Demand for E-85 has barely gone up in the past eight years. The production of E-85 still under total capacity, by nearly half a billion gallons. When your talking about only six billion gallons a year, less than the total amount of liquid sweeteners consumed every year in America, there’s some leeway for that extra production. Demand by far is not stripping out supply.

Corn and soybeans are actually very high in demand, and are meeting up with total supply, but in reality soybean prices have been hitting record all time lows in the past year. Soybean stocks are actually increasing.

If you look at the big picture, you have to wonder however why these large companies chose soybean and corn. It’s another product that they can inflate, and theres no reason why it should be in the $3.00 range. Even when ethanol production was at an eighth of where it was now and supplies were similar in the 70′s and 80′s (no, I understand there wasn’t much of it around, but there was however a demand that did meet supply) it wasn’t nearly as much as it currently is; even adjusted for inflation.

@Victor,
Even FOX is critical of the Iraq war. You know somethings up when a conservative news outlet criticizes a conservative government. I’d like to nominate John McEnroe for president.

The reason why France and Germany so vehemently opposed invading on WMD grounds is because the missile delivery systems were made by both France and Germany. This is what you call “eating out of both troughs.” It’s considered politically heinous.

Taxes in US generally on lower scale of world countries. Could be less, but we have congress to thank for that. They are on the front line of spending for their pet projects. Most presidents did not show their penchant for spending (except Kennedy), but congress is full of it. And to be honest, any congress either democratic of republican.

The French revolted once, they can do it again. Take a hint people in Europe – when the government starts taking more than half your earnings, it’s time to do something nasty.

Just out of curiosity… why do you always insert something like ,”[1:48 pm not am]” at the end of all your posts??? I’m assuming you’re somewhere in the China/Singapore/Western Australia region… but still, it’s just a little odd in an OCD kind of way… LLN only timestamps on Eastern Standard/DS time probably because that’s where their server is.

That is the most ignorant comment I think I have heard all week. Because the US Government is [seemingly] not out taxing the hell out of people to the point wherein you are giving away nearly half of your earnings, it is “irresponsible” to this jackarse. The US Government wastes enough money as it is and does not need anymore to go blow on useless projects… see Iraq and Afgan. Also, what clowns such as the aforementioned person need to consider when discussing the “low” state of US taxes is that the US has a lot more people to tax therefore they can be spread out a little. Furthermore, you also have to factor that Americans are taxed at the Federal, State, and Local/City level… so taxes are FAR from low. From your paychek you have a Federal Income Tax, a State Income Tax, the Social Security Tax and t/Medicare Tax… and owing property brings on more taxes and so does buying goods and services.. hell, the taxes on a cellphone bill literally take up half a page. The US Federal and State Governments tax the hell out of people, they just spread it out so that the stick they are shoving up your arse hurts just a little less. [1.48 pm not am]

It’s a matter of perspective. To me, gas prices (and for that matter, taxes in general) in the US have always been irresponsively low. Look at what Europeans were driving in the fifties. Untill this day, the difference in average vehicle weight and engine power remain staggering.

What you say makes me appreciate what the economic downturn in the US means to ordinary people. The Dutch economy has seen some very good years, contrary to the US economy.

All that however, can’t undo the cultural rivalry between Europe and the US. Most Europeans look at the US with a mixture of admiration and resentment. Some values we share, some we firmly don’t. (could go on a bit on this…)

But seriously… I loathe people who send that shit to my email… The last thing I want is to have to see it in the comments section of sites like this.

If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!

If it goes one level further, you guessed it….. THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That’s all!

(If you don’t understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people…. Well, let’s face it, you just aren’t a mathematician. But I am, so trust me on this one.

continued

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all in. I suggest that we not buy from Esso and Shell UNTIL 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!

I’ll bet you didn’t think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference

With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.

How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can’t just stop buying gas.

But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all get together to force a price war.

Here’s the idea: For the rest of this year, DON’T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies ESSO and Shell.

If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Esso and Shell gas buyers. It’s really simple to do! Now, don’t wimp out on me at this point…keep reading and I’ll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

That is the Canadian version… Americans should boycott Exon and BP

Besides… I also thought “white trash” only bought domestic makes… strange how a good deal of those SUVs are imports. Hmm…?

You’re a real crusader, arent you? I agree that people who bought SUV’s in the last few years are missing a wheel, however.

Present stats show demand is outstripping supply globally … so prices rise. Granted, supplies are being restricted by the Middle East to only meet deman but those machinations are another conversation. As long as the balance exists as it does, things will not get better.

Again, watch what happens in the next 30 days, it’s not over … and what will happen when oil eventually hits $200+? This isn’t a game or a dream … adapt or suffer. Buy gold. The US dollar will resume its freefall to below .70 USDX. Things will get MUCH worse. Complaining will not change anything. Investing to offset pain will change everything. Take control of what you can and prosper.

But like I said earlier, what gets me really worked up is about half of the price at the pump in Europe is taxes. You have your first taxes on petrol and diesel, then you have value added tax, and then your taxed at the pump once again. The UK’s taxes are 188% on fuel, for about 5$ worth of taxes on your fuel. You could be experiencing prices just about 30 cents higher than ours with similar taxes! And you should be able to have lower priced diesel… diesel comes to Europe through America, and Petrol comes to America through Europe (excess refineries), but taxes have defined your prices once again.

I wonder when you guys will stand up to what your politicians are doing, not to say you guys are liking it over there, but seems to me that no intolerance has really grown since Hitler…

Rene Curry- That’s also very true, but even before they were merged, they didn’t have much incentive. They more or less worked, and still do as a big co-op group.

“Europe has no more solutions other than taxing the hell out of things for penalties. Hell, what do you not have a penalty on?”

So true, they even have a TV tax… that is right, a tax for owning a TV.

“”Using a television without an appropriate licence is a criminal offence. Every day we catch an average of 1,200 people using a TV without a licence. There is no valid excuse for using a television and not having a TV Licence, but some people still try – sometimes with the most ridiculous stories ever heard. Our detection equipment will track down your TV. The fact that our enquiry officers are now so well equipped with the latest technology means that there is virtually no way to avoid detection.”
– from the official website of the British Television Licensing Authority, May 2003″

This took away competition. They have no incentive to increase capacity or take market share. They are all sitting in their boardrooms with the same strategy, sit on their hands and keep supplies tight.

I got sucked in for $4.26 the other day here in GA. Checked some gas website right afterwards and found $3.89 in the same area for 93 octane. I don’t see gas getting cheaper. Time to invest in oil?

for the guys beliving we pay such prices since years… as I started driving in the good old days of the DMark one liter petrol was under 1,- DM… less than 45-50cent Euro, today ~20 years later I pay 3 to 4 times as much… the fuel cost have exploded the last two years… now they are completely crazy with price jumps of 10cent/liter up and down within 24hours..

Anyway – I’ve already come to the conclusion that we’re only getting some of what we deserve for having elected some retarded cowboy, not once… but twice. Hopefully this will leave us with a bitter enough recollection to prevent us from ever doing it again.

1. Increase the yield on a barrel of oil converting to gasoline.
2. Increase allocation efficiencies by only offering 3 blends of gas – regular, plus and premium instead of reformulated gas.
3. Reducing fuel overall fuel consumption by switching to more efficient regular fuel blends instead of oxygenated fuels, which reduce fuel efficiency by as much as 10 percent per tankful.
4. Increase refinery capacity by reducing downtime required for switchovers.

Of course, the oil companies wouldn’t like these ideas since it would force them to charge less and encourage competition in the refining industry again.

The enviro-green wackos won’t like it either since it will reduce the cost of driving.

The same thing needs to be done for diesel except that they also need to repeal the EPA Tier 2 Bin 5 requirements for diesel passenger car emissions and move to a standard that is more attainable. Doing so will allow us to use a less refined diesel which takes less energy to refine and clean. According to a wikipedia article, diesel costs 25 cents more than it would otherwise.

Of course, with the demonrats in charge, I expect nothing to get done.

I need to badly rephrase that statement. No, oil companies do not have some of the highest profit margins per barrel of oil sold, but make fairly large profits on every barrel of oil they sell. Yes, that’s because they sell a lot of oil, but recently those fairly set profit margins on a barrel of oil have moved up and down. Overall profits however have been significantly up.

Speculating has been driving the price of oil up for sure, but regardless, 39 cents in one month? And if that’s so, why aren’t prices dropping further, as speculation decreases? Even further, I find it odd they have yet to find faults with their system of bidding more and more on oil.

Chinese diesel consumption has been on the rise, but from what I have read from currently to 2004, China has always been behind the United States in terms of diesel consumption for vehicles. Despite China using a good four or five times more diesel fuel then a few years ago, they still remain behind the U.S., which in comparison to Europe doesn’t consume to much diesel in terms of vehicles.

The U.S. consumes approximately 50 billion gallons of diesel each year. I’ve had a ditsy time trying to find figures on total consumption of diesel in China, but all sources point at overall consumption being about 30 billion gallons of petrol per year. Note that as of now, China is consuming more petrol than diesel, and I’ll leave you to find that figure for diesel. China has increased oil production by about 1.8 million barrels a day since 1970.

And truckers are going out of business indeed, very much so because of diesel prices. I’m curious where you came up with that, and although that may hold some truth, an increase in diesel prices of 42% over a few weeks is hitting hard. It especially hits independent truckers with small contractors. For every 10 cent increase in prices, 1,000 trucking businesses go broke nationwide. With that 42% increase comes an overall 6% decrease in profits just by fuel alone for a truck that consumes 600 gallons of diesel, and most truckers don’t make that much, not to say some have great salaries but not many.

And you don’t need to get so defensive; I was simply asking if anybody knew of any petitions going on at the current moment. As a matter of fact, truckers are on petition as we talk right now, they’ve been “snarling” traffic since late March. The American Truckers Association is calling for President Bush to decrease miles per hour to 65 and release some oil from reserves. Now, I don’t know how much a plan like that would help, but just an example.

Aside from that, I don’t have much to petition; I’ve driven quite a few cars, but usually ride my bike 4 or 5 miles a day; not a long commute. Trucks here for anything that I can’t carry in the Taurus station wagon, and that’s mostly for usual commutes… and great at camping.

1> The refineries are indeed working at full capacity. Refinery Utilization in the US is at 89% which is considered “full capacity”. At any given time, 10-15% of refinery capacity is down for changeover, maintenance, any number of reasons. To combat higher prices we ran our refineries at 90-95% for the past 5 years. That is a completely unsustainable thing to do; we neglected maintenance in order to keep production up. A new refinery hasn’t been built in the US in THIRTY YEARS. What worked 30 years ago, isn’t cutting it anymore.

2> The oil companies absolutely DO NOT have “the highest profit margins”. Not even close. As a matter of fact, oil companies have BELOW AVERAGE profit margins for major all companies — their margins are only A THIRD of what most major tech companies run at for example. The reason they make so friggin’ much money is because they SELL so much product. When you sell a TRILLION dollars worth of stuff, making a $100B in profit shouldn’t be unexpected in the least.

3> Demand for oil, or anything that people “need”, doesn’t have to go up much at all to get a large increase in price. All it takes is one person showing up who wants it a little more than you. If there’s nothing more for them to get, then they’re going to have to buy what it was that you wanted to buy. They offer a little more to secure the supply, you counter with a little higher offer, they counter with a higher one, you counter back. You’re both going to keep going higher until it reaches a point you just don’t think it’s worth it to go any higher. And that’s exactly what the speculators do on the markets every single day.

4> Truckers aren’t out of a job because of diesel prices. They’re out of a job because there’s nothing for them to move. Stuff isn’t being made and piling up in a warehouse for want of a truck to move it. There just isn’t enough stuff being made (or brought in) to employ all the truckers. Now, you CAN argue that the higher gas prices have caused people to buy less stuff, which means less stuff needs to be moved.

5> China IS most definitely consuming “that much diesel”. China is purchasing 20 PERCENT more crude oil this year than last. Diesel in particular is up a STAGGERING amount, with imports of refined diesel being up TEN-FOLD year-over-year. It’s mind-blowing demand growth for gasoline is only offset by its demand for diesel which is growing THREE TIMES faster. That’s an incredibly MASSIVE growth in a market that is extremely supply-constrained (refined oil products). Diesel fuel growth is so tight in China that it actually has has to resort to rationing it out in an attempt to curb the growth. The demand is growing faster than China’s ability to refine or buy it.

6> How do you plan on “petitioning” oil companies? Plan on not driving to work? To get food? I think it’s safe to say that a large portion of people are ALREADY “campaigning” by limiting their travel to only what’s necessary. You’re not gonna get a whole lot better than that.

jayjc08, read something on the subject before pontificating. World wide oil production either already peaked or will peak within very short period of time (you can look up specific dates in Economist). In US it peaked 40 years ago. Since then country imports 70% of it’s oil/ BTW, our own oil is not all that great and out existing refineries are not tuned for refining it. Our domestic oil is more profitable to sell to Japan then refine in US.