Walmarts profit are even higher, do you think walmart should lower their prices?

Gas is high because of wall street speculation, decreasing value of the dollar, and OPECs threat to curb production. IMHO, those are the MAIN reasons why its so high.

 

The profits of exxonmobil are not rumor. just do a news search on it.

incidentally, the whole "drill here drill now" thing may be moot very soon. Iraq has JUST agreed to open its oil fields to foreign oil companies. Since contracts will likely be signed in a few weeks and "production" will start shortly thereafter, you can expect this to have a near-immediate impact on gas prices.

I'd bet we drop 25-50 cents per gallon within the month.

 

Well said Sam, I agree 10000%. Dont forget the amount of money the Gov't takes in taxes from the Oil companies and does absolutely nothing to help produce the oil. As for Oil spills, I heard on the radio the other day that more oil spills into the Oceans naturally then man has ever spilled. So you cant really use that as an excuse anymore either.

The bottom line here weather you like it or not is drilling for oil here right now is the only short term answer to high prices. To be honest it dosent even have to be a short term answer. I heard we have enough oil in this country alone to last iirc something like 300 years. What do I know though all I can go by is what the media lets us hear and read.
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Bad argument; out of context. There's a big difference between some oil leaking into the water at the bottom of the ocean and a tanker running aground and spilling its contents onto the shore.

 

Maybe, but when was the last time you or anyone you know or anyone on this forum from all points of this country went to the beach and couldnt swim because of oil?

Not to mention a tanker running aground has nothing to do with drilling here. Either way were gonna have oil shipped in. Maybe if it didnt have to travel so far the likely hood of a spill would be less.
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was just about to make that point. would be interesting to see the data that says how many of the natural oil spills occur within 10 miles of a coastline.

 

The real question is whether or not current oil leases are recieiving any drilling activity, or if they're just locked up, further dragging production to spike prices, and using the off-shore option as a scape goat to distract, create a scape-goat, and genuinely gang-bang the middle class.

 

Good point Hustler. I keep hearing that the oil companies currently have something like 63 million acres where they are allowed to drill but they arent. Whats up with that?
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who cares about the environment? God gave us this earth to skull-****.

 

Awe man, I used to like your posts. I fully endorse skull *******, but this just makes you sound ignorant.

 

Question- where do we get the power from to do this? I assume you are referring to the liberation of hydrogen from water. Presently, the vast majority of domestic hydrogen is produced by refining natural gas or other hydrocarbon compounds.

Production of hydrogen by the electrolytic seperation of water is pretty energy-intensive process. The potential energy of the hydrogen that results from the process is considerably less than the electrical energy consumed to perform the seperation. Seems that it would be more economical to use that electricty directly to charge a battery.

Don't get me wrong- I think hydrogen has great potential for use as a source of power for automobiles. It's a bit trickier to handle than other, more common compressed gasses (LPG, CNG, etc) but it's not impossible. Also, it's multiuse- you can run it through fuel cells (trendy) or you can burn it in a concentional internal combustion engine (inexpensive, practical.) I just don't see how we're going to economically produce enough hydrogen to satisfy potential demand in the first place.

 

Exxonmobile made ~40 billion in profits last year I believe.

 

My last read suggested an alleged 94% efficiency. Admittedly, this seems suspiciously high - and is still less appreciable than would be the direct application of the electricity consumed - but it lends hope to the possibilities of the process nonetheless.

 

the other problem with hydrogen and ethenol is infrastructure. We'll be using oil for YEARS before either of those could support a national fleet of cars. I still think eletric is where it's at (other than conservation). We have the infrastructure now, and we could gradually switch to cleaner methods of supplying the power.

 

I've got graphs!!
From this article: http://www.memagazine.org/mepower03/...g/gauging.html

It's basically an analysis of "alternative fueling methods". Note that the places it says "diesel" or "conventional SI" do not necessarily mean using those fuels, only those engines.

Fig 1: Efficiency of fuel production


Summary: there is little energy expended to put natural gas in your tank.
there is a LOT of energy expended to create hydrogen by electrolysis.

Fig 2: car efficiency.


Summary: diesel hybrids rank highly as do electrics. natural gas/hydrogen in your car not so much.

Fig 3. overall "well to wheels" efficiency or the total efficiency to produce the gas AND run your car. basically the "long view" and not "I just plug it into the wall and voila".


Summary: Hybrids and natural gas / Fischer-Tropsch processed diesel are the clear winners. Hydrogen by electrolysis shows up dead last.

 

There isn't a distinction between, US oil at $50/bl and Saudi $140/bl, to the market it's just oil.

 

Ouch. My ***** actually hurt right now. This clearly obliteratess my original suggestion so I'll shut up now.

 

... with battery-electric somewhere in the middle.

Excellent graphs, and good data. Just one thought:

If we (the North American and western European nations) would finally get over ourselves and resume investing in fission-based power generation, then those charts would be rendered meaningless. As a practical, mass-market form of power generation, nuclear energy is as close to free as you can get. I don't mean free from a monetary standpoint of course- nukes are expensive to build, expensive to run, and expensive to clean up after. But in terms of their environmental impact (resources consumed and atmospheric emissions produced) they're damn near magic.

In other words, who cares if the overall efficiency of a nuke-to-EV powerchain is 5%, if the energy was more or less impact-free to begin with.

Yeah, wind and solar are neat playthings, but they're just not practical for truly large-scale generation in most parts of the world. I have no problem with people planting windmills and solar collectors here and there throughout the southwestern US and selling "green" energy to liberals, but I can't really see either of those technologies being of much use in Ohio.

 

That is something like .33 per gallon. US Government taxed them around
.84 per gallon. Do the math on that...