PeakOil is You
THE International Monetary Fund Thread (merged)
Re: IMF oil price shock warning! >130$/b
by vision-master » Sat 09 Apr 2011, 15:48:00
Gas up to $3.89 gal as of today, must be over $4 in places like Cali?
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Re: IMF oil price shock warning! >130$/b
by timmac » Sat 09 Apr 2011, 15:55:21
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', 'G')as up to $3.89 gal as of today, must be over $4 in places like Cali?
Its been over $4 a gal in Cali for over a month or 2, its now edging towards $4.50 per gal there is many areas..
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Re: IMF oil price shock warning! >130$/b
by kmann » Sat 09 Apr 2011, 15:57:03
20,320 total product supplied week of 7/4/2008 compared to 18,494 for the week of 7/3/2009 (EIA data). About a 9% drop in demand for that week. I don't know that I'd call that highly inelastic. Of course there was alot more going on than oil prices during that period. Maybe somewhat inelastic, I'm not familiar with how other products behave with a 350% price swing. Nevertheless, I believe speculation to be responsible for a substantial part of the price swings.
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Re: IMF oil price shock warning! >130$/b
by Puchica » Sat 09 Apr 2011, 16:22:06
this pattern fits the Law of the Queue
From the secure heights
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Re: IMF oil price shock warning! >130$/b
by yeahbut » Sun 10 Apr 2011, 04:44:26
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GASMON', 'N')orth West England - Diesel £1.42 / litre, Petrol £1.29 - £1.36 litre. No shocks for us anymore, we know & expect £1.50 - £1.60 soon.
Sunny day, park up & get the bikes out.
Gas
Sunny day, park up & get the bikes out.
Gas
Zachary. Gas is over $6US/gallon in NZ. People are getting back on the trains and buses, public transport usage is up every month. Bring it on.
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Re: IMF oil price shock warning! >130$/b
by pedalling_faster » Sun 10 Apr 2011, 07:34:35
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('diemos', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kmann', '$')142 to $38 range within a six month period cannot be justified by supply and demand alone.
Yes it can. Oil has a highly inelastic demand curve since it underlies all economic activity and there are no short-term substitutes. The minute that demand is one barrel per day over supply the bidding begins. Once the demand falls below supply the price collapses to the marginal cost of production.
it's very true that Western Civilization is wired into using fossil fuels.
but there are substitutes - the amount of substitution varying with the seasons.
for large trucks, biodiesel is a direct substitute. states like North Dakota are America's primary biodiesel source crop producers, e.g. sunflower oil.
of course there is the issue with some biomass-derived liquid fuels of competing with food. and there are ways to appease that, e.g. giving tax breaks that are currently given to timberland owners (who pay basically zero property taxes as long as they meet the BLM standard of 110 trees per acre), if they also grow biodiesel source crops on their land.
getting back to substitution, only some diesel cars & trucks, and most large trucks, can run biodiesel directly. B99 is sold mid-winter, somehow they have circumvented the characteristic of SVO (straight vegetable oil) that causes it to gel up in winter. making the appropriate technological conversions (when i went to a biodiesel conference in 2006, the primary shop-talk among exhibitors was finding ways to heat the fuel lines ... they had already mastered heating the fuel tank & the dual-tank configuration) expands the fleet/ percentage of cars that can use non-fossil-fuel liquid fuels.
for Automobiles, the initial substitution that was made was 15% ethanol/alcohol. again, this relates to the subject of rising food prices ...
"A report by Dr. Indur Goklany, writing in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (Volume 16 Number 1, Spring 2011), estimates that at least 192,000 excess deaths and 6.7 million additional Disability-Adjusted Life Years lost to disease have been caused by using food crops to make ethanol for fuel." (from PO.com home page.)
perhaps governments will wise up and support their citizens in growing corn and other foods that compete with biofuels. one example is the iGrow program in Sonoma County. basically they use government money to tell citizens to grow their own food, but some good may come of it. the primary difficulty for urban dwellers is access to secure garden space (so they can grow corn without it being stolen.)
this raises the question - how much alcohol can be substituted ? well, in Brazil, the answer is 100% - they got a clue after the oil shocks in the 1970's & switched entirely, leveraging their natural advantage (tropical location) and sugarcane production. (load up on sugar now, it will only be getting more expensive.) the engineering changes required are similar to marine engineering - the use of alcohol adds more water to the fuel cycle, which is corrosive for automobile engines.
http://green.autoblog.com/2010/01/04/re ... ion-in-20/
"there were 250 million cars here in 2008, and only 246 million at the end of 2009."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_ ... _operation
"The study found that of vehicles in operation in the US, 38.3% were older than ten years, 22.3% were between seven and ten years old, 25.8% were between three and six years old and 13.5% were less than two years old."
one of the paradoxes with automobiles is that the modern electronics makes them less tolerant of fuel changes, this is certainly true with diesels. i have a '98 Ford truck, which seems new to me (i bought it new), but i guess it qualifies as "older than ten years".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel
"Ethanol fuel is widely used in Brazil and in the United States, and together both countries were responsible for 86 percent of the world's ethanol fuel production in 2009.[2] Most cars on the road today in the U.S. can run on blends of up to 10% ethanol,[3] and the use of 10% ethanol gasoline is mandated in some U.S. states and cities. Since 1976 the Brazilian government has made it mandatory to blend ethanol with gasoline, and since 2007 the legal blend is around 25% ethanol and 75% gasoline (E25).[4] In addition, by December 2010 Brazil had a fleet of 12 million flex-fuel automobiles and light trucks and over 500 thousand flex-fuel motorcycles regularly using neat ethanol fuel (known as E100)."
I would say this is one of the primary policy goals to focus on in the US. Just as the US gov. gives tax breaks for solar installations, they could also give tax breaks for fuel conversions. Of course, this would require Ford & GM to get on-the-ball and offer conversion services at the repair facilities at their dealerships, similar to buying a re-manufactured engine. I paid about $3800 for one in 2006. I would estimate that the conversion task can be accomplished for $5000 on a modern 6 cylinder gas-guzzling engine. Obviously if the government offered a program similar to "Cash for Clunkers", that would be helpful (side-stepping the issue of where the money comes from. Recently, most of it has been printed/ created out of thin air.)
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