Oil Continues To Bedevil US Mass Guzzlers

Typical high-speed accident this year on Long Island where many people love to drive their cars
May 8, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The price of a barrel of oil has shot up to $124 a barrel. Just last year, everyone was fretting and hoping it would drop to under $50 a barrel. That was pure wishful thinking by American oil addicts. Are we still demanding a war with Iran? Yes! Are we fighting more and more in Iraq and Afghanistan? Yes! Is the dollar still being inflated by overproduction via the Federal Reserve's new lending window that doles out $50 billion at a pop? Yes! And is the rest of the planet slowing down oil purchases? Nope. So the price of oil goes up and up and up and Americans are raging at the gas pumps and McCain talks about war, war, war and Hillary wants cheap oil one way or another and will Santa Claus save us and dump oil all over us? The huge sinkhole in Texas due to pumping oil out of the earth is instructive, too. Heh.

Oil Trades Above $124 After Touching Record on Supply Concerns

Crude oil traded above $124 a barrel in New York after touching a record yesterday amid forecasts of stronger demand for distillate fuels, which included heating oil and diesel.

``There's huge diesel demand growth in Asia, which is going to keep pressure on supplies,'' said James Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates, in Galena, Illinois. ``Whenever there's a big rise in one energy market there's an impact on the psychology of the other markets. Also, demand for crude oil will rise as refiners boost distillate output.''

If the central banks of the G7 nations and their trade partners keep on flooding the world with 'liquidity' we will see oil prices go higher and higher. This connection is hard for most people to see since the media never talks about this. The price of gold which collapsed by 10% this spring, is once again rising, too as this flood of Funny Money™ continues or even accelerates. Everyone has seen the amazing videos of the giant sink hole where lots of oil has been pumped out of deep caverns covered with salt domes. I often joke about how people imagine the Earth is but a ball of oil and all we have to do is pump it infinitely. And I point out, the entire planet would collapse into itself if this were true. We can't pump oil forever at bigger and bigger amounts. This is physically impossible.

The desire to have oil fields fulfill our desires and if we just print more dollars and hand it to anyone who can find this Black Gold, it will flow like crazy. Alas for this fantasy! The oil costs are direct forces of inflation! For all our systems from transportation, heating and producing energy of various types, making of plastic, fertilizer production, manufacturing plastics, etc, etc: it is the fundamental basis of modern industrial society!

So oil is usually the engine used to eat up inflation. Since our bankers refuse to raise interest rates, all of this will flow into energy systems where it will be burned off one way or another. So long as we keep trying to evade responsibility for our wayward spending by simply having the central bankers make more money, energy prices will fuel overall inflation across the entire planet.

Note yet again how the 'experts' talk about 'psychology'. HAHAHA. No one can create inflation by wanting inflation! They are always trying to CATCH UP WITH OBVIOUS INFLATION. If one fails in this enterprise, one gets very poor very fast. Ask the elderly on fixed incomes! I am on a fixed income and it killing me. I can't just demand Social Security mail me more money. They don't and won't. So my psychology be damned.

More and more Americans have the answer to skyrocketing gas prices: Just steal it.

According to the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, gasoline theft is becoming a huge issue across the country. Motorists drive up, pump their gas, then speed away without paying.

It’s gotten so bad in some areas that gas stations may revert back to the old “pay-before-you-pump” rules of the 1970s.

Last year, for example, gasoline theft cost the gas industry $134 million. (Experts say it would have been a lot more, but many stations went to pay-before-you-pump rules after the post-Katrina gas-price spike.

Before you stick it to the man and rip off your gas station, know this: It’s not their fault. In fact, motorists in New York were asked how much profit they thought their gas stations were making off them filling up their tanks. One person guessed $1.25 a gallon. Another guessed $.65. The reality? Less than a dime. [CNN]

Here’s the breakdown: For every gallon of gas, 72% goes to the big gas companies (like Exxon and ConocoPhillips), 13% goes to taxes, 8% goes to refiners, and 8% is split between marketing, distribution and the gas stations.

I remember when the government allowed the big oil companies that were split apart by the government 100 years ago to reassemble themselves. All of the present oil companies in America were all Rockefeller's oil monopoly. Exxon/Mobil obviously should never have been allowed to reassemble itself as a monster entity. But then, old Ma Bell is growing, too, bit by bit. And our media is turning into a monopoly owned by only 5 men who happen to also be Zionists.

Rapid inflation turns law abiding people into criminals. Just like rapid inflation in housing turns reasonable people into scam artists and con men as they misrepresent their finances in order to get virtually free loans. All of these goofy schemes breed crime. I remember the seventies. People rioted at gas stations. Just the other day, someone in a big, fat gas guzzler got infuriated as we filled our own small gas miser and drove right up on our bumper, trapping us at the pump and began blowing his horn. I was going to summon the police but the car in front of us took off to get away from the stupid brute and we followed. This sort of ill tempered infant behavior is alas, not uncommon.

The people who got all puffed up with pride when they first bought their Big Trucks are the same characters who are livid with rage that their beloved Big Trucks are destroying their finances and even their entire lives. I have little sympathy for these people. I drove Big Trucks all my life...as farm or work equipment. Hauling building materials, farm products, equipment, etc. I never drove these to and from desk jobs or to the grocery store. The Big Truck fad morphed into the Soccer Mom fad. I have stood by a soccer field to count the number of Soccer Mom Big SUVs carrying more than two children.

The number was ZERO. None showed up for the soccer games. All had two or fewer children in them. This was an unscientific study but I bet if we did this across the nation, it would barely be above 5%. I was reading a Mad Magazine story about the gas hysteria in the mid-1970's. The cartoons talked about cars getting more than 30 mpg. Today, except for a handful of foreign cars, we get barely 30 mpg on the gas miser cars! My Geo Metros got over 55 mpg but they were unpopular because they couldn't go zoom zoom. I drove my two Geos for more than 300,000 miles between the two cars. The US is not even slightly serious about the oil problems we face.

For example, the average house in 1970 was only 1,500 sq feet. Today, it is over 2,500 square feet! Many are McMansions that are over 5,000 sq ft. The average commute has doubled in the last 20 years. In other words, we spent the last 30 years since the first warnings about the Hubbert Oil Peak and the uncertainty of oil since we can't produce enough oil domestically to keep on going, we spent these 30 years goofing off and making things literally TWICE as bad! The average SUV of the larger classes gets only 9 mpg. This is ludicrous. My big work truck I use only for hauling, a big one ton brute, gets 19 mpg. This is because the engine was built for hauling, not driving 100 mph on a highway.

Hillary Clinton visits Indianapolis Speedway

Sunday, she earned the endorsement of Sarah Fisher, the first woman to earn a pole position at an IndyCar Series event, and who is now preparing for the fabled race.

And today, Fisher, an Indianapolis native, showed Clinton -- and a trailing pack of reporters -- around her garage at the speedway as cars roared around the track at more than 200 mph.

Clinton admired Fisher's high-tech race car, -- "That is so neat," Clinton said -- before posing for photos with Fisher and her team, the first owned by a female driver.

"Making history is what it's all about," Clinton quipped.

Like McCain and Bush, Clinton wants the NASCAR voters. And the NASCAR voters want to drive gas guzzlers. And this is simply irresponsible and utterly disgusting. The US is going bankrupt due to importing much of our energy we use to zoom zoom around and live in huge, hulking houses. Most civilized nations cured this problem via taxes: energy is taxed severely so people are not tempted to up the ante and guzzle. In this election, candidates are tempting voters with the idea of ZERO TAXES! And to sweeten the deal, ZERO INTEREST LOANS! And why stop at that? Why not ZERO DOWN! Like we see in ads on TV. The fine print is interesting. Buy now and pay later at 100% compound interest in the form of slavery and economic destitution. What a charming choice.

Clinton: 'White people support me'

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview published Thursday. She cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

I just had to include this quote. Before, the racism in this election was kept in the closet with the bed sheets. Now it is in the open. It is interesting the McCain and Clinton are both courting the same gang. 'No education? Hate them n.....ers? Vote for me!' is charming, isn't it? There is a huge number of people who desperately want to cling to this 'American lifestyle' which features gas guzzling coupled with reckless spending. These people vote. They can see inflation raging around them and they hope, due I fear to lack of information, inability to see through the lies of the 5 owners of our media and due to political pandering, they can't figure out that their lifestyle is DEAD. And is being sucked into the earth like that collapsing oil reserve that got pumped dry. And the collapse of this culture will be as swift and terrible if we don't change our ways, fast.

According to Attorney General Mike Mukasey, international organized crime has decided it wants a “taste” of all that money generated by high oil prices.

Mukasey said a new Justice Department investigation found the global mafia groups “control significant positions in the global energy and strategic materials markets.”

Mukasey: “They are expanding their holdings in these sectors, which corrupts the normal functioning of these markets and may have a destabilizing effect on U.S. geopolitical interests.”

HAHAHA. High oil prices are due to what international Mafia? ARREST BUSH! ARREST CHENEY! ARREST ALL OF THEIR TEXAS OIL BUDDIES! And bomb, bomb, bomb Saudi Arabia, while you are at it, guys. And start WWIII. Might as well. When America voted---sort of---twice for a pair of oil soaked snakes to run this nation, I was horrified. People around me said, 'They will make oil cheap because they control oil!'

Talk about naive. Then, when these oily Mafia guys used 9/11 as an excuse to attack Iraq, people up here were happy. 'Now we will have cheap oil!' they yelled.

I said, 'Fat chance. All wars make oil expensive and cheap loans at 1% interest makes inflation so oil will inflate no matter who we conquer.' And so it was. Note the latest propaganda! It isn't global central banks creating inflation! It isn't irresponsible oil use by the US who has to import much of our oil and palm off increasingly worthless dollars that is causing the price of oil to shoot up. No. It is this unnamed 'Mafia.' I bet they will say, these Mafia types are Russians and Chinese. HAHAHA. Or perhaps it is the drug dealing Mafia selling heroin from Afghanistan! And then dumping the profits into oil speculation! Yes! Oops. We are protecting the poppy crops of Afghanistan! Oh dear.

Well, I suppose if the media owners join with select politicians to yell nonstop to NASCAR dads and soccer moms with only one or two children in their behemoths, 'It is the fault of international drug dealing Mafia types who have slanty eyes or drink volka', the less educated might fall for it. After all, Clinton fell for the goofy garbage about Saddam having WMD. And millions of Americans still think Saddam and not Bush has a lot to do with the success of 9/11.

Can Rockefeller Heirs Turn Exxon Greener?

It turns out that some of John D.’s descendants would like to see changes at the oil giant and are publicly challenging the company’s current boss, Rex W. Tillerson. Specifically, they are behind proxy resolutions demanding that the roles of chairman and chief executive be split and that Exxon invest more in alternative energy.

“They are fighting the last war and they’re not seeing they’re facing a new war,” said Peter O’Neill, a great-great-grandson of the company’s founder. Another family member, Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, an economist, said, “we feel so passionately about them becoming the best company that they can.”

Exxon didn’t seem too shaken by the threat from the Rockefeller name. It points out that these family members represent only 0.006 percent of Exxon’s stock.

The Rockefeller family wants to keep control of energy systems. But the others running the reborn energy monopoly don't want to change course right now. Money is pouring in like crazy! And don't they all sound like a Mafia meeting? I love 'The Godfather.' It is a great movie. Well, there are ruling elites and they argue with each other as to how to chop apart the world and control it. But I don't think the Mukasey AG is talking about arresting any of these Mafioso.

When gas prices go up, gas station workers brace for the worst

Prices aren't the only things rising at gas pumps around our area.

So are tempers.

Workers at gas stations in Rockland again are bearing the brunt of driver anger at prices that are hovering around $4 a gallon.

"They are getting crazy," said Ash Muhammad, who works at the SuperValue in Stony Point.

As usual, the poor guys with little education at the bottom of life's ladder has to deal with Clinton and McCain's enraged mob of hard-working, white working, poorly educated voters demanding cheap oil. Educating people to make wise choices is supposed to be the role of our leaders and our 'betters'. People with PhDs must be helping people who can barely read. The owners of the media have an obligation to tell the truth as best they can, not lie about everything. And politicians should not pander but this is what works so they do it. And the US will fall into a sink hole we call 'bankruptcy' and no one will stop this. Too many people make too much loot right now to stop this.

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[Canuck]

‘Perhaps 60% of today’s oil price is pure speculation’

William Engdahl

http://tinyurl.com/6q9dxq

[mad mike]

there is no limit to human greed and folly.(tm)
that having ben sed and it bears repeating,
let us jump into the mix.
does being a black candidate make you more honest than a white one?
isnt obama being vetted by the same system?
and is obama god? he is a man. only human.
i red some things abouthim.
such as him voting for a gas tax break for his home state. and taking money from atomic energy concerns. sure atomic energy is good,
if (and a big IF) you can deal with the radioactive waste. which stays that way for thousands of years. and there's that shady real estate fellow who gave him lots of money. why is that glossed over? i figger it is the same old. every one pins thier hopes on this person, gets in big let down. consider...will obama leave the white house richer or poorer than he went in?
you may notice that i am writing as if he is already president. well, he is. you dont have any say in the matter. ben decided already. sure, go vote for who ever you want
because obama is in.
i am for zero taxes because i get zero services. why let those crooks take it?
as to oil. oil refined in california is being sold as diesel in mexico which can be purchased for $2 a gallon there. what you say to that.
the man enslaved to wealth can never be honest. democritus.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

We have 3 choices and one possible other choice for President: two total warmongers who are also multimillionaires. And Obama who is at least, neither.

And maybe Ron Paul. Vote for him if he decides to run independently.

[don]

I would love to know what Cindy McCain is hiding in that bank account. Seems like she wants to keep that a Monetary secret. Ugland house at Best?

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

We don't have Bill Clinton's returns, either, you know.

[Judy]

The end of cheap oil is here. I give spontaneous lectures to captive salespeople while shopping in town (have to drive 60 miles to shop). I explain Hubbert's peak, tell them gas costs $8/gallon in England, that world output has not increased in three years, etc. When someone replies that we have plenty of oil, I say "yes, but it is hard to get and costs lots of money to retrieve and refine". Interestingly, a number of people actually get it.

[shargash]

"‘Perhaps 60% of today’s oil price is pure speculation’"

Hahaha! That's funny. If only it weren't for the evil speculators, oil would be $50 per barrel. The fact that oil production has been basically flat since May of 2005 while demand has grown exponentially, has nothing to do with it. The fact that the Fed has lowered interest rates well below the rate of inflation has nothing to do with it. It is all those nasty speculators. Engdahl sometimes writes some good stuff, but he's completely out of his element here.

Look, we have two camps. One camp has been saying for years that flat production with exponential growth in demand would lead to exponential growth in prices. They were dismissed as kooks. Well, we've had flat production. We've had exponential demand growth. And now we have exponential price rise. QED.

The other camp said there's lots of oil left, we don't have to worry about peak for decades. Oil prices will come down. Don't worry about it.

Now the people in the second camp say it is all speculation. Who are you going to believe. The people that got it right and predicted what is happening? Or the people who were clueless about the rise in oil prices and kept saying they would revert to mean?

People need to recognize that the world has changed. Dinosaurs like Engdahl are harming our ability to deal with the energy crisis by blaming it on convenient scapegoats. We need high oil prices to spur people to do something about peak oil. If we don't heed the price signals, we will be completely unprepared when the crisis hits in force.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Correct, Shargash. Way back in 1974, I explained until blue in the face, the wars in the Middle East coupled with the US hitting its own Hubbert Oil Peak was a warning shot across our prow and we had at best, 40 years of easy switch-over time to prepare for expensive oil. The retrofitting should have begun back then.

Instead, oil got cheap every time wars stopped and people bought more and more oil from farther and farther away and now we have a massive trade deficit, 30% of which is energy related...and we are in worse shape for the global Hubbert Oil Peak which is now...when the most oil is pumped out of the earth every year,

For some stupid reason, people think the Peak is when the least oil is pumped. Then there are the 'infinity' people who think money and oil are both infinite and forever.

[GK]

I love the term "radical inflationist"!

http://www.24hgold.com/viewarticle.aspx?langue=en&articleid=253137_G-7_Central_Bankers_Stymied_by__Crude_Oil_Vigilantes__Gary_Dorsch

Meanwhile, the “crude oil vigilantes” are receiving extra ammunition from the Bank of Canada, which has slashed its overnight loan rate by 150 basis points over the past six-months, including two half-point rate cuts. Canada’s new central bank chief is 43-year old youngster, Mark Carney, previously a Goldman Sachs investment banker. The rookie central bank chief is building a reputation for himself as a “radical inflationist,” molded along the same lines as Fed chief Ben Bernanke.

[kenogami]

This Goldman Sachs scoundrel and the previous chief of the Bank of Canada have increased the money supply by 16% in the last year. They are destroying the values of all my savings to keep the $CA on a par with the $US, which is collapsing. The stupid morons of all the central banks of the West are destroying the West banking system to try to save the $US, which is a basket case.

[Canuck]

So Goldman Sachs and other investment banking players head wizards of the derivatives beast wouldn't adopt an unregulated commodity market manipulation position on energy futures, because?

The value of Engdahls information is the exposing of hidden commodity market manipulation tools at the investment bankers and speculators disposal.

60% is an obviously unsupportable assessment, particularly with the printing presses running flat out. This hardly worthy of a derogatory label such as “Dinosaur” in particular after Engdahls has done the service of identifying ICE. You’d be hard pressed to have me believe that energy futures speculation isn’t exacerbating rising oil prices.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Of course, Canuck! This speculation frenzy in oil is EXACTLY due to the monetary expansion at the top via the banks! They crank out loans hoping stupidly to revive the overblown real estate markets and it all flows into OIL speculation just like it did before Volcker raised interest rates to stop exactly that!

All they have to do to stop this oil speculation frenzy is force up rates in the US, Cananda and JAPAN! But they are doing the opposite.

Isn't that stupid as hell? We can't blame the speculators for taking advantage of this. And the speculators at the top in Goldman Sachs are buddies of the central bankers doing this crap.

[Canuck]

The problem I see with extrapolating peak oil (reduced production) or increased Asian demand as the genesis of current run up in oil prices is that it is not reflected in deliverables at this time. During the 1973 oil shock deliverables from OPEC to the US went from 1.2m bpd to 19k bpd which effectively doubled the price presented to the refiners at that time.

At this point I have heard of no shortfalls on deliverables save some reports of shortages of Diesel in China this is attributed to Chinese government price controls which have forced refiners into a margin squeeze thereby reducing production. Even with this with no other fuel type shortages in China is reported this is entirely due to Chinese government price controls on retail Diesel prices.

Peak Oil or Asian demand have not developed to the point of shortfalls similar to the 1973 oil shock in any manner in any market. Pricing effects of these issues at this point are anticipatory. Inflation, speculation and market manipulation are however fully in play within the pricing structure at this point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

I hope you enjoy my newest article, Canuck. It explains everything.

[Canuck]

Keep it up Elaine, I'll throw this in, because, well, I guess I have nothing better to do. :)

Let’s look at another aspect, Asian demand. Crude oil is an unusable product, it has to be refined and I drive by major refineries and distribution terminals twice a day. It’s in my face and the air I breathe every single day. Tanker trucks are constantly impeding my progress.

If Asian demand is such a significant factor in the pricing structure it has to be represented in refinery throughput.

We have a table, world refining capacity 1970-2006.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb1109.html

Apparently India is unworthy of mention which is unfortunate. China is represented with significant increase only 2005-2006 at 34% increase. In world production terms only 1.9%.

Average world surplus refining capacity through the 1990-2000 period was 9%. 2004 surplus capacity was 4%. Estimations as of 2005 would require 50 – 70 more world scale refineries to be online by 2010 to achieve 9%.

http://www.icfi.com/Markets/Energy/Marketing/refinery-capacity.pdf

Asian demand is obviously increasing, but it’s not being reflected by significant increase in throughput. Only Saudi Arabia is announcing significant increased refining capacity. Where’s the Un-satiated Asian demand, the clamoring for fuel, lineups, the strident demands for refining capacity. Asian demand pressures on pricing is currently not as significant in pricing structure as people are making it out to be, as with peak oil.

[hardrock]

Engdahl has it partly correct, but is off by a wide margin.

I will admit there is a premium built into the world price of oil that is driven by speculation as well as legitimate hedging activities. It is not 60%....I would say, closer to 20%.

As the price continues to increase in an unrelenting fashion as it has lately, the forces driving price escalation increases. The opposite results will come when we get a turn in the price and it comes down, down, down until it hits its corrective level. In other words, the market always over reacts and is exacerbated by speculation whether up or down.

Yes, we may be at or nearing 'peak oil', but price drives consumption in all commodities, oil being a lot like food, in that, we cannot live without it. They, food and oil are linked at the hip. Food production cannot happen without abundant oil in the modern world. The big boys know this....that is why when they think the time is right to bring the price of oil down to a sustainable level they will begin the elimination of large numbers of 2 legged critters in order to maintain control of resources and populations.

America is the toughest country to maintain control of....that is why we had 9-11 and other scare methods, thereby allowing laws that take away our rights and power of resistance. That is why 'they' have allowed us to be over run by an alien culture and people. Divisiveness is a great control mechanism as well as neutralizing our most capable of resistance populace, the working class. This why the 'hard right' and the Fundamentalist Christian wing is funded so well by aliens. On top of that the corporate owners have had a field day of profits from the diminished wage demands brought on by the 'alternative' work force of minorities and women who don't have babies.

Now, couple that with what Elaine points out continually; We have allowed our main source of information and entertainment to fall into the hands of 'aliens' of a different sort....more that 5 by the way. So, we Americans are being brutalized from the top and the bottom by people who could care less about that which we and our forbearer's truly tried to protect and was always cherished by those who understood how difficult a decent governmental system was to obtain.

I will also note here that Bill Cara, one of the few good guys on Wall Street has just recently recommended we all read and understand Mark Mitchell's work, "Deep Capture". I will try to post the link here.
“The Story of Deep Capture” - by Mark Mitchell.

Needless to say, the problems coming our way are considerably bigger than we can imagine and with many more causes than meet the eye. It takes a great deal of time and study along with a dose of independent thought to come to any knowledge of what the hell is really going on in this country.

In a former time, when we had a more independent populace, who had a vague idea of where things came from, we would have the perpetrators busting rocks in some funny looking underwear along our roads. As it is, with our 7-11 culture, 'they' [the perps] are on TV, writing books, putting on banquets and awards, laughing at us in our inability to protect ourselves, our money or even our children's future. Those who plunder us...
despise us.