Posted on 03/21/2012 2:29:23 PM PDT by Dacula
Edited on 03/21/2012 4:01:12 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Even if it only cut prices by about 10% (which IMO is BS), the greater benefit to increased drilling is.. we`re usin~ OUR resources, not buying them from Saudi royal families and other rich muslims who regard America as only a necessary evil.
It`s not ALL about price. Even if domestic oil INCREASED prices, it`s still far more acceptable than feeding the monster that is islam.
More drilling and more refineries certainly couldn’t hurt.
For many years, we have been expanding and upgrading our existing refineries.
We now produced more refined product than the US consumes.
Because of this, we now bring in a bit of surplus crude oil, refine it, and export the refined surplus. It keeps more jobs here, helps the trade balance, and gives us a cushion if we have unexpected shutdowns.
biggest cause of recent increases in demand for natural gas is the amount that it takes to boil ethanol out of corn mash
Industrial use of natural gas has gone down slightly, not up.
We are are a next exporter of refined product, what comes out of our refineries.
But our import of crude oil to run in our refineries is quite high. It has come down a little, with our falling demand and slight increase in domestic oil production.
Taken together, we still import a lot of petroleum.
The author compares the natural gas market to that for gasoline by which to support the bogus contention that increasing drilling does not reduce prices. Hence, it was natural to ask if in fact there had been an increase in demand and then to seek a cause.
Natural gas consumption as a feedstock for gasoline has increased in that producing corn ethanol requires fertilizer and heating for distillation, both of which use a lot of gas, although the former is probably a substitution for some other agricultural product. It was rational to ask if the relatively recent and Federally mandated addition of ethanol to gasoline increased natural gas demand.
Thanks for the data. It shows a baseline increase of 10% over the last year, which is more recent than the addition of high levels of ethanol in gasoline nor is it enough to explain the prices that we are seeing as a demand pull.
There are many variables in the equation of the price of crude oil. One of those variables is: Oil is tied to the US dollar. The more money we print, the less valuable the dollar, the higher the price for oil.
Possibly because we have a shortage of refineries.
We do not have a shortage of refineries.
The expansions and upgrades of the existing refineries, combined with our falling demand, has left us with a surplus of refining capacity.
The info I have is that refineries cannot make a profit
under the present situation. Also, several refineries have shut down for repairs.
Profit margins are tight at these high crude prices. Some less efficient refineries serving area with significant demand decrease have shutdown.
This is a fairly normal time for scheduled work with short term shutdowns.
But even running refineries at ~83% capacity on average (some of that 17% is those shutdown), we are still exceeding the demand for domestic refined product.
I didn’t think inflation was of any concern today? According the our guvmnt it’s at a manageable 1.5%. Don’t worry about the price of: Gas, food, clothes, wood, water, eletricity, etc. They have a formula that proves it.
(Sarc)
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