Posted on 04/11/2005 5:58:56 PM PDT by OESY
Higher Taxes combined with a large market that will pay the high prices (trucking)
The taxes are appalling, thanks for the link, but they've been in place a while. Diesel prices were still the cheapest until the last few months, when they suddenly became the highest.
Excise taxes fall into this category....but unfortunately, sales taxes don't. That's why the state does not have an incentive for lower prices!
Nope, he is on Hydrogen Kick,
You don't suppose the loss of production capacity due to the explosion in Texas has anything to do with it do you....
That impression would be wrong, price goes up, consumption goes down, tax revenue goes down. When people conserve, the politicians have to figure a way to pick up the lost revenue, don't cha know.
Brian "Bart" Simpson has apparently never given much thought to economics. Hey Bart, supply and demand may have something to do with prices. Just a thought.
I hear this tired old question too many times! How much of our unleaded gas is refined in this country? How many refineries exist in the US? What is the current capacity for refining crude in each of these existing refineries? What would the maximum output be if all refineries in the US were maxed out?
As the article stated, what would the output of each of these refineries be if 37 different blends were not required by environmental laws?
If these questions are answered, maybe then I will agree that we need another refinery......
You do understand that our refineries are at 95% capacity with very little outage time don't you. You do understand that increasing competition will lower prices don't you.
There isn't a market alive that the beauracrats in California can't screw up. And they use 20-25% of all the oil in the country so when they screw things up, they really screw things up.
Meanwhile, those thieving bas_ards rake in record profits and continue to expand, anti-trust laws notwithstanding.
And when the chumps ... er, consumers ... scream TOO loud, they turn the heat down a notch. Now, instead of $2.50 a gallon, we breathe a sigh of relief that gas is only $2 a gallon. Never mind that it's double what it was two years ago ...
I'm a free market capitalist, so I guess I don't advocate the government stepping in to regulate the oil companies. But I eagerly await the day when I can tell them to stick their crude back in a hole.
You do need more refinery capacity, primary to deal with the ridiculous requirements to produce 17 different types of gasoline during different times of the year or in different zip codes. If everybody was producing the same 4 fuels, we wouldn't be bottlenecked at the refinery level virtually ever.
I believe some new sulfur rules went into effect in January for diesel.
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/diesel.htm
ENVIRONMENTALISTS. PERIOD.
All refineries are maxed out. The blends are additives to the gasoline.
Let me make sure I have his right. YOu don't think that gasoline prices have anything to do with the price of oil?
Oil is twice the price that it was a year or two ago. Yet the supply has actually increased on a daily basis and there isn't a single request for oil going unmet. And demand, while higher each year, certainly hasn't doubled in the last 12 or 24 months. And we hear 'concern' about terrorism but somehow that concern has been here since 2001 and prices didn't double until last year. Traders are the ones who cite 'concerns' despite the existence of plenty of oil and plenty more which hasn't even been looked for yet.
Enron did the exact same thing 3 years ago with electricity. When the market supply gets tight, it is much, much, much, much easier to rape and pillage energy buyers. Every little hiccup becomes reason for a new rise in prices which would otherwise be considered ludicrous. You can either start investigating the traders and analysts, or you can start DIGGING UP SOME MORE FREAKING OIL!!!! Or do both. I'm sure there is a little criminalism mixed in with our capitalism out there.
When the feds force one of the oil companies to do it or gives them some other kind of positive incentive.
If an oil company built a new refinery now it would lower the price of the products the company is selling.
Doesn't make much sense for an oil company to do that, does it?
Please let me know where it states that the price of gas must remain constant at 1.50 a gallon.
Adjusted for inflation, gas is cheaper than it has been in years.
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