There IS Good Economic News!
August 4, 2011, Submitted by: Ken Tweet
Oil Prices are down!
As of this post date, this week the stock market has been walloped with tremendous losses, while today alone the Dow has sunk 500 points, the most since December, 2008. Instead of posting on the bad news of it all (and there is much bad news…), I thought I would glean out a bit of good news instead.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Crude oil prices plunged to a year-to-date low Thursday as a U.S. dollar rally and strains on global growth pressured futures contracts to under $90.
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Crude-oil futures on Thursday dropped 5.8% to their lowest settlement since mid-February, as the equity markets sold off sharply, casting a pall on prospects for oil consumption.
(Reuters) — U.S. crude futures fell $4 on Thursday, dropping briefly below $88 a barrel after earlier pushing below key technical support at the June low as concerns about economic slowing pressured oil and equities prices sharply lower.
NEW YORK, Aug 4 (Reuters) – U.S. crude futures slipped on Thursday as worries about slowing economies in debt-laden Europe and the United States and rising crude and refined products stockpiles weighed on oil prices.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) — “Today the cavalry finally came in the form of lower oil prices,” Jim Cramer told his “Mad Money” TV show viewers Wednesday, as he opined on the markets mid-day rally off its lows. Cramer said there’s still a lot of bad news out there, including a pathetic debt deal, bad manufacturing numbers, slowing personal spending numbers and of course, the parade of horrible news from Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal. But even all that bad news could not undo oil falling below $93 a barrel, something even the president wasn’t able to accomplish by releasing tons of oil from the strategic reserves, he said.
Lower oil prices translate to lower gasoline prices, lower costs to manufacture, and lower ‘ripple-through’ of costs passed on to consumers.
Although Wall Street has been hammered this week, reminiscent of 2008, when looking for a ‘bright side’, unless you’ve invested in Gold and Silver, the good news is that oil prices are down. Now let’s see if this translates to gasoline prices dropping at the pumps – it should…
Maybe it’s time to buy that SUV or pickup truck you’ve always wanted… 
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The real answer to lower oil prices is to cut the demand for the oil. The fact is that oil has a finite point in which it will run out or at least go critically low enough that the next world war will be fought over the remaining amounts. Lower gasoline prices is exactly counterproductive to conserving what is left until some alternative energy source is found. It is quite sad that people go through this cycle of “wasting” this resource when the prices go down rather than learning from from the past and making vechicles much more fuel efficient.
Not only does more oil use QUICKEN the end, but it adds more pollution to the atmosphere which adds to more cancer deaths to those that cannot live outside pollution zones. The climate is going to react in ugly ways to the increase carbons in the air in very negative ways, like droughts and floods that are going to cost a whole bunch. Cheaper manufacturing usually benefits all those countries that employ slave labor that have stolen good jobs from the United States. Besides this the oil producing countries are not going to allow too much price drop before cutting back so much it will create all sorts of artifical shortages and drive the price right back up. Cramer fails to look at the broader picture on long term misery.
There is no good news except that people will temporarily experience some gas price drops, but so what if they do not have anyplace to go with a full tank of gas because they do not have a job to go to. Economy recovery and good news my foot, things stink and the stench is just becoming that much more unbearable to sniff in each day.
Hey :be informed”
What would you think I should put in my cars fuel tank?
This is the same crap like NoObama (and the greens) say for Americans to use windmills or solar power panels. Well, you can’t drive your car with these things. Also ,a leftist site said for people to use skateboards or bikes, so you can figure out their age by that statement.
There is NO shortaqe of oil or gasoline. The past few months, theres been reports of new oil finds across North America. The USGS has reports out that state that there is more oil under NOrth Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming than there is in all of Saudi Arabia! The big, rich oil companies won’t touch it for fear the price would drop to $25 a barrel. Plus Canada has found more sand oil fields-enough to supply all of North America for the next 100 to 200 years ,depending on useage. And anyways, in 200 years there will probably be another form of transporation (unless there is a nuclear war or something).
The USA exports more oil than it imports. You know the Alaskan oil fields-most of that oil goes to JAPAN!-because it is cleaner burning and they will pay more than the going rate for it.
It’s the greedy New York Speculators that are driving up the price of oil and gasoline-so they can make 100′s of millions in profits and live in 25 million dollar townhouses in New York City and spend the rest on cocaine! ,Since they are the only ones who can afford it!
I think if they take control of oil contracts, then they should have to take delivery of it too!! If that happened, they would drop those oil contracts and oil would drop to $25.00 a barrel. Have you ever checked what gasoline sells for at the gas stations in Saudi Arabia? Depending on what day you look, its been 25 cents, and some of the other oil countries, 35 cents, 50 cents a gallon!
Companies like Exxon should not be allowed to make $300 billion dollars. With that kind of money comes a lot of power! Just imagine if oil trippled in price-Exxon would make a trillion dollars! With that kind of money they could equipt an army and take over America! I say nationalize all oil-gasoline companies in America now and use the profits to pay off the national debt and to fix up America-highways, bridges, water pipes, the National Parks, etc, and this alone would put a lot of people to work.
The oil companies feed the newspapers these lies about oil almost gone and the newspapers report it as fact just to have headlines and to sell papers and to scare the public!
And gasoline in my area actually went up this past week in price. It was 3.45 and jumped up to 3.51 to 3.79 at some stations. Thats why the ecomony is slow. People have to divert their money to pay for gasoline to drive to work. So no going out to restaurants, no movies, cut back on groceries, cut back on perscriptions, no buying a new shirt or pants-because all this money must be put into the gas tank, and it’s stupid, greedy New York city speculators fault. During WW2, they couldn’t fool around with the price of oil or gasoline, or they would be put in jail!
@ lone survivalist. Big problems with the oil in North America that it is locked away in tar sands which require massive amounts of water and energy to extract it. There is all sorts of what is called bottle brushing oil fields all over Saudi Arabia which indicates that they are scrapping the bottle of the barrel. Practically all oil reserves in the world, except for the Caspian Sea region are in a downward slope. This is why there is such an interest in the Iranian and ex Soviet states for the remaining oil.
The conspiracy theory is one I have also thought about but has flaws in that the United States gets 70% of their oil from other countries. If there was that much oil the oil companies that are all about greed would be mining the living hell out of the oil fields in the mountain regions because they would be able to sell it right here. The oil has been in a downward spiral since about 1970.
Since the 1980′s there has been if anything an exaggeration of the actual oil that OPEC countries state they actually have to look more important and control prices.
Even IF there was a way of getting oil out of the oil sands cheaply and could keep up with demand, there is the issue of damage to the environment. I lived in an area that was so polluted that I had to wash smog stains off the fruit trees to keep the trees alive. People must find some other way to transport themselves rather than hydrocarbons. I wish I had an answer to this. Everyone still has to fill up their cars to go and pay higher prices, and this cycle is soon to end because peak oil has probably been reached. The extreme interest in capturing the Caspian Sea region would not be so important to the U.S. government if there was the oil they needed over here.
There is an old saying that the country that can propel their armies will eventually win the war. Case in point the Germans and Japanese in WW2. The U.S. knows that the only excess oil is where they are trying to set up bases. It is all about oil.
@Bee, and Lone S…, You are arguing the same issues… Not unlike how a coin has two sides but remains one coin. “Bee” ( Like myself…” ) repeats generic and slightly changing stats. to keep in the foreground of the movement of inevitable change. The Truth of life… “L.S.”, You too, are on the track with your thoughts. ( I personally like the “Nobama” insert. ) Wake the sleepers… Keep up the dialogue, and See how your thoughts are in line. The reason for the continued repetition, with the evolution of disbursement, is that it is a rare bird that goes back to the archives to read what has been said. Hence, First keep the debate progressing as semantics are subtle. Second read between the lines as you really are saying the same things, you just don’t have “The Floor” for long enough to come full circle… We try to keep it short , and we try to keep it up to date. That is really the most important function of the on going process. I’m glad to see you both inputting and it makes finding a middle ground easier. Distilled down, using a short hand space to cover the endless issues befalling us leads to debate. This is good but, we are waking to the same visions in the manor that we are capable… Peace… Survive-All…
It is a terrible shame that people cannot fuel their automobiles on garbage that each person discards each day, it is still oil. The combustion engine has not come very far in the past 100 years. Like any resource there is an end to the ease of obtaining that resource. The more effort and cost goes into drilling for oil each year.
I live in the mountain region area and there are places around my state in which much money has been invested in sucking fuel out of rocks and sand and it is a failed concept. The general consensus on this is that not only is it too costly, but there is very little net energy gain from the process. This also has been occurring on many of the older oil fields around the world, it takes more and more effort and energy to get energy. It use to be that you could stick an oil well in the ground and the pressure shot up the black gold and you marketed it with little energy loss. Throughout the Middle East the oil is not coming as easily as it has even 5 years ago, and the oil that is coming out is not the sweet crude anymore and requires much more refining and yes, more energy to do so.
IF there was very large deposits of oil then these companies would not be using the equipment to “bottle brush” these oil fields. Greed is the driving force for these oil companies and IF there was vast oil in the mountain region that could be pumped out cheaply then they would do this rather than dealing with foreign countries. There would be a lot more profit in oil right in your own backyard. The excess oil would of course drive prices down but would be made up from the lack of shipping costs from far away lands and because people would start using more oil and travelling more. Also gas guzzling vechicles would be manufactured again to take advantage of cheaper oil. It would all average out in favor of of the oil companies to have the oil right here in the U.S.
The process of getting oil frozen in rock and sand is extremely costly and uses enormous amounts of water and energy. I suppose you could use coal fired up sources of heat and pressure to get the oil separated, but you still have little net energy gain. The water issue is something considered, but especially the clean up process that goes into the extraction of this very dirty fuel. The act of refining uses more energy. Again costing more money and more energy. When you have a 1.1 to 1.4 to 1 net energy ratio of using oil rocks and tar sands, this is not really practical. After all this it is a slow arduous process that would require massive investment to keep up with the increasing daily demand.
The pollution issue is also a very important part of the over use of carbon based fuels. The planet is going to react to the poisons spewed into the atmosphere. Just the same as the chemical reaction of pouring an acid into a basic (alkaline), pouring carbons into the environment the planet is going to react. Hurricanes for one thing are the nature’s air conditioners. Droughts are a part of climate change. Besides this carbons cause cancer and asthma and other breathing affected ailments that are going to over tax a health care system that is already broke.
The broader picture here goes way beyond filling up someone’s car tank with inexpensive gasoline, it is about learning a new way of fueling someone’s car. A much more effecient solar and wind driven system that most everyone could plug in electric cars that had engines that had some horsepower to them would be nice. People right now that plug in their electric cars are using the electricity that probably came from carbon based generators so they are truly not really going GREEN at all.
Many true oil experts say that peak oil, the point in which people have used up more than half of all the oil available, back between 2005-2008. Now there is a downward slope that oil becomes much more difficult to obtain. If you use the figures of some of the oil experts from before 1980 the peak oil was reached about 2003. These oil experts predicted the oil decline of the U.S. within 1 year or so of the year 1970 when peak oil was reached in the U.S.
The fact is that greed drives oil, and one reason that Iraq attacked Kuwait was that Kuwait continued to export too much oil and was driving the prices down so much that Iraq could not pay the debt of the vast military expenses from its 8 year war with Iran. If there was high net energy oil available in the U.S. then companies would jump at the chance at drilling like there was no tomorrow for it. They would not be drilling in extremely deep water off the Gulf Coast when they could drill on dry land. There would not be no interest in the Caspain Sea region either. The U.S. goes where the oil is and starts wars over it. Case in point North Korea that supplies terrorists with weapons to be used against the U.S. they have not be attacked, but Iraq sure was and posed no threat to the U.S. other than the supply of oil.
Every ten years enough oil must be found equivalent to all the oil ever found.
A billion barrels lasts around 42 days in the US alone.
Having said that : I worked in the oil industry in the seventies. The overwhelming industry consensus at the time was that all usable oil would be found and exhausted by the year 2000.
The oil and gas fields I worked in then are now exhausted.
Why did Japan attack Pearl harbor and then race to Asia to capture the oil fields?