Oil Prices Amidst Turmoil in the Arab World
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-02-24/oil-prices-amidst-turmoil-arab-world
Turmoil and uncertainty in North Africa and the Middle East are leading to increased volatility in oil markets: What price spikes could mean for U.S. consumers and the global economy.
Guests
Steve LeVine
contributing editor of "Foreign Policy" and author of the book, "The Oil and the Glory."
Kate Gordon
Vice-President for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress
Lucian (Lou) Pugliaresi
President of Energy Policy Research Foundation (EPRINC)
Comments
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How many reasons for high oil prices are the media going to believe? I've heard a new one every month - and none of them seem to hold up to any reasonable analysis. What I never hear is the windfall profits reason. Where is a media that covers this industry fairly? Looks like gouging pure and simple. Maybe we need a new media to investigate the media
Two comments
1) Opening the domestic supply. What makes anyone think that opening ANWR or the Gulf will improve our situation? Big Oil will take what they produce out of these sources and sell it on the world market and ship it to the highest bidder. Please don't fool yourself or us into believing that they will only use it domestically
2) We have squandered the last 40 years (from 1973-74) by building huge SUV's and other energy inefficient transportation and believing that we deserve it because we are Americans
How about moving to natural gas as our primary energy source, we have plenty of that (in fact they are burning it off on every oil well) for the mid range future.
Note that when the price of a barrel of oil goes down, the price at the pump does not adjust accordingly. This guy is disgusting. Supply and demand is used by economists when it fits their objectives.
I doubt that technology will "save us" from the world having to simply alter our lives to use less energy. Taxes on carbon would help a lot in creating financial incentive to adapt in time instead of too late - even creating markets for new ideas, which may be what our economy needs.
Your guests seem to be holding their fingers in their ears and shouting "la-la-la!" The point is not to get gas prices back down. Gas prices need to be much, much higher. How our economy will cope with that is a huge question. How we will cope with high gas prices without grinding the poor to dust - a popular money-saving tactic - is equally huge. But we can't pretend that we can continue sucking oil out of the ground and spewing its waste products into the air. We must stop this, or we will die. Reality has to get a hearing sometime!
Everytime there's a rise in the price of petroleum, you have a conniption and start accusing everybody and his mother of price gouging and profiteering.
Why is it that we never hear a peep out of you when petroleum prices decline?
Relying on oil is unsustainable. Why is it that oil seems to be our focus? Even your guests seem to be seduced by oil, except perhaps Kate Gordon. I wonder to what extent your other guests are connected to the oil industry, as consultants or benefactors.
With increasing fuel prices effecting food prices, we should consider buying our food from local markets and what is in season.
From Okemos Michigan
The discussion among these experts chills me as it is apparent that there is a wide gap in any from of agreement, compromise. I think the real problem is the lack of trust, new legislators energized by a shaky mandate, and power issues. What happened to believing in each other and honesty? If it can't live in DC how can it live in Madison Wisc, or Michigan?
Concerning instant price hikes at the pump.
Under the generally accepted rules of accounting, a business has the choice of using a practice of controlling stocking levels using a "First in First out" or "First in Last out" for accounting purposes. It is not possible to change, once the choice has been made.
Gasoline suppliers use the latter and rightly so! When a gas station owner buys their supply at a lower price, they will then have to replace the current stock at the higher price.
Biodiesel is where this country needs to go. Fund it!
Not only does Biodiesel burn cleaner than gasoline or "dino-diesel" it also is far more fuel efficent than gasoline. This could completely releave our dependence on foriegn oil and the related market volitility.
Research on methods to turn not just soy (which can impact the food markets) but animal waste, waste plastics, and other waste materials into biodiesel.
Americans need to understand that diesel vehicles are now quiet, don't smell bad, and are incredibly fuel efficent. They will still pack much of the power Americans crave in their vehicles.
Before we start converting all our cars and trucks to natural gas we need to insure the safety of drilling for natural gas.
In 2009 we paid a little over ninety cents a gallon for heating oil. This year, we paid $3.71. If you work backwords, crude oil should have been around $27.00 a barrel in 2009, , based on todays barrel price, which I doubt it was. What gives? Unfortunately it took too long to register to pose this question so you've probably moved on already.
No drilling required for biodiesel!
Thanks DRShow for a timely topic and informed guests, a subject that impacts every home, foreign policy and economic policy. Over on WBUR's On Point Tom Ashbrook prefers dropping two mad dogs in a ring to draw a crowd. Why can't NPR listeners understand why Diane is usually the best? We take away facts and concepts that let us formulate our opinions in our own way.
It causes hunger and higher food prices. It uses GM seeds that pollute organic alternatives. Other sources are cheaper and cleaner.
Somebody told Lee Black about FRACKING. Watch GASLAND, Diane did.
President Obama could stopgap our growing gas crisis now by instituting a Ridesharing requirement for all Federal employees. The residence location databases exist and the mandate could go out immediately that employees who live in the same neighborhoods who are to wind up at the same work destinations, connect to ride together. That order could be followed up in the States and municipal governments to follow suit. Ridesharing programs exist voluntarily on college campuses nationwide through social networks. It's time to expand the system in this time of need to government and industry.
Commentator Gregory Morrison talks like a soybean lobbyist.
Mike, if you like the taste of water you'll watch Gasland and join us in protecting our aquifers. Natural gas in a wasteland is not worth it.
Actually I feel that biodiesel shouldn't be made with soy due to effects on food markets. It's a start though. Some folks in Cali are working on breeding an algea that can be distilled into biodiesel. They are also engineering some bacteria that eats plastics and excretes a substance that is distillable as well.
I'm a diesel enthusist not a soy lobbyist!
I'm interested in an alternate fuel that wouldn't require a major revamp of infrastructure. Biodiesel can be pumped from current gas stations without major changes unlike natural gas. Vehicle would also require little modifications - the same fuel tanks, pumps and lines could all be used...unlike natural gas.
During the oil crisis of the '70's, an NGO operated by Robert Kennedy Jr. and partners bought oil at the tanker level and distributed it to needy families in the Boston area at wholesale prices which were a fraction of the retail price of heating oil. The organization was able to cover its own costs and provide a needed public service to desperate families by bypassing the greed of the "free market". Although, their efforts were not reported prominently in the press, the price differential underlined the profits taken by all the middlemen, and how a more equitable system of distribution and sales could be conducted.
There is no need to make natural gas (NG) a principal transportation fuel. Instead, learn about the visionary Steel Interstate rail passenger and freight service concepts for North America at www.steelinterstate.org.
Steel Interstate infrastructure will advance rail service analogous to how the Interstate Highway System vastly improved the speed and safety of 1955-era vehicular traffic. But unlike interstate highways, the Steel Interstate offers environmentally sustainable, electrified mobility not currently available in North America--truck competitive "just-in-time" freight service and a fast national passenger rail network.
The Steel Interstate will strengthen both rural and urban economies and interconnects all the nation's proposed high-speed rail corridors and power movement of freight and passengers with domestically produced electricity.
Steelinterstate.org is the premier web source documenting why it is a very bad idea to subsidize conversion of over-the-road trucking to NG(http://www.steelinterstate.org/topics/why-not-convert-trucks-natural-gas).
Like what happened to the price of corn after federal subsidies for corn-based ethanol, NG prices will rise if energy billionaire T. Boone Pickens' plan to convert over-the-road trucking to NG is successful. NG prices have steadily fallen as forecasts of domestic shale gas reserves have increased. Pickens and other energy industry kingpins have a plan to stop falling NG prices and bolster their NG asset values. Pickens proposes to secure taxpayer-supported conversion of trucks to burn NG and to similarly subsidize a nationwide NG fuel distribution system owned by Pickens--Clean Energy Fuels Incorporated--at Pilot and Flying J truckstops.
The public will pay twice--first, for tax-payer-funded NG transportation conversion subsidies and, again, for increasing home heating, fertilizer, and electricity costs and hundreds of other consumables where NG is a prime production feedstock.
Well Grady if you have a viable alternative I'm listening. However, that alternative answer should not be just mass transit. It simply doesn't work in this country where we depend on trucking our vegetables and other goods from California to New York or build our cities miles wide. Mass transit within our cities is part of the solution, but not THE solution.
I have watched Gasland (thank you for the wrong assumption that I have not). What I took away from that is that the Republicans with their "No Regulation" and no policing of the regulations in place are mainly the cause. Put the fox in the hen house and what do you expect? Put the fox in the hen house with the farmer and a shotgun and you get another result. Designing regulations to prevent the gas companies from their wildcat ways and Gasland becomes a Cannery Row.
And again with the wrong assumptions, I live in Michigan which has more freshwater than almost any other state, and work in the business of cleaning up and monitoring water quality throughout the country. I also work on a certified organic vineyard/winery. So I understand the importance with keen precision the need to protect our aquifers and surface waters from damage. Please, in the future do not extrapolate what you think you know into incorrect assumptions.
Mike, the vast majority of what is now carried by truck can be carried far more efficiently by a fast Steel Interstate freight train. We used to carry fresh vegetables from California to the east coast in the 1940s by train. Now the Steel Interstate can do that again, faster than a 1940 train and faster than 2011 truck.
Check out the comment above yours and look at www.steelinterstate.org/concept and all the economic, environmental, safety, and national security benefits that will accrue if we move trucks and truck trailers on to the fast Steel Interstate, www.steelinterstate.org.
What would be the effect on oil prices if "Traders" were taken out of the equation?
The comment about Moore's Law applying to batteries is completely false. It applies to computing(storage and processing). Batteries were not part of the original theory, nor do they hold up to actual data...
I was a bit surprised about your notion that "you don't have to buy gold, but you have to keep buying gas to keep your car going". This attitude is exactly why our country is in the position that it is in. Most family cars are a giant money pit to begin with and most short trips could be largely replaced with walking or biking. Public transit could be used for commuting to work in the urban centers from all the exurbs everyone seems to be moving to. The notion that you have to keep buying gas is absurd. I live in Pittsburgh, known for hills, rude drivers, and inclimate weather, but I still have no reason to buy gasoline. I commute to my professional/office job everyday, visit local restaurants, and retail establishments, all without gas and I couldn't be happier. Now if only our lawmakers would figure out that bike and transit infrastructure is far cheaper than bailing out car companies, building bigger freeways, and giving out subsidies to oil companies and automobile purchasers, we would all be much better off.
I live in Phoenix and hear the show on tape delay. I don't know if the following were addressed or answered.
1. In regard to electric vehicles, has anybody ever calculated the cost of producing the electricity required to recharge the batteries? And if so, how is the electricity produced? if fossil fuels are used, are the 'savings' such that our overall use of fossil fuels is decreased? And, if we were to switch all private vehicles to electric, do we have sufficient power generation to recharge all those vehicles at night? I can't imagine what would happen if during a normal summer heat wave we were trying to cool our homes and recharge our vehicles at the same time.
2. I did not hear any comments regarding the use of hydrogen as a fuel. Isn't this a more viable alternative than natural gas or biofuels? I am not an engineer but it seems logical that if both natural gas and hydrogen need to be liquefied the process should be similar. And there's a lot of hydrogen out there.
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