to their proximity to oil sources in the Mid-East, Russia and Africa. Not to debate whether that is good or bad (convincing arguments can be made both ways), the policy is basically to tax fuel as heavily as possible without totally tanking the economy. This reduces consumption thus promoting conservation and efficiency, while helping to fund the generous social safety nets that have long existed in most of the "pro-western" European countries.

And yes, the presently bloated military budget to protect our overseas "interests" which just happen to lie in oil-producing regions of the world, should be included when calculating the petroleum subsidy.

In fact, Mr. Obama propose cutting the subsidies completely in his 2011 budget proposal.

Assuming the subsidies have been relatively constant the last 25 years lets do some math.
Being generous lets say the subs were, on average, $35B. Times 25 yrs that's $900B. Round it up to $1T......

Now, according to the Congressional Research Service the major oil companies paid $2.2T in revenue for the same period.

" As the experience of the past quarter-century has shown, governments have actually “profited” more from the oil industry than the industry has earned for its shareholders."


How is that a net loss for the gov.?

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1168.html (http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1168.html)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/01/us-obama-budget-oil-idUSTRE6103RM20100201 (http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/01/us-obama-budget-oil-idUSTRE6103RM20100201)

Do not bring logic into this discussion. That will never do!   ;D

Why do I not hear anyone complain about speculators when the prices drop? Is the system only broken when prices go up?

I have heard of a way to reign in wild speculation.     Require people that bid up oil futures to actually have some of the means to store the oil.   Right now anyone can buy oil futures and not have anyplace to put it.   One way to save on fuel, that many people don't take advantage of, is using IRS Form 4136.    It is a tax credit for federal highway taxes paid for non-highway use, such as farms, fishing boats, construction equipment or even you lawn mower if you keep track of it.   Invest in an oil company to hedge your personal gas costs.    Gas goes up, stock goes up.    Today Goldman downgraded the oil market.    Oil futures dropped 3% and Chevron dropped about the same.    I don't think politics has anything to do with this.

The whole speculator thing is *.  
You buy something and unload it before you have to pay for it.

Sorry, I don't know what came over me!

DOWN WITH THE LYING CHEATING EVIL OIL COMPANIES!!! WE NEED MORE SOCIALIST..... ummmm.... i mean ...... GOBMENT CONTROL!!!
(is that better?)

Oil is taxed coming and going. I have a few oilwells on my land. I pay taxes twice on my royalities. I pay income plus state sales tax.  :-\ I know ya'll feel my pain.  ;)

Mike
Very, very, very, very small Texas oil man.

How can you store something in the future?
You don't need to have a factory in your backyard to invest in Microsoft do ya?

Before you buy or sell short, for each contract, you must put up $8,000 cash in margin money on deposit at the clearing house that is debited and credited each day from your account to control  42,000 gallons of heating oil or 1,000 barrels of crude oil. Only commercials usually take delivery. In general, less than 5% of future contracts are delivered. In the S&P 500 contract and some other financial markets NONE are delivered - when expired, they are credited to an account in cash. Futures and options are mainly a hedging mechanism for financial risk control..

If you bought just ONE heating oil futures contract yesterday, you would have lost about $6,000 in about 24 hours. Timing is very difficult and the risk is huge.

Believe me when I tell you that most commodity speculators lose their asses in the end.  No one can force a market in one direction for long without getting caught.  Remember in the 90's when oil slipped all the way from $40 down to the $10 area?  Even the oil cartel could not stop that decline.  Speculators have even less power. Same when prices increase, no difference.

A speculator who buys has to eventually sell it = latent  downward selling pressure.
A speculator who sells short has to eventually buy it back = latent  upward buying pressure.
It all evens out in the end and actuallly makes price movement less erratic.. In contrast look at an illiquid market that trades a few times a day. An extreme case is house prices. How liquid are they when you want to dump a house in ten minutes? Look at the commissions.     $500,000 of S&P 500 contracts cost about $10 to move. Liquidity, baby.   Even house speculators got hammered in the last few years.

Without speculators you'd be  biddng 100 and selling at 110.    Speculators provide liquidity to narrow down that spread and make it fair.

If speculators were so bad they would have been outlawed 300 years ago, but the govt at least got that right.

Almost every individual in the stock market is a speculator too. Call them "investors if you like, but when we jump in the stock market we are speculating that our stocks will go up whether held for 5 minutes or 5 years.

T

I see zero value in it. The guy with the best intel makes the buck and everyone else pays more.

Why is this any diffferent than when buying stocks, houses, bonds and all other commodities?  The guy with the best intel usually does better, but not always. No one can accurately predict the future and usually makes big mistakes like everyone else.

There is no conspiracy. Most have no clue what the future holds, even the best financial pros or they would soon have all the money in the whirl... ;)

T

You will notice that most food stuffs and other consumer goods have not changed in price on the market shelves.  But if you go and buy a '1-lb' can of coffee for example, you are only getting 12 ozs.  The manufactures realized that as long as the packaging looks the same and the price remains close, they can cut the quantity in a package.  This makes it look like the price has not increased when in fact it has. You are just paying the same amount you're used to and getting 12 oz instead of 16.  

The only things that they can't do this with are things sold by large unit volume, like a gallon of milk or gas for example.  They can shrink a loaf of bread, or the amount of cereal in a box, or penut butter in a jar, as those quantities are subjective (how full is full? -or- Product is sold by weight, not volume, some settling of contents may occur). Then leave the price the same as it was for original quantity per unit. Net result you are paying more with out noticing or complaining or maybe even not buying that product anymore.

As long as they keep the incremental increase below some threshold, the average consumer will not notice.

Because Frank isn't making money on it. If he were, he wouldn't be posting here.  ;)

All this whining boils down to some people being pissed that someone else is making money and they aren't. It might as well be kindergarten - Johnny is upset that Billy got a cookie in his lunch and Johnny didn't.

Sheesh.

I don't file metal off coins either guess I'm just a sucker

Oh, I just love a lively debate.

The missing point about speculators -    Statistically, over 95% !! of all futures traders (speculators) lose all their money over time. They blow out and in comes another group of young bucks to try their luck. Musical chairs. It just like the casino in odds. Why would it be any different in the futures markets?  The consistent winners are the commercial users and producers. The speculators are betting against these guys. No chance. The smart hedgers don't care if the price goes up or down cuz they are hedging their inventory. They hedge at the price they can make money with the product and go back to work.

BTW, what did the average speculator do on this recent huge oil price rise? They SHORTED the market expecting a crash. They lost while the producers were long and buying. These position reporting stats are available to everyone. Of course some speculators made money. Just like the casino, maybe 5% of them.

Over 300 years there have been countless govt investigations into this commodity speculator area. We have blown $billions for studies. The end result, with an exception of perhaps two cases I recall, is that there was no wrong-doing and the markets ran as they should have. The exceptions are when there is illegal manipulation as when the Hunts tried to corner silver. They paid the price in $billions in losses anyway. Then there was the copper mine fiasco back in the 80's. They too lost $billions in the end.

The biggest investigation resulted in the 1933 Securities Act as everyone knows. The '29 crash caused a huge witch hunt and the govt wrote themselves some new rules that last today. But nowhere are speculators written out - even the '29 crash couldn't find reason to eliminate them.

Bottom line is - who is making the money in the commodity price spikes? It's the producers who have kept their expenses at a reasonable level. As always, the OPEC guys, and major oil companies are doing well. The surrounding riff-raff speculators are trying on a wing and prayer to ride their coattails but are failing miserably, as always..  ;)   And of course brokerage firms take their cut through commissions. This is a drain from the speculator too.

BTW, Ed/HYS - You are right about food packaging. What a clever way to hide higher prices. The local Chinese restaurant has started it too. The aluminum trays are much smaller these days. I noticed it last week.   Steve, we better watch out at the shushi bar in 2 weeks…  

" The manufactures realized that as long as the packaging looks the same and the price remains close, they can cut the quantity in a package "

The local food mart sells Dunklin Donuze Coffee in 12 oz bags.... for the same price that Dunklin sells their 16 oz bag.  I love this country.  I buy 8 'O Clock coffee, and grind it myself. Its cheeeper than the Dunklin, and my house smells like the A&P.


klc

bottom line is everything is dependent on energy.  Energy will dictate the cost of everything.

Ah yes, energy.  To carry on the hijacking tradition;

My neighbor used to live in Northern Ohio.  Built a boiler with an eye on 'cheap to run' that would take whole pallets as fuel. 

He later tried it with old tires, and after tweaking the blowers a bit, got it to burn them with just a bit of white smoke & not enough to get any attention.  Now his son lives in that home and heats the whole house & hot tub in Winter with free "items".

Reportedly can recycle the left-over steel cords for a few $.

Green enough?

73DG

I do too, especially when they are funny  ;D  At the risk of being hated, I don't do any cross country travelling now so I can kind of ride out the price--but the cost of going a distance to a hamfest, or to get a big rig will hurt.


Unfortunately for me, the only market I dream of cornering is mod. reactors, maybe KW vintage bc rigs. 

So true, especially with the decentralization of our culture and the globalization (ok, outsourcing) of manufacturing.   Gone are the days when the stuff you bought here was made here (locally or even in this country).  Initially Rail transport opened up opportunities to ship products nationally, but that was killed by trucking since trucking could go door-to-door and at that time fuel costs for trucks were so cheap that the cost of maintaining and running rails made them non-competitive.  So producers could locate factories (or farms) further away from population centers they served and get goods directly to the market via truck and do it more cheaply and faster than rails, although with a much greater fuel burn per ton of goods moved. No big deal if fuel is cheap.

Now products, and especially food stuffs, must be shipped great distances to the point of use, and trucks are not the most cost efficient way to do that when fuel costs "by necessity, skyrocket".
The Rail system, which at one time moved massive quantities of people and materials has languished, and a great deal of which has been abandoned or lost so there is no low cost fall back to trucking or airfreight.  Even 'rail trail' preservation projects are a joke, first, the cost of recovering the roads would be prohibitive, I think the last estimate to upgrade the existing 18 miles of track from Nashua to Lowell to connect to the Boston MBTA rail was about a million a mile, imagine scratch building a complete road, not to mention the fights from the groups who wanted the trails for their recreational use in the first place.
Finally, automobiles and their associated marketing all-but made ownership of a car in the US a necessity, which caused our population centers to spread. It was no longer necessary to live and work in the same community, you were only limited by how far you were willing to drive, as long as the fuel costs were cheap enough, which they were for 50 or so years. Now hour long commutes are not uncommon, and Mass Transit is a joke since it's just not possible for it to go all the places it needs to go, and even if it does, it takes far too long. I could take a bus from my house to work, but it would take me over 2 hrs one way and it's only 6.5 miles!

So the farmer has to pay more for his fertilizer, insecticides, and for the diesel to run his tractors, the grocer has to pay more to get that product since the shipping costs have to increase in response, then factor in the whole taxation thing. All those costs get passed on until we're paying $10 for a loaf of bread.

When have prices dropped?

 I believe that the most important resource / commodity now and especially moving forward is and will be Water. Not Salt or Poluted or bromaic suflide, etc.  For clean healthy food is slightly more important than long distance transportation.

  Our Main resource of Energy will depend on clean Water even directly. Notice what heavy water is.  73, Dr. John K1DEU

In 2008 the average price of gas was $1.79. It's now over $3.60. Before 2008 it was higher than $1.79 at some times and other times lower. The price of gas goes up and DOWN often. See the graph below.

Source

http://www.eia.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/mogas_history.html

Yet, they tell us that car ownership and driving are a "privilege not a right".

The automobile and associated bureaucracy have become a convenient instrument of social control.

So, as spoken by one who intimately knows this market, the speculators are actually SUBSIDIZING oil prices  ;)

The $9.50/gal here is mostly taxes - pure government interference in the market in an attempt to help finance its socialist society; also, there are only 2 refineries here as I understand so it's also probably a lack of competition.  Finally oil is priced in dollars and this is a euro economy.  The price always goes up (in euros) when the dollar falls.  Then since I get paid in dollars and have to exchange to euros, I get doubly screwed.

In response, cars are mostly smaller yet there are still plenty of gigantor Mercedes, big Citroens (which I must admit are REALLY cool cars), tons of Jeep SUVs, and a smattering of Suburbans, Escalades, and Hummers as well as some exotics like Aston Martins, etc.   The taxes based upon engine size are another burden the Greeks shoulder, if they want anything better than a tiny little crapbox.

Even so, it's cheaper for me to drive to work than ride the bus.  The metro doesn't go close to my place.  And it's a crap shoot whether either the buses or the metro will be on strike on any given day.  My little Caddy gets 30 MPG on the highway and about 20 commuting.

I recently rode the Washington DC metro - frigging $5.40 from Shady Grove to Washington National Airport!  Last time I rode it regularly it was $2.40.  No wonder people prefer to drive.

UN-fortunately there does not seem to be any innovators. Folks want the energy saving device handed to them  and installed for free, and then probably no use it.

Here's a twist. The following is not OFFICIAL.
My brother works for a heating oil/gasoline/diesel delivery company near Washington DC. Somewhere in this thread someone mentioned that he/she saw receipts for gasoline delivery to their local gas station and could not detect any increases in the last several months.
My brother tells me that his company, IS seeing increases and it's the exact opposite of what we are thinking here. There is LESS consumption of these fuels, so the price of oil goes up.
It doesn't seem to be the poor shmoe at your local gas and go making big dollars.

The whole point of the stock market was to raise cash for big projects and everyone made a buck in the end. Ever since the small investor was let into the market the volume took off. The excessive volume has produced an undercurrent of prople moving stock at a high volume to produce gains over short periods of time perverting the spirit of the market. Now every business in the market must react to daily buzz rather than long term goals.
Wait till that big computer system comes on line in the basement of wall st.
Someone is giong to suck money out like a blood sucking bug on a humid August day.

except in the oil "market" the producer is the only entity that really knows how proven are the so-called "proven reserves." Not even the majors know how proven their "proven reserves" are...just look up how often they restate them (downwards). So there's no way for "market forces" to operate in oil until the time the Saudis allow for the independent evaluation of how much longer they can pump at rate X, Y, or Z, etc.

Peter

according to your link, most of this $2.2T is not taxes on oil industry profits but rather it is federal and state excise taxes which are "pass on" taxes...oil companies pay little, to none (plenty stories recently about Exxon's tax liability), tax on profits by exploiting the tax loopholes put into law by the politicians they own while they pocket the subsidies awarded them by the same politicians they own.

While it's easy to count the direct subsidies, it is hard to count the indirect subsidies.
For example, the recent cancellation of a new rail tunnel in the NY-NJ metro area is
an indirect subsidy to the oil industry since the population pressures on the existing system will certainly result in more gasoline consumed in longer and longer traffic jams into and out of NYC.

In the end ALL the Taxes are paid by the consumer. And in the end all the money ends up in gobment hands. Where the 2.2T came from is less relavent to where it ends up. And I doubt very much, but will look into it, that the indirect subsides total anywheres near the total tax revenue.

The real problem on the supply side, at least for the U.S., hangs on the fact that our domestic oil producing market died after the 1980 tax increases. Ifn we had let the market run free and not given into the junk science of Climate Control our dependencies wouldn't be lying off shore.

Good point. This makes it even HARDER for the speculator to skim profits off the move. The average speculator is a doctor who gets a tip from his commodity broker. It goes something like, "Oil is high enough - let's short it here for a big fall. OPEC can't possibly let it rally any more or the USA will get POed" , etc etc. (Crap info = losses) They put in a stop loss order $4000 away from the market and get clipped in one day.

 Johnny/JN -  I never thought of it that way, but you are right. The small speculator probably does help subsidize the oil industry in the form of better price spreads for the big boys to get in and out.... Interesting thought.

T
 

Why is that?  If the dollar falls (loses buying power), the price in $$$ goes up.  But there would be a respective shift in the euro to dollar exchange rate, with the stronger euro now buying more of those devalued dollarettes. So shouldn't the price at the pump stay about the same in the Eurozone, unless the euro also loses value?  The euro is not bound to the $$$ at a fixed rate; the relative values of the currencies is allowed to float. Like the stock market and copper commodities, the exchange rate fluctuates on a daily, even hourly basis.

The last time I was in Europe right after euro had just been introduced, the countries were still using the old currency but everything was dually priced, marked in local currency and in euros. This allowed an acclimation period before the new money was released to the public.  At that time the euro was worth about $1.03, close enough to the dollar that US tourists could approximate the prices of items in the store by the euro price, without mentally calculating per the exchange rate. At that time the Canadian dollar was worth about $0.80 USD; now it is $1.04. According to this morning's newspaper, the exchange rate is 0.6904 euros for $1, or $1.4485 for 1.00€. The buying power of the USD relative to other currencies has taken a big plunge over the past decade.

So why does the daily variation in exchange rate not take care the higher price per barrel in dollars when paid in euros?
If the price in both euros and dollars increases, but only the dollar and not the euro loses value per the official exchange rate, doesn't that mean the price at the pump in real money has gone up as someone is taking advantage and skimming from the till? Or am I missing something here?

How about this; we remove all taxing from oil and gas and its drilling and production and set reasonable standards to protect people (not etherial owls, et al (al has been ok)) from getting their health messed up by doing so. Spare me the Exon Valdez and Gulf incidents, stuff happens and it will, unless you do nothing. If you do nothing then find a way to pay 9.50 a gallon and don't whine. If you do something productive there will be incidents just as there are crashes when planes fly. You clean up the messes and get back on the horse if its the best horse you have. We are on a path to do less than nothing now and can change that.
We could also change our automotive fuel to CNG. We know where to find that. . .
Art
w0ba

We were assured back in the early to mid 50's that by now we would be driving atomic powered cars, each with its own tiny reactor in the engine compartment. Nuclear power plants would be delivering abundant electricity too cheap to meter.

Wonder if those cars would have been made in Japan?

After the Japan incident you will be lucky to be able to build a reactor on the far side of the moon now.  Too bad really.  The newest designs are way ahead of the game when it comes to safety and cleanliness.  But John Q. Public only knows that nukes are bad...  Ignorance and fear mongering.   Automobiles kill more people in a single year than all the accidents involving nuclear power plants combined ever.  Ditto on the amount of pollution generated.

They did come really close to an atomic powered bomber, having a developed a working atomic jet engine.  Man that would have really given us an edge in getting stuff to orbit as well.

Roger on the far side of the moon Ed.

        I was very involved in Shutting down a perpetual Reactor in the Tri-cities Schenectady, NY area in the 50's People naturally get overexcited when their pet starts to work and completely ignore the possibility that nothing is perfect. Today the GE Japanese design is used in Vernon, Vermont near Brattleboro is in my local area. If you knew the addictions/habits of some of the security / safety workers and Administrators like I do we would move to the far side of the moon quickly.

There are many safer designs like the French under Charles De Gaulle and Norwegian use which could be copied without expensive copy royalties.  Also understand that Crude Oil companies do not want anyone to compete.

There are many other reasons that somewhat clean H2O will be in critical demand.  73  Dr. John, K1DEU

being as clean water is relatively easy to produce, how can you say that we are running out?

When I was in the middle east, I never understood how those folks didn't just use solar distilation to convert the water from the gulf into fresh water. They lots of high energy sunshine 11 months out of the year and millions of acres of land that was completely vacant.  For very low investment cost, they could have had completely solar powered fresh water plants anywhere along the coast and turned most of the desert into oasis easy.     Heck, we could do the same thing in So. California.  There must not be any profit in it I guess.

    Brine disposal is a major problem with California, UAE and other seacoast distillation projects.

  The Oceans have more than Salt in them.   John

Ah, those are osmosis type plants, they produce large amounts of very salty brine and require an expensive energy intensive infrastructure. A solar distillation plant could just handle much more water, taking only a small amount out, so the returned brine is less dense & salty. Or you could take out as much as possible and decide that dumping really salty water into the sea might kill a few acres of seaweeds and move a few fish but would provide People with much needed water (I notice that environmentalists are good at telling us what we can't do to solve a problem, but really bad at coming up with an real world, economical, effective solution).
As for the rest of it, yea there is lots of stuff in seawater, but with a combination of settlement and solar evaporative distillation, you could get a lot of fresh water out.  Wouldn't have to be drinking water, just imagine reducing the irrigation load for crops, that would be huge, allowing folks to retain the 'good' water supply purely for human consumption.  If the energy cost was low enough, as in a purely solar powered installation (pumps, heat etc the whole shebang) the real cost is initial construction and maintenance, and a well designed system could keep the maintenance costs reasonable.

Divide by 10 then prices make sense.  Gas is all the way up to forty cents!  Some cars cost $4500.  Sometimes I can get a coke for nickel, sometimes a dime.  I just bought a loaf of bread for a quarter. 

See?  All those numbers work, at least for someone my age.  The trouble is it works for your income too.

Yup, that's just about the prices I remember from the early to mid 50s. Furthermore, a (non-surplus) transmitting triode like the 211 went for $12.50:  $125 in dollarettes, just about what audiophools are now paying for a WW2 surplus 211/VT4-C. It cost 3¢ to post a 1st class letter.  That would be 30¢ in to-day's money.  So the price of postage has actually gone up a little.  You could buy a modest older house for $10K.  You could probably find one on to-day's market for $100K, depending on the area.

That's why, now that congress is on a budget cutting kick, this would be a good time do away with the damnable penny. To-day's nickel or dime (depending on the reference year) is equivalent to yesterday's 1¢ piece. We got by fine with the resolution of payment possible with the penny of years gone by, so we could get by just as well to-day with that same resolution using the nickel or dime. The US mint spends more money manufacturing pennies than it does all the other coins combined. They have to keep making new ones because the things are so worthless that people discard them or squirrel them away in jars, taking them out of circulation almost as fast as the mint can produce them. And after it's all done, the metal in the penny is now worth more than the face value of the coin. I'd bet that discontinuing the penny would would take a bigger bite out of the deficit, than would defunding WWV and public broadcasting.

And while they are at it, they should reinstate the $500 bill.  It would be equivalent to a 1950s C-note. To-day's $100 bill is nothing more than yesterday's ten spot.

Here's that Atomic Car.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulmalon/5086865926/

I was making $5 an hour when I bought my house for $30K

Interesting comment, Don.

They apparently won't issue a $500 bill because it would make life easier for drug dealers. A million bucks in 100s fills up a small suitcase.

So the big time smugglers are now apparently shipping their money in 500 Euro notes instead of dollars. LOL

"  Here's that Atomic Car. "

Is the driver talking on a cell fone??

klc

Or a CB?  See the whip antenna on the tail fin, and that looks more like a hand mic; he's not holding it up to his ear.  Or it could be a Yeacomwood on 75m. That whip looks like one one of those fibreglass rods with spiral wound wire for distributed loading.

Imagine the power he could be running at his home station with electricity too cheap to meter.

And the guy's not wearing a necktie!

with all those pennies squirreled away in a jar, I'm surprised we haven't seen people melting them down and taking the copper to metal salvage yards.  The penny has to be worth more in weight than face value. Consider all the nut cases willing to risk their lives to pull live wires from electrical systems and radio sites. 

If you think copper is a good deal look at silver

The penny is copper clad zinc. It only has about 3% copper.

Darrell, WA5VGO

With that goofy 'atomic car', changing either the front or rear tire would be a real bitch! :P

BTW, here is where some of your oil $$ goes.  This Krautwagon is not stainless, rather done completely in white gold.  Nothing like 'conspicuous consumption', eh?

73DG

PS...I'm half German so have room to talk. LOL

I can remember when the penny was pure copper. I think they changed over to copper clad sometime in the 60s when face value dipped below the value of the metal.  That extended it a few more decades, but now the copper clad zinc is worth more than face value.

In 1943, they minted a load of steel pennies.  They remained in circulation for at least 20 years, before they were recalled. Now they have taken on some value as collectors items, worth about 12 to 15 cents each in ciruclated condition, and as much as 50 cents or more if uncirculated.  I once had accumulated a big jar full of them, but later cashed them in thinking they would never be worth anything.  I should have held onto them.

There were a very few copper 1943 pennies minted, and those do have considerable value, if authentic.  There are some fake ones out there, where half the 8 has been ground away from a 1948 penny.  It is easy to spot the fake, since the real 1943 date has a tail on the bottom of the 3 that extends below the base line of the numbers.

"And the guy's not wearing a necktie!"

Oh, then he must be a CB'er.


klc

Beautiful car.

Unfortunately, the cops in CT would shut it down in a heartbeat. They have a law about reflective window tinting and probably car paint too.   On a sunny day that car would look like an arc welder driving down the road... :)

T

I bought a roll of Steel pennies for $3 about 5 years ago. 

I'm late to this thread, but wanted to add the following ..........

Controlling (lowering) the cost of petroleum products in the US in our lifetime seems virtually impossible, but certainly feasible for our children.  This is based on the simple facts of supply and demand and the reality of a government system that continues to “fiddle while Rome burns”.

The US is the worlds number one importer of world-wide crude oil.  The US imports three times as much crude as the number two nation, which is now China. We cannot possibly make up our total demand by “more drilling”.  We currently import 60% of our crude.  Only 40% is domestic.

It seems to be a seldom mentioned fact that the top two suppliers of our imported crude are Canada and Mexico.  Together, they supply about 22% of our crude.  Our number three supplier is Saudi Arabia at about 9%.  Numbers 4 and 5 are Venezuela and Nigeria, who together supply about 15%. (See Ref 1)

Thus, right now, nearly eighty percent of our crude oil demand is being met by “non Persian Gulf” sources that we should be able to control if we could reduce our demand.

A twenty percent reduction is  a lot, to be sure.  However, when it is realized that the two biggest users of petroleum products are for transportation and heating (not electric power generation).  It is clearly time for our government to back off with petroleum oriented subsidies and give some real meat to helping the development and deployment of all things electric.

Ref 1: http://www.infoplease.com/science/energy/us-oil-imports.html (http://www.infoplease.com/science/energy/us-oil-imports.html)

Guy – W1FRM
[/size]

Including full speed ahead development of nuclear fusion, with a program of the same urgency as the Manhattan Project. Unlike fission, fusion does not leave behind the nasty spent fuel waste, and the fuel can be derived from ordinary sea water, not expensive-to-mine uranium.

Of course, safety would still have to be an issue. The Hydrogen Bomb is nothing more than an uncontrolled fusion reaction.

Just a few problems.

• Solar: Still too inefficient. And there's the environmental impacts and the transmission problems.
• Hydro: No new dams are being built and none are likely to be. We aren't even keeping up on the maintenance of most dams. Many go away each year (most are generators anyway). On the plus side, some smaller existing dams are being outfitted for generation.
• Wind: same problems as solar. And then there's the NIMBY problem
• Nuclear: GFL after Japan.

You got it man.   Good luck building a new dam. either the property cost would be out of site or some species of speckled bifurcated butterfly would live there, and of course every new project has the NIMBY folks to deal with. Hell we can't even build power lines in NH because it will 'ruin the scenic view".   Well I hope those folks can enjoy that view when they have to pay triple the electric costs.

Wood for heating fuel is getting legislated out in some states too.

Nuclear has only one real chance, and that fusion, but that is decades away from being reality. No one is investing in anything Nuclear now anyway, so with out the cash it's done, regardless of how good it is.  Even if you had a working Fusion plant, the tree huggers/NIMBY groups would make construction so crazy expensive that it wouldn't get built.

Meanwhile we sit on 200 years worth of the best anthracite coal buried in the Appalachians Enough to power our cities and provide secondary fuels for cargo transport. unable to use it cause coal is evil incarnate.

We will to freeze to death in the dark, unable to afford the gasoline to flee somewhere warm, while our Fearless Leaders zip around in private jets burning thousands of pounds of Taxpayer funded Jet fuel per hour...

At least one train a day (maybe 2-3 miles  long) with nothing but full coal cars goes through this area each day. It guess it's coming western Virginia and West Virginia and winds up at the port in Newport News.

Is cold fusion research worthy of funding?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/2009DIA-08-0911-003.pdf

As several have mentioned Methane which is found naturally way above crude oil deposits is #1. Its rarely deep.

We need crude for tires and many things but not for torque or AC power.

Not at sea or near the sea and not near known seismic activity.

BTW the Horizon attempt was not for crude but for methane. Using a emergency back-up cap that was well known NOT to fit the pipe, our Government confirmed this.

Many drill a small well using Water Drillers modified equipment. For just one person or a small community and distribute it safely using flexible acrylic pipe. I will be tapping methane here late this fall or next year dowsed 80 feet down.  I would expect most people know we can purchase refrigerators, freezers anywhere that run on Methane / Natural Gas.

Dr. John K1DEU   Water fusion will be allowed to work early 2013.

A coal train about 1/2 mile long passes here each day. 1 train=1 day supply of coal for the southern power plant. It's kind of scary to know that if the train were interrupted, there is only so much reserve fuel onsite.

Not only are we not building more dams, the ones we have are falling apart, just like the highways, bridges, sewer lines, water lines and the rest of the infrastructure.  Most of this was built in the period between the late 1800s and the mid 1970s, designed for a life expectancy of about 50-60 years. Some of it is now over a century old.  Since governments at all level are teetering on bankruptcy, no funding is being outlayed for repairs. In the decades to come we'll be seeing more bridges collapse, open sewage running into the rivers and in the streets, water mains rupture, dams collapse and who knows what other catastrophes.  There is already a dam up in Ky in danger of collapse; the Corps of Engineers is supposedly working on it, but we are not out of the woods on that one yet.  If it does collapse, water will gush down the Cumberland River and the flood that hits Nashville will make May 2010 look like a heavy dew.

The recent "stimulus package" was supposed to include repair and rebuilding of infrastructure, but only a token amount was actually set aside to do that. Infrastructure collapse may be a greater threat to the nation than energy and pollution problems combined. Things are falling apart and we don't have the money to fix them. Kind of like a lot of our historic homes and buildings that are being allowed to crumble and fall down.


I wonder if that would still be true if an all-out effort were put into the R&D, as they did in the Manhattan Project during WW2? The research to make it practical could be done at existing facilities, and a working prototype could built on an existing site or somewhere in the middle of the desert.  Once it could be made to actually work, then the fight would be on to build plants. Scientists have predicted that a working fusion plant would be much safer than the present-day fission plants (no hazardous waste piling up, no reactor core to melt down and little or no likelihood that it an uncontrolled reaction could accidentally occur to turn the plant into an H-bomb).

This would be a far better place to toss money than spending it to police the world.

As for cold fusion, I'm afraid that may be in the same realm as the fake Apollo landings, wooden audio control knobs, oxygen-free copper and breaking-in $600 power cords.

I've often wondered what it would be like if a human engineer from 1000 years in the future were to appear on the scene today.  What innovations and energy solutions would he give us to solve our problems?  Would we have the infrastructure and tools to even begin to support the methods he would advise?

Compare this to a professional engineer going back to the year 1011. How much could he do with the tools they had at the time? It would take a long time.  The obvious medical innovations would be staggering, like antibiotics and other easy to implement techniques. But to usher in a new world of technology would not be that easy.

It would be like sending a cellular phone back to year 1911.  What could they possibly do with that technology then?

As our technology gets more complex, it seems the infrastructure to support it becomes way out there. Imagine how difficult it is to refine uranium for a bomb. I'll bet the next energy innovation will not be a simple thing that we missed, but rather a method that approaches the complexity of a collider. The "easy" days of Marconi, Edison and Tesla are probably gone forever.

T

Not a pretty picture where we are headed Don.  I used to also use the term policing the world now a days I say Colonizing.

from my website  Of course we colonized the Native Indians

When it comes to America in 1760, America was a British Colony. By 1776 we Americans, who the British knew as the most treacherous, unfair cunning murdering Terrorists’ finally kicked the British out and established our own sovereign Republic Country.

 

When we study history 300 to 500+ years ago we find that the French, British, Spanish, Portuguese and many other powerful countries with their Warships traveled to many foreign countries with the intent to eventually return home with many stolen natural resources for the rich and famous. These resources included such a long list of thousands of items from Snuff/Cocaine to Poppies/Opium to Oil for Light, heat, and lubrication, Tobacco Gold & Silver.

 

Serving in northern Thailand in the 60’s we had a dirt runway and lived in tents. From bases like this, we sprayed and dumped into rivers and lakes Agent Orange defoliating much of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. I and many friends often wondered why we Americans were there.

 

Some may remember when the French Colonized Vietnam and were kicked out by the sovereign Vietnamese citizen/terrorists’ around 1957. Next let us study why the French before 1957 allowed many of their colonies to nationalize with out a French puppet government. Now our curiosity is why did the French hold on to their Vietnam Colony longer than their other colonies?  Very simply the Crude Oil from the French Oil wells on the coast pumped Oil that was so clean with low sulphur content that it would run some diesel engines and Oil heaters directly with out any expensive refining. The same quality Oil is found in Iran, Iraq and the Sudan area but not in America.

 

A Merchant Marine friend of mine in the 1960’s was working on Oil Tankers loading in Vietnam and delivering pure Crude to Hawaii and eventually California. The U. S. Navy’s main job was to protect the costal oil wells and ocean going oil tankers. In case anyone forgot, the Vietnamese sovereign terrorists eventually kicked our American colonizing butts out of their sovereign land with God’s help. It is more than my wife and my sincere prayer/demand that no countries colonize foreign lands  to steal their resources or force a foreign/puppet type of government upon them for any excuse!

 

 

 

When one studies the Universe’s Fairness doctrine for all  Dimensions throughout the Universe. The pre-amble begins:

 

A sovereign geographic area/ country is allowed to defend its land area by any method necessary !   But not far outside of its air, land or water borders. Yes, foreigners’ may visit but only with the majority permission of the local nationals. Yes, many sovereign countries may trade their resources with those they respect without excessive financial advantage. Any countries colonizing other sovereign countries for any resource or political reason will soon meet their maker.

 

The Republic form of Government (documented by Aristotle) is used by the majority of all humankind in all dimensions !  Many of you know that America's founding Mothers and Fathers studied the previous failures of many Governments and properly wrote the original American Constitution and Bill of Rights with as many checks and balances so that the rich and famous could not have any advantage over the poor and middle class voters. It is more than sad that many of these precious documents original guidelines were altered or destroyed by individual powerful and rich people/lobbyists’.

John, K1DEU

Solar is becoming cheaper every year and it's projected to be comparable with the cost of a clean technology coal plant in a few years. The Chinese have taken a leadership role in developing photovoltaic technology. (Are we asleep at the switch again??)

Price for thin-film solar is now down to $1/watt (not including infrastructure). You can pay $300 retail for a 250-watt panel- Right now. A 500-megawatt coal fired power plant costs about 500 megabucks to build today..And you have to pay for the fuel forever...If I could afford it, you bet I'd install several KW worth of solar here...Just for grins. That atomic fusion generator in the sky blesses us with maybe a kilowatt of energy per square meter of earth's surface.

IMO.

Therein lies the environmental problem. By putting up these solar panels we are blocking the sun and doing damage to the ecosystem. Besides that, they're just plain ugly. Putting them on every roof and skipping the big transmission lines may be a way around this problem. But now you are making each person responsible for their own electricity. GFL in our current coddled and helpless society.

it's 1kw/m^2 at the equator.  Slantwise through the Atmosphere in higher latitudes and it drops quiet a bit.  Not to mention Shorter solar days at those latitudes and foul weather.  If you're planning on running a pure solar power grid, and live anywhere real, you'd better have 2x capacity min and very efficient storage/inversion technology. It also helps to have converted your home over to a mostly DC with High efficiency lighting/appliances.

As a backup or secondary power source, it will work FB OM.  Just hit the grid when the output drops or load goes up etc. 

Solar Heating supplemented by renewable (like wood) is much much better idea. Save the Fossil fuels (what a misnomer!) and NG for other uses.

Methane is decent fuel and would work great as every home has a source of methane (toilet) built in.  But, it's also been labeled a "Greenhouse" gas, so good luck with that.

There is not a lot of motivation for young people to become engineers today. When we were kids engineers were treated much better than today. Now they are slaves to useless bean counters who want to outsource them.
hopefully things will change someday. where we put useless bean counters back in their place.
Maybe Kelly Johnson will come back and shake things up.

BTW there is a clean coal plant on Rt91 just north of Springfield Ma.
It is rare to see a little puff of white smoke come out of the stack

Frank,

A very good friend of mine who is an EE (he has his MSEE), has remarked to me that in his opinion, aside from most registered professional engineers and consulting engineers, here in the U.S., engineering is a white collar job where you are frequently treated as a blue collar worker.

In many countries of the world, engineering is considered an extremely prestigious and honorable profession, with similar prestige accorded to doctors and and other highly esteemed occupations.

I guess here in the U.S., many young folks consider sports heros, rock stars, and celebrities as being more prestigious occupations, and this is what they aspire to be. Fast and easy money; that's what they want in many cases. Generalizing here, of course.

73,

Bruce

Just to power NYC 24/7 by photovoltaic would take the equivalent of roughly 80% of the state of CT in real estate.

Frank said:
There is no such thing as clean coal! Ask 'El Presidente'.'  Now around here the Marcellus Shale is suppposed to have a HUGE gas supply. I was talking with one of the water drivers and he said they have now hit oil and anticipate a larger oil supply than what the Saudi's could ever dream of.

The day will come when our decendants drill down into the Earth and mine the molten energy there. Just imagine a controlled flow of magma to the surface and back down again through a pipe 100' in diameter.


Second step: Mining plasma from the sun - directly.

And last: Mining energy from the galaxy's black hole.
Speed of light travel will require mastering stage three.

These are stages one, two and three of advanced civilizations according to the book, "Hyperspace".

Right now we still reside in stage zero... ;)  (lucky us)


T

Black holes do not exist. They are merely artifacts of our very primitive methods of observing the universe.

Tom,
Remember when we were kids and they told us "someday computers will do all the work and we will have plenty of free time". It didn't make any sense to me at the time.
I just hope we find fuel here before those low life own us.

When computers do all the work, THEY will own us.

The LHC has the capability to give us knowledge to unleash energy via beyond quantum mechanics. I think our limited view of the material world is confining us to this blue marble. We have to reach past 186,000 MPS or we wont be able to sustain ourselves. Realizing mastery of quantum physics will unlock endless energy and space travel at the same time.

Mike,
Ash is still an issue but at least it isn't coming out of the stack.

At least Gore and others finally admitted that Green house gasses was a mistake and the Ole North and South poles are supposed to melt naturally every 13,000 years. And not from Coal, wood, etc.

Well at least the Spiritually Weak had a excuse to spend our tax money on the largest grass party/junket in Copenhagen.


The Marcellus Shale isn't even the tip of the iceberg for our Crude. Many people know that here ON LAND in North America we have easily 41 Times what the middle east ever dreamed of for Oil and Methane. And it ain't shale !





 John, K1DEU

Frank said:
Frank, ash isn't even the issue anymore. The fly ash at the nearby plant is used in making dry wall at the local US Gy[sum plant. The rest is handed over to other townships to be used on the roads.

Is that tongue in cheek or??? 

As far as harvesting energy from space, all well and good, but how do you get it down from there in a form that is usable as electricity?   I remember a popular Mech (?) article that had an orbiting power station that pumped energy to the surface in the form of microwaves which were supposed t be collected and converted to good ole hz AC.   

Talk about weapons potental!!   

I think the geothermal idea is pretty good, but instead of allowing magma to float up to the surface (with all the difficulties that would entail)  you'd pump water down to the hot zone where it would be converted to steam and used just like any other heat source.  They are actually doing this in iceland where volcanic/geothermal energy is close to the surface.  Around here you'd need a pipe many miles long to reach a more or less permanent hot zone that would be able to provide enough heat to keep the power running, difficult, but still possible, given the money for R&D and construction.

Can you please expand on what means by 'allowed to work'? Either it works or not?

It was tongue in cheek but pointing to a larger point. The reality is every time the scientific world claims something about outer space, not long after, new observations show it to be false. I think we're fooling ourselves with all this pontification about deep space and black holes. Many physicists completely disagree with Hawking on what happens in black holes. Further, the field of physics is rather messed up with dogma and black listing. We aren't getting nearly as broad a view of the world and the associated research as we should be. Therefore, I claim that what we know about the world is just that much more limited (and it's severely limited to begin with).

Just outside of Naknek Alaska there is a geothermal project going on....It is being done by the local electric cooperative....A small outfit that has put it all on the line financially to develop a geothermal source and eventually build an electric generating plant to supply power to SW Alaska.  It has been slow going, They have been working with their own funds and grant monies and so far have one well drilled that produces the required hotwater ...They are now officially broke and filing for bankruptcy.  The state government and the federal government have been very slow to get behind this project...Oil is king in Alaska and that no doubt has something to do with the lack of governmental interest....I pay over $6 a gal for heating oil there and the electric is generated with diesel at those same costs...I pay .46 a KWH!......I don't know what will happen with this project but it is in limbo right now......So ....some people are trying on a small scale but progress is difficult with the system we have in place....If you are interested, there is some info on the web....Google Naknek Electric  coop...

It is unfortunate that any concentrated source of energy has inherent risks. We need to manage but not regulate to death these resources.
Solar is a wonderful concept as is wind but not sufficiently concentrated sources of energy to be practical. That's a sobering statement but we all know it is true. Aside from that fact the US grid is in no way capable of decentralized power distribution. Regional is about as "distributed" as we get.
Concentrated sources of energy are primarily hydrocarbons and nukes. If we want to become energy independent (I don't think the current or past agenda has been in this direction) we must drill our own oil and convert to CNG (instead of burning it off or wasting it), and convert our coal electrical generators to clean coal or natural gas.
If we want America back in control of its own destiny we must change our focus to that concept. Sorry to all the tree huggers who want to defend an idea that isn't real. Currently our national focus is to feed the world government/market. I'd rather feed the 1 in 4 on food stamps in our own country. Our own energy production would do that and more. We would become the oil source to the world instead of an unstable area of the world. Yes, I would like to see Detroit (for example) with roads and public facilities like Abu Dhabi and Kuwait City and by generating and employing our own we can do that, while creating the most prosperous and successful country and citizens on earth.

Art
w0ba

Since water is H2O, the year must be an even number. So it won't happen until 2014.

I think big bang is bogus. It is based on a short term oscillation of expanding universe who knows if the trend reverses into compression.

&3 to All on this BBS.  Will catch you on 75 AM in the next several weeks where our individual opinions are not edited to much. Love & 73 John, K1DEU

   Geez John, don't let the EXIT door slam you in the butt on the way out...
             

   Art, W0BA, long time since I've seen any comments from you.  Nice new
   call-sign.  How are things going out there in CO?
   

saw $4.19/ gal. here driving around tonight.

I had to go look up 'Essene', thought it was some sort of synthetic gas. ;)

I once knew a girl named 'Ambrosene', she was pretty hot but not something I'd put in my tank, either. 8)

73DG

Essence is the French word for gasoline or petrol.  I remember the old Standard Oil brand name "Esso". They still had it in Canada as late as the 1990s. In some parts of the world they call it "benzene".

Hi Ralph,
Good to see you again. Yes, there has been a good deal of family activity for some time. . . .
CO is a wonderful place but I need to move to a house without HOA constraints. Imagine! Folks upset by a simple wire antenna. . .  grrrr. Anyway, aside from that life is good.
Hope all is good with you and I definitely miss the gang on AM.
Art
0ba

Art's voice was never that high.

ESSO

Every
Sucker
Stops
Once

Ralph are you referring to the in and out swinging door on the OK Corral AM Bar room door/

Well the springs are pretty strong but you gotta be fast coming in and especially going out.

BTW I'm so old I don't drink anything stronger than black weak coffie or straight Ginger Ale but they still make money whenever I visit.  

Ralph are you gonna come down to what the elite call the AM Ghetto around 3885 KHz and say hi to we lower class hams ?

Sure hope so.

 John, K1DEU

Well, I switched from fuel oil to good, old Pennsylvania anthracite for heating my house because I can't afford oil anymore. No smoke and a very faint odor in the exhaust from the coal stove. On the other hand, if I fire up the oil burner and go outside, I get a nice aroma like a bus idling at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC, minus that famous NYC urine smell. Although, being from New Jersey originally, that oil smell kinda makes me feel at home! Nothing like the aromas near Exit 13 of the famous NJ Turnpike to bring back the feel of the "Garden State"!

If I could pipe some of the hot air coming from Washington, D.C. up to my house, I wouldn't need to burn that "dirty" coal.If I eat a plate of halushki, a food I never heard of before I moved to NE PA, I probably produce more gas then the Marcellus Shale. Greenhouse gases? Anyone who believes in "global warming" has never spent a winter in Luzerne County, PA! Not surprising, since the world's first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania. It was the Drake well, drilled in Titusville in 1859.

Pres Oblama says that asthma is caused by burning coal .................the smoke and the ash is too much.
He is saying a lot of strange things lately
We're heading for $6/gal..........$5 is not enough.

Rob, the prices seem to be moving faster than the video games I play. I paid $3.89/gal last week, then $4.21/gal on Tuesday of this week. Today, as I drove by the same pumps, it had dropped to $4.11/gal for reasons that escape me. The explanations that I have heard and read go on about speculators and the declining value of the dollar, but I think someone in a penthouse office suite somewhere hired Vanna White to spin the wheel to come up with the daily price changes. The only thing I can be sure of is that the state of CT is tagging an additional 3 cents per gallon onto the rising and falling price of gasoline at the pump. How nice for them...

Rob W1AEX

When it gets over $4 / gal. I go into conservation mode.   That means 1.  Holding the RPM to 1400 which in 5th gear is around 38 mph, and 2.  Consolidating trips.  I also do as  much out of gear coasting as possible.    RPM drops to 600 out of gear when the engine is warm.  The terrain here is flat mostly so it is possible to cruse at low RPM/high gear.

Of course this pi$$es off the pinheads so I keep to four lane roads and let them go around me.  I can make an 18 gal. tank last about three weeks this way. 

Most people here have not changed their habits.   The way people drive you'd think gas was $2 / gallon.   What's amazing is they blow by me spewing money out their tailpipes but at the next light I pull up right behind them.   It actually takes me just about the same amount of time to get to and from work every day as it did when I was zooming.

thiis has been enough of a revelation that I may just keep driving like this even if gas goes down in price. 

In both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, it is illegal to coast with the gears in neutral.

   Otherwise known as "freewheeling".  

   I remember my granddads old Chebby Coupe had a lever under the dash,
   on the right side of the steering colum marked with that tag.  

   My guess it was to disengage the drive train when being towed  out of the
   ever present mud  puddles in that time frame of automotive history.

   Was a real hoot going down a straight away hill though...
  

I have to admit I do the Freewheeling thing too.  The truck gets about 18 mpg on a good day.  Between freewheeling and carefull driving I can bring that up to 22 mpg.  A short stint in city traffic drops that to under 10 though.

i wasn't clear; sorry about that.  when I said I take the car out of gear I wasn't exactly correct--I leave it in gear but push in on the clutch pedal so it isn't engaged.  I don't put it in neutral except when sitting at a red light on level ground.

I have noticed that simply putting the vehicle in neutral at a light makes a difference.  The RPM drops about 400 or so.  I don't know what damage if any that coasting along will do, but the On Board compuker says that the "instant fuel economy" runs > 99mpg when I'm doing anything over 35 in 'coast' mode.   Seems one should be able to build a engine/tranny combination that would allow it to disengage when the vehicle wasn't using the engine to maintain speed or accelerate.  It could re-engage upon brake pedal actuation to help with engine braking etc.   Makes sense since the average engine uses 30% or more of it's possible HP to overcome internal friction.

I drive an old clunker 93 Saturine. I did all that free wheeling for about a month coasting on long hills and such. I did not ever turn off the engine for fear that my steering wheel would lock up. I did not see any significant difference in MPG.

It gets about 35 MPG on trips and around 30 in city. 

When driving a manual shift I always throw it in neutral at a light or other lengthy stop. It saves wear and tear on the throw-out bearing as well as on the hip and knee joints when you don't sit there and hold down the clutch for extended periods of time. Once you develop the habit, you do it without even thinking. I find it much easier, the "lazy" way. But I wouldn't think it would make an iota of difference in idling speed or fuel economy, since idling in neutral only involves overcoming the friction of the bearings in the the gear box itself vs the the friction in the throw-out bearing when holding the clutch down. Since you have to shift all  the way back down to the bottom before taking off anyway, it makes perfect sense to go half way (to neutral) while you are stopped at the light. But still, I don't see how that would cause the idle speed to drop.

IIRC, that's called "Georgia Overdrive"  ;D  ;D


Ya know for always driving a stick, I never do that for some odd reason ???  ???
I drive a '99 Ferd Ranger with a 2.5. I get 26 or 27 mpg around town, and well over 30+ on the highway. (I do use mid grade gas) No one else that I know with one of those gets that kind of mileage. I guess I just got a light foot. With that kind of mileage and the little bit of driving I do, I havent felt the pain too badly yet. However those $45+ fill ups do cause me to roll an eyebrow!!

I think freewheeling is illegal in this state too.  They claim it is dangerous because you are relying totally on the brakes without the benefit of the engine's braking action when you take the foot off the gas.  I'm not sure if just pressing in on the clutch would be considered freewheeling and besides, it would be hard to determine if someone was driving along with the clutch in.

I remember in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, they used little Fiat taxis all over the place, and there were some long hills. You could ride the taxis for the equivalent of something like 16 cents US, so that's how everyone moved about.  The drivers not only put the cars in neutral; they turned off the ignition during the coast. When they finally arrived near the bottom of the hill, they would put it back in gear and turn on the ignition, and the engine would start back up again. Every driver I rode with during my visit there did it.

I think some cars back in the 30s and 40s had a freewheeling feature that worked simply by engaging a lever, and more accidents resulted.  But I doubt it is  really any safety hazard with to-days automotive and brake technology. Of course, with some cars, if you turn off the ignition the steering locks up - not good.

I have been known to "freewheel" in my van with automatic transmission when trying to track down line noise.  The damn thing puts out so much garbage in the radio spectrum with the engine running that it masks the noise I am trying to track down. So I'll just speed up to maximum safe speed, put it in neutral, cut off the ignition, and let it coast while listening with no RFI from the car's electronics.  Other drivers probably think I am having car trouble.

OK Rob now another tangle of webs. You will wear out the throw-out bearing on the clutch faster by constantly depressing the clutch pedal for free-wheeling.
The manual transmission in your vehicle should give you an advantage over the rest of us for increased gas mileage. If you're really innovative, install a two-speed rear end and change the gear ratios. When you're tooling along on the highway at 70MPH the RPM's would be at 1500 in your highest gear.
Fred

"When you're tooling along on the highway at 70MPH the RPM's would be at 1500 in your highest gear.
Fred"


A way to figure a gear ratio change for the best mileage is to find and/or plot the engines' torque curve (not HP), and set the gears for that peak: RPM=70 MPH (or whatever).  

This usually coincides with the highest manifold vacuum reading (gas powered rigs) whilst on the highway...but maybe not the speed you want to be going.

73DG

The old Saab cars had an automatic free wheeling system. You could set it up IIRC with a leaver inside the car. The mechanism inside the front wheels used needle bearings that were about 1/16 diameter and about two inches long. When you got done free wheeling, you just put the gas to it and the thing would re-engage with a clunking sound. As these bearings became worn, they would lock up and you had to tear the whole system apart to repair it.

I was advised by my mechanic not to use the system on my Slob. It was one of the earlier millage extenders that I know of.

  

A new mileage extender is in the works.   An engine that shuts off when you are stopped, just like with the hybrids.   It requires a different type of starter.  Think of all the gas burning while a zillion cars are stuck in traffic everyday.

Bob said:
Aint nothing new there. They've been using them on golf carts for years.  ;)

Well, I have to admit I did some checking on this, over on a car forum, and the experts agree with you Fred.  What a fool I was to doubt the wisdom of amfone.net  ;D

But that adds wear and tear on the solenoid, battery and starter motor. Plus, it becomes a PITA when the engine gets a little age on in and becomes harder to start. You can't win for losing.

I disconnected the seat switch on my riding lawn mower that killed the engine whenever I got out of the seat for any  reason, even to toss something out of the way to keep from running over it.  The instructions say never to stop the hot engine without letting it cool down at idle speed first.  Otherwise, it backfires with a loud bang.  So what am I supposed to do, sit there while the thing idles down for a couple of minutes every time I am about to run over a beer bottle that some passing driver has tossed my way, or twig that has fallen off a tree?  I also have an elastic band to hold down the stupid safety lever that stops the push mower every  time I take my hands off the handle bars.  It's even worse of a PITA to manually restart that thing every time I release my grip, and re-start by using the pull cord no less.  Plus, those pull cords are not exactly easy to replace after they wear out.

Actually, Don, that is considered good driving practice. The throw-out bearing in an automotive clutch is not designed for high duty cycle operation. It is only designed for intermittent usage.

Prior to the introduction of the ball-bearing type of throw-out bearing, a carbon thrust bearing was used in many cars, including my 1957 VW. The duty cycle rating of the carbon thrust bearing is even less, and they would rapidly wear out in the event the driver resorted to depressing the clutch unecessarily for long periods of time.

Some folks think the clutch should be replaced as frequently as the brake linings in their vehicle, but the clutch in a properly driven standard transmission car should easily last 150,000 miles or more, if properly used and not abused, etc.

73,

Bruce

My John Deere rider will self crap out only if the enjine and the whirling blades are engaged.


klc

Indeed.  I got 250,000 miles on the original clutch and throwout bearing in my old Chrysler LeBaron when my wife finally ran it over a speed bump and the subframe collapsed.  I got 225,000 on the original clutch in my 94 Chevy pickup.  The throwout bearing froze when my sister in law was driving it and she reefed on the clutch pedal so hard she broke the linkage.  I started it in gear and drove it home sans a releasable clutch.  Actually with that Chevy I rarely use the clutch, except to start out.

Key to long clutch life is easy on the throwout bearing as discussed above, no resting your foot on the clutch pedal, and clutch/gas timing such that the engine almost stalls on takeoff and accellerating/releasing the clutch simultaneously rather than revving up, then slipping the clutch.

In my experience a manual transmission is capable of much better gas mileage than an automagic.  Not only do you have no power wasted in the torque converter, you can anticipate traffic or road conditions and short shift or hold in a higher gear as necessary.

The quick start engines operate the same as the hybrids, not the solenoid driven, geared starter motor.

Man, I am glad I am not her husband.  Sounds like she could really kick some ass. ;D



I remember chewing my wife out multiple times until she finally got the message.  There was a stop light right at the top of a steep hill approaching where she worked. If she arrived at the top of the hill when the light was red, instead of putting the car in neutral and mashing on the brake pedal, she would rev the engine a little and let out the clutch just enough to hold the car immobile until the light changed. She was afraid of rolling backwards into the car behind her when taking off if she used the brakes. I replaced one clutch myself on a freezing winter day without any assistance with the transmission, before I discovered what she was doing.

Like Don I don't like the complete shutoff on my push mower that occurs if you release the safety bar so I keep a large spring clamp handy to clamp it if I need to move something.  I only use it for trimming but that is where you find the most stuff that needs to be moved, last week it was a couple of garter snakes :)

My Deere utility tractor just shuts off the PTO but leaves the engine running if you leave the seat.  You still don't want to do it accidentally since it has a brake built into the PTO that stops things in a hurry.  I don't think it is a big deal with the mid-mount deck but the rear deck I use for mowing the roadside has large and heavy swing mount blades and it wouldn't do the gear box any good to bring all of that to an immediate halt.   With the graphic illustrations of human wrapped around PTO shafts I won't defeat that safety feature.

I have gotten lazy over the years and just buy automatic transmission vehicles these days, the last standard I drove was a medium duty farm truck.  I have been very impressed with the Allison electronically controlled automatic in my pickup and I can't out think it and I certainly couldn't shift better than it does after years of driving automatic.  After using the cruise control linked automatic grade braking for the first time in the Rockies I am unlikely to buy a standard in the future (even if they do become available.).  I considered ordering my CTS with a 6 speed manual but laziness won out :)

Guys, Your mower will let you get off while running if you disengage the blades and set the parking brake. Not a good idea to bypass the seat switch. If someone were to roll over on an incline it would be like wrassling a buzzsaw!!  :o :o :o

Mike

Could possibly become a diss-ass-er  :o :o :o

I don't have any steep inclines that would likely cause mine to roll over.  That did happen to a friend, and he got a deep gash on the buttocks and severe injury to his arm and hand.  Despite repeated surgeries, he never recovered full use of the hand or got relief from the chronic pain till the day he died, over 20 years later. I don't think they even had seat switches on mowers when he had  his accident. The accident happened because of pure carelessness on his part.

A better  solution than the seat switch might be one of those gravity operated switches similar to what they use on portable electric heaters, that would disconnect the ignition if the frame of the tractor tilted beyond a certain limit from horizontal. Mine  has an electrically operated PTO clutch, so the seat switch could be rewired to cut off the PTO instead of the engine, as well.

Still, common sense and reasonable precautions are worth more than all those safety bells and whistles.

Mike,

The PTO engagement on my tractor is a separate control and I do shut it off before getting off the tractor; my earlier response was concerning some of the smaller lawn equipment that shuts the engine off.  There is an available override so that the rear PTO can be used without someone in the seat but that has to be set manually.

 I was dating a rather petite woman many years ago and she wanted to try mowing with the tractor, she was doing fine until she hit a bump lifting her off the seat and disengaging the PTO.  The tractor has ROPS and I do use the belt when mowing on slopes.  It weighs more than a small car and I don't want to be caught between part of the tractor and the ground!

Don,

They started making riding mowers so they wouldn't backup with the blades engaged ! After a large uprising by customers, they put an override on the ign. switch to bypass that safety item. Sometimes you can vote with the wallet.  ;)

Roger,

I was also talking about smaller riding mowers. I worked on riding mowers and tractors for Sears. I wasn't sure how the goverment has regulated safety on large tractors. I thought maybe they weren't as strict.

I do 60 MPH, everyone passes me, gas is still to cheap

Or too many people are too dumb. 

I used to get 3,000 miles out of the clutch in my 340 'Cuda.

I could launch a cassette from the in dash player all the way to the back seatback.

You obviously weren't doing it right.  Sidestep that clutch, man  ;D

Been there, done that!! Used to pop the glovebox open and launch all of it's contents into the lap of whoever was sitting in the passenger seat

Day-um !

Twice we have squeezed a quarter million miles out of the original clutch in cars we bought new.

Sold a 90 Corolla with 240,000 mi, clutch still hi hi FB

Sold a 95 Camry with 260,000 mi, also hi hi FB clutch OM.

Of course, neither of these cars would launch your lunch from the console to the backseat on takeoff.

But at 30mpg, it's times like this they're good commuter cars.

Paid 3.899 today for reglah. That does make driving your Hot Rod a special (and costly) treat  :'(  :'(

Dood, I run a mix of Cam2 in the Electramobile.

Hate to see what THAT's up to, next time I tank up.

http://www.bazellracefuels.com/racingfuels.htm#CAM%202

   Clutch, what's that?

   A little timing, get the revs correct  and flip the lever when right and you
   don't need no stinking clutch peddle...

   My old '37 Dodge worked fine like that but of course it took some practice
   and the shifter might have had a tooth or two end up in the housing sump...
    ;) ;) :D :D ;D ;D ;D

P,

Where can one buy that cheep gas??

klc

Picture is from early March, true, but I got straight gas (87) for 3.83 yesterday, not too far off.

That's exactly what I was doing. Just a whole lot : )

I just paid 4.19 for 89 juice yesterday.
Poor oil companies need a tax break.

You need 89 in that truck? 

I've always used 87 for everything.  There was a time when I added a water injection kit to keep the detonation down and advance the timing some more. Worked great.

See ya at Nearfest Fri/Sat, OM.

T

In many cases, 89 octane is reached by blending ethanol with 87 octane.  Since alcohol BTU content is lower you also lose MPG in the bargain so stay away from higher octane unless you have to use it.

The 3.6 V6 in my Cadillac CT has a 11.3 to 1 compression ratio and runs fine on the recommended 87 octane regular gas courtesy of the direct fuel injection system.  The manual cautions that the standard port injected version (with 10.2 compression) may require 89 octane under some conditions. 

Unfortunately in IL it is very difficult to find even 87 octane that hasn't been cut with ethanol, there is one local station that still has it.  Diesel here also contains an unknown amount of bio between 9-21% but that is less bothersome than ethanol and does have some real benefit for the injection system (as long as it isn't really cold).

With fuel being diluted with "food products" I hope that the dairy guy doesn't get revenge and start dumping used motor oil in my 2% milk :)

Day or two ago saw $4.29 here for 87.  But, a few miles west on the other side of town found 7-11 selling 87 for $4.03.
I went inside and handed over all  the cash I had on me which came to $47 and said put all that on twelve outside and it got me up to 3/4 of a full tank.  I hadn't planned on doing that but I figured I may not see $4.03 again for awhile.

Interesting ???  ??? I wonder if that is area specific?? My Ranger gets noticably better mileage on 89 than it does with the 87. Oftimes enough to warrant the extra cost.

I wonder if your Ranger needs 89 to avoid retarded timing (via an electronic knock sensor)?  Maybe some carbon buildup?  Not all 87 octane is pure gas, here is a link to a group that lists ethanol free stations but it is user built so check before you fill:  http://pure-gas.org/index.jsp

The use of ethanol to increase octane has been common throughout the midwest region for quite awhile, probably strongly correlated with the corn/ethanol lobby :(   

For awhile it was also an EPA listed oxygenate to meet specific air region/city air quality requirements but I think that has ended.  Of course the latest tomfoolery is the move to increase ethanol content from 10 to 15%.  Think of it as the EPA version of BPL, don't let science get in the way of revenue.

$4.29 regular $4.69 for super.  I drove through San Francisco on my way up north today and those were the prices. My understanding is that's down from the peak there.  When I was a kid, we called the high octane stuff ethyl.  I wonder what that was about.

From the addition of Tetra-Ethyl Lead.

73DG

Rodger,
           We get stuck with that oxygenated szht around here during the summer.
What crap!! There is a noticable drop in fuel economy with that junk! ! ! ! !

"This fuel has been oxygenated to reduce emissions" B.S.! ! ! ! ! It has been oxygenated to reduce the thickness of your wallet!!

I found 89 gives me better mileage and less cents per mile. Also runs better.
91 runs even better but costs more cents per mile so 89 gives me best economy.

That has pretty much been the case here as well.

If you go to Iowa you find the 89 is 10 to 20 cents less / gallon than the 87.   turns out it is subsidized -- has something to do with corn gasohol.  Lotta corn in Iowa.

A little far to drive, just for a fillup  ;D  ;D

$3.99 for 87 this morning in Northern Ohio.
We got us an ol' fashion gas war going on. None of the stations wanna be the first to put $4.00 on 87.

What kind of gas mileage do you get with your CTS, Rodger?  Last trip I took to Delphi (part highway, part windy mountain road) I got about 30 MPG with mine; 3.6L/6 speed manual.  With $9.50/gal gas here I don't drive the Land Rover much  ;D

I paid $4.11/gallon this morning for 87 octane here on Long Island, Buddly. And that is for cash. My wife and I stopped using the credit card for gasoline purchases a few months ago, as the filling stations in this area charge an extra $0.10/gallon for credit card sales. Ten cents/gallon adds up over time, and I won't give the service station the satisfaction of making an extra dime per gallon off of me just for a credit card transaction. ;)

And I passed by one station after filling up that was charging $4.59/gallon for 87 octane fuel. My guess is that the filling station where I gassed up today will be charging $4.59 for 87 in the not too distant future.

It's still a bargain compared to paying $9.50/gallon in Greece. My guess is the Greeks tax the hell out of gasoline, especially considering the severe economic conditions they are currently experiencing.

73,

Bruce

JN,

You beat me on MPG but I still have you beat on MPD (miles per dollar) :) 

I average 25-26 long term on a roughly 60% highway 40% urban driving cycle.  Your manual probably helps and my heavy right foot doesn't.  For some reason in Bloomington/Normal many people treat the left lanes as the slow lanes so maneuvering is necessary.  There are also many "opportunities" in the Spring to pass agricultural traffic on the two lane rural roads.

Long highway driving yields around 28 which is still better than the 20 MPG my diesel pickup gets on long trips-especially now that diesel is more expensive than gasoline.

Even with the economy in the tank as it still is, the price of fuel is going sky high, so what can we expect in the unlikely event the economy and employment ever return to what we think of as "normal"? Remember, we saw $4/gallon a few years ago, then the price plummeted with the economic crash. Despite the situation in the middle east, the real driving force behind the present increase is world-wide demand, as China (and India, too) continue to crawl out of the stone age. China is running its heavy construction equipment full blast while rapidly expanding their fleet of trucks to haul all the stuff, and at the same time, more and more Chinese are able to afford personal cars.  N. America and W. Europe will increasingly have to share oil and other natural resources with the rest of the world, particularly East Asia, and this will drive prices only in one direction: up.

Petrol was $1.50/Litre here in VK7 (equal to $5.68/ US Gall) over the Easter period.
The last time we had high fuel prices it was because our oil came from the Asian Basin, this time it is because it comes from the Middle East.

Here's a 3 year chart for the nymex front month unleaded wholesale gasoline price.  Underneath this same chart is the S&P 500, you could infer many things, including "but it's different this time".  :-\
You would have to add your states tax and Federal tax for an aproximate retail price.
here in NY it's about 69 cents for taxes on top of wholesale price.

Symbol = $GASO
http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$GASO&p=D&yr=3&mn=0&dy=0&id=

Stockcharts won't link the exact chart, but you get the idea....

And here you can find some retail price charts and info from Gasbuddy....

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?time=24

Could be a long hot Summer....

I was thinking about this and ham radio yesterday.  There's a hamfest Sunday about an hour drive from me and I decided to skip it this year and one of the reasons (besides not having any spare cash) is that I'd probably burn around 4 gal. getting there and home and that would be over sixteen bucks just for gas to go spend money I don't have.

Then I thought about all the small ham businesses--there are small mom and pop niche businesses in ham radio that do almost all of their selling by dragging a trailer to hamfests on weekends and setting up to make badges, embroider hats, sell parts, special materials and so on.   I bet many of these go under because it is just going to be too costly to drag the trailer to the fest.  In fact, there are all kinds of craft fairs and hobby fests, not just ham radio, that will probably go under.  Last time it peaked here at $4.25 but dropped back down in a few weeks.  This time, I am starting to think we're going to be in this for a while. 

If you go to a fest and see the tube guy, the battery guy, the coax guy etc. you should probably stock up because you may not see them for much longer.

Gas prices seem to have dropped significantly as of today- as low as $3.59/gal  for 87 octane in Westerly, RI!  Oddly enough, just over the border in CT, 87 octane was still way over $4/gal last night.

Yeah, one of the most expensive stations on my route in Chesterfield and has been accused of gouging was down to 4.09 this afternoon, about a 20 cent drop in the last 4 days.

No drop in price here in Central Verminmont.

Still steadily rising.

Up to $4.03 now.


Propane delivery yesterday was $5.10 /gal.

87 Octane $3.49/gal in Northern Ohio this morning!

You have to pay your dues. They will increase a little more than go down in about another month.
Most stations near my little city in Western Pa. still $3.99. Near Ohio $4 something. And just a couple in town just dropped to $3.89

I just drove the Alcan hiway...$1.44/ litre in BC. and the Yukon..$4.45/us gal in Tok, AK and $4.14 US GAL  in Anchorage...I hear it is over $5 gal in Naknek...Alaskan summer ale is $8.50 for a 36 ounce pitcher....life is tough....

Didn't read every thread so this might have been mentioned earlier, but according to CNN (yeah, I know.) gas is going for US equivalent of twelve cents a gallon in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. I would still rather live here though. Can't afford to drive much, but I would rather live here.