I filled up at three places in the last two weeks in California — Los Angeles, Bakersfield, and Santa Maria. The price per gallon of regular gas was $4.25, $4.10, and $4.06, and I had to wait in line for the chance to buy it. Gasoline at the pump has risen 67 percent since inauguration day 2009, although it has just been announced that the United States has the largest reserves of recoverable fossil fuels in the world (gas, oil, coal, etc.).
This is a crisis in the making, and at some point the proverbial people are going to put it all together — past statements from President Obama and Secretary of Energy Chu on the desirability of soaring gasoline and electricity prices; the entire crony-capitalism nexus between green subsidies/regulations and corporations favored by the administration; and over two years of tough hands-off policies from known sources of fuel in Alaska, the West, and offshore fields — and then make the logical conclusions.
And we have not yet arrived at either the peak summer driving season, the high-water mark of Middle East unrest, or a real economic recovery that might see greater global use of gas and oil. In theory, $5 or $6 a gallon gas is easily imaginable and might come sooner than we think.
We are going to have to be reassured by the administration that high gasoline and electricity prices are not seen any longer as positive incentives for a future of heavily subsidized wind and solar power, carbon reduction in lieu of stalled cap-and-trade, and high-speed rail. Talking about inflating our tires, tuning up our cars, and not being able to drill our way of the crisis simply is not going to convince the public that anyone in this administration knows or cares about skyrocketing energy prices or their role in a Carter-like inflation in the making.
Who cares, apparently, a long as Immelt makes out like a bandit?
Humbug.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseVictor, Victor, Victor. You complain of having to fill up ONE car. BHO has to fill up a fleet of SUVs so he can get an escort to Andrews AFB and hop on his 747 to jet off to his golf games and multiple vacations. Do you realize how much that is costing him??
Wait just a minute! You and I are paying for all that as well as my fill up at the Stop and Rob Grab & Go too!! Whoa. (Maybe when folk understand that we are being robbed blind by this bunch they will listen to VDH.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think the quote was: "my policies will necessarily cause energy prices to skyrocket." That will be a better ad in 2012 than it was in 2008.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow does this square with what I'm reading on CNBC's site here: External Link
Last I checked, most cars don't run on natural gas and nothing's been transported using coal as a direct power source in decades, so it's kind of disingenuous lumping all three together under the rubric of complaining about gas prices at the pump.
Finally, environmental costs (whatever they may be) aside, the fossil fuels will eventually run out. We need some kind of replacement in place (bearing in mind that changing the infrastructure of energy production and delivery is a task that will take decades) before that happens.
This posting seems to be advocating for burning through whatever assets we have and then hoping for the best. Is such short-term thinking really conservative?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGeoff, we have over a 100 years supply of natural gas and even more coal in the 48 states alone. Oil is the only scarce fossil fuel domestically, and if we ever figured out oil shale we would have over 100 years supply of that too.
The only way our energy resources are going to dry up domestically is if we pursue our current policy. And you know, I personally think in 100 years there will be a more feasible technology than wind and solar where the energy density is so low it can never be feasible on a large scale.
Greens claim that they are just looking at the science. Well, the fundamental science behind wind and solar says they can never be feasible on a large scale.
Then you come to transportation. Transportation necessarily requires a high energy density. You can't put enough solar panels on a car to make it go anywhere, at least cars that carry more than 1 100lb adult that isn't lying prone and unable to move.
We actually only use oil in this country for manufacturing (making plastics, etc.) and transportation. If we wanted to get off oil we wouldn't invest in wind and solar, we would invest in battery technology.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGeoff, all energy prices are going up, not just oil. It's just that gasoline is the most visible.
While it is true that fossil fuels will run out some day, that day is centuries in the future.
400 to 500 for oil and gas, several thousand for coal.
Trying to figure out what needs to be done in that far off day is a fools errand. We have no ideas what the needs of our great great great great great great great great great great great great grandrildren will be, much less the technologies they will have available to them.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDo we know that Obama is against hyperinflation, or is it another tool to bring on a revolution he wants?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGeoff G ...
actually coal to oil technology has existed for 60 years and is economically viable at current oil prices ...
also more and more local buses are using NG as fuel ...
agreed not many actual commuter cars use natural gas ... but the report he cited pointd out that our real oil reserves are several times higher than the "proven reserves" nonsense used by Presentdent Obama and his crew ...
of course all of these sources will eventually run out ... in 200 - 300 years ... we have been using oil for fuel for less than 100 years ...
so yes, we will eventually need to have widespread electric cars ... when you can show that it is profitable, a better auto battery will be invented.
Until then good luck ... just because the Feds pay for research doesn't make it happen ... until someone can become a billionaire very few inventors will make the effort ... like almost everything "invented" in the last 200 years it will be done by men and women not working for the government ...
taking your future fears to their logical if adsurd conclusions the only "permanent" energy sources are: solar and ... actually nothing ... wind and hydro are just 2nd level forms of solar power ...
so in the end its solar for everything after we run out of oil, coal, gas and radioactive isotopes ...
in 500 years we may be in trouble and when I say we I mean humans not you and me ...
we can't face a fiscal crisis in Social Security today that will effect your children but you want to worry about the energy needs of your great to the 10th power grand children ... try alittle triage on your list to things to worry about ...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGeoff G. One: Do not list CNBC as a reference for anything having to do with science, fuel or the economy! CNBC's primary function is to tout stories that will move the market, usually in favor of some "expert" who has a vested interest in the impact a particular story will have on the investing public, all to the benefit of his/her portfolio. The referenced article is by an "economist" not a geologist. Further it reads like a textbook from "Save the Earth", Greenpeace and other hard case enviro-nuts. We have a scientifically illiterate population with huge numbers of folk who are unable to logically reason and reach a fact based conclusion. Stories like the CNBC story are strong on sensationalism, yet factual backup for the conclusion is absent.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou complain about high gas prices at the same exact time that you complain about fuel economy standards, and you choose to live in the 2nd most expensive energy market in the nation.
There is literally nobody in America less qualified to whine about gas prices than you, Vic.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf gas is $6 or $7 per gallon on November 6, 2012, President Obama is a one-termer, guaranteed. At 100 billion gallons of gas consumed per year, the two or three hundred billion this will have cost us will have been money well spent.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen President Obama is done, we'll fondly look back on the Carter years as the good old days.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't mean to pick on Geoff, but let me throw another scenario out there.
Say we know for certain that in 500 years a giant comet will obliterate the earth. Should we start building an ark tomorrow?
No, of course not. The solution would be drive economic growth and create a society that is rich, productive and make space technologies a priority. 425 years from now when our descendants really had to start dealing with the situation, they would hopefully be in a technological position to deal with it.
Same thing with fossil fuels. The best way to be prepared for when they run out is to use them to drive economic progress so that when they begin to become scarce, our descendants (as opposed to the Saudi's or Chinese) will be in the best position to deal with it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOn a related note, have you seen today's (3/29) Dilbert?
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No. Geoff is specifically and completely wrong about oil: We will NEVER run out of oil, or natural gas, or coal---as we never run out of any resource, but simply replace and thus stop using any given resource. The price becomes too high relative to new resources that can take the place of an old resource, and use is either restricted to much reduced uses or eliminated altogether. We never run out--we use something better and cheaper.
But the only way this happens rationally and affordably is through free prices and unobstructed liberty to change. NEVER through subsidized substitutes that governments pay rent-seekers to produce. Those fail universally.
We will never replace oil with some government-subsidized idea of a replacement. And we will never run out. Ever.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThanks everyone for the responses.
I'll say right off the bat that I'm well aware of the limitations of wind and solar. While they do have their place, they'll probably never be anything more than niche providers, perhaps fairly large niches, but certainly nothing on the order of what coal is to us today.
My own view is that, recent events in Japan notwithstanding, nuclear fission is probably the energy source of the future. I've not read much on the question of energy supplies, but what I have read indicates we are likely sitting on thousands of years worth of fuel versus mere decades.
I'm not as sanguine as MarkW and DorsaiGuy that supplies of economically extractable fossil fuels will be available for centuries to come. My reading on the subject would place him at the far optimistic end of estimates (with the link I cited at the more pessimistic end).
tiredturtle's point regarding CNBC as a source for news is well taken. I generally take any story from any media source with a grain of salt. However, the fact that the loss of Libya's relatively small contribution to global oil supplies would produce such a spike in price even while demand remains soft due to the ongoing global recession indicates that supplies are pretty tight already.
To Dave From Tampa, I'd say that if we knew a cataclysm would occur in 500 years' time, it might be worth our while to start putting some thought towards avoiding it now. And if we knew it would hit sometime in the next 500 years (i.e. maybe 50 years, maybe 100 years, perhaps 500), then maybe our planning ought to be bumped up a little.
Triage is all well and good and there are lots of problems that require our attention out there but first I would say that our nation does have the ability to work on a lot of problems in parallel, and second I'd say that the end of cheap and abundant energy without another source to replace would be catastrophic to civilization as a whole in a way that makes social security look positively trivial.
Finally, I'll just note that even if we did have the ability to ramp up domestic oil production, it's still in our national interest to move global demand away from using oil as an energy source, if only to take a huge economic weapon out of the hands of the Saudis, Iranians, Russians and others. It's true that increasing American supplies would help with this, but ultimately, the best way out of that particular foreign policy problem is to remove the need for oil altogether.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBatDad: Are you actually saying that unless a person moves to a state with lower gas taxes, they have no right to complain about gas prices?
Are you that desperate for any excuse to shut down those who say what you don't want to hear?
As to CAFE saving gas, it's been proven over and over again that it doesn't. Beyond that, is your answer to everything more govt control? Or is that just your role here?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGeoffG: EVen if there were only 100 years left of oil, it would not make sense to start panicing now. It certainly would not make sense to make oil more expensive now in order to prevent it from becoming more expensive later.
The only solution is to allow the free market to function.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThanks for the article...Nearly every single coversation around here (West Central Illinois) eventually gets to the price of gasoline. In my opinion, there should be articles every day on this topic.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI have read that in the oil shale areas of Western Colorado, SW Wyoming & NE Utah contains upto 4 trillion barrels of oil. That is enough to supply the USA with oil for the next 400 years at current rates of consumption.
That should give us enough time to develop alternate forms of energy.
Also, extracting that oil would provide jobs for Americans right now. Now just for the oil field workers but also jobs to build the roads into that area, and buildings to house the workers and stores to support them. In addition, the ripple effects would include more jobs for the people at the grocery stores, gas stations, resturants, bars, etc to support the workers.
And don't forget the ripple effect from the spending resulting from the workers getting paid and spending their money -- plus the taxes on income and spending.
As for the environemental impact on the area -- well, I believe that area is already a desert so I would guess the impact would be minimal.
Plus all the revenue generated would remain with the US economy. We could stop sending money to Saudi Arabia and other places who, in-turn, use that to fund attacks against our country.
Those countries would probably wither and die and/or revert to their tribal ways they had before they began to reap the wealth lying underneath their feet, which they did not discover nor develop. It was Westerners (Americans and Brits) that developed and built the infrastructure in their countries (and Westerners still mostly operate their oil industry under the auspices of the nationalized oil companies).
Oh wait, I forgot.
The only place where the Democrats want to drill is in your wallet.
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