Yup! Your CONgressperson did this too you, so it's no wonder their so unpopular. People instinctively know we're all in trouble whenever they're in session!!!
I believe you'll get worse MPG, so you will pay more for less.
E85 isn't insane, the mixtures, well that's another thing. If people knew the costs, they wouldn't be used.
Now, by Congressional fiat, change the materials that must be used in the blend -- without regard to their availability.
Thank God for Big Oil!
Actions are respectable. Moaning is pathetic.
Congress also decided not to include a liability waiver in the energy bill to protect refiners that blended MTBE into gasoline from lawsuits stemming from contamination. This has touched off a rapid phase-out of MTBE from gasoline stocks ahead of May when the renewable fuel provisions in the energy bill kick in and refiners say they face liability exposure.WTF does that mean?
I don't know guys, I'm coming from this thread. I need to be overdosed - brought up to speed - quickly.
Supply concerns for ethanol? hehehe...if my grandpa, great uncle, and great grandpa were still alive, there would be no supply concerns for ethanol. but then again, maybe so because they would drink it before it got shipped out. Hhhmmm....now where exactly did I put that copper pot?
Some environmentalists hate ethanol; they say that ethanol is terrible for the environment.
For instance, the runoff from corn fields create "dead zones" in rivers, lakes, deltas, and oceans near coastlines.
Furthermore, in order to produce ethanol, a lot of corn must be produced, using exorbitant amounts of water and other natural resources.
Therefore, ethanol creates huge environmental problems. It is more expensive than oil in many ways.
Bush could delay this order with an EO - one call to the EPA to suspend the ethanol mandate for one year is all it would take.
Darn, and I thought it was the EVIL oil companies that rasied prices. Socialism never works
SmartMoney.com
Tripping Out
By Ray Hennessey
April 18, 2006
"VACATION'S ALL I ever wanted," the great philosopher and humanitarian Belinda Carlisle once said. "Vacation, have to get away."
Now's the time of year when Wall Street analysts tell us summer effectively has been cancelled. This time round, the culprit is oil, which is topping $71 a barrel. That, in turn, has helped drive prices of gasoline higher. That's causing sticker shock, so much so that you, the American consumer, will be loath to fill up your tanks and go off on vacation. In fact, you'll probably just stay at home. Luckily you filled up the air-raid bunker in your basement with Yoo-Hoo and Glenmorangie when you were worried about the Millennium Bug back in '99.
Rubbish.
Are gas prices a problem? You bet. I own a Saturn, a boring one that does nothing to increase my dating rating but certainly doesn't burn fuel like a Hummer. Still, I raise my eyebrows and whistle when I see what I'm paying to fill up my tank. No doubt the airlines will struggle with higher jet-fuel costs. (Luckily, there's never been a problem that industry couldn't handle with skill, grace and intelligence.... Oh, even I can't finish that sentence without giggling like a toddler.) Cruise lines will pay through the nose, too. In fact, any industry that uses oil-based fuels will have to pay more, and that cost will be passed along to you and me.
But will we really not pay? Will a trip to Au Bon Pain replace the flight to Paris? Of course not. As a people, we Americans relish in our vacations. We don't quite carve out the time for vacations like the French and Germans do, but, then again, with the state of their labor markets, their vacations really don't count. One has to hold a job to qualify for a holiday.
Yet, Americans are big on vacation. We work hard and we play hard (or so the beer commercials tell us). We do it with the same aggressiveness we use to do everything else. All-you-can-eat buffets on cruises are not an opportunity, but a dare. We develop strategies for beating the lines at Six Flags that can outfox the brightest brass at the Pentagon. We own Winnebagoes larger than our homes.
So, a spike in gas prices isn't going to stop us. It's just going to make it more expensive. And you and I both know we're going to pay it. Why? Because it ain't that much. Let's face it, even if there were a $20 surcharge on your airline ticket, is that really enough to tell the kids that we're cancelling the vacation to Europe and will instead play Clue until Mommy hits Daddy over the head with a candlestick in the billiard room? We just have to dig a bit deeper, but dig we'll do — in our wallets and on the sand in the O.C.
The reasons for telling you this are twofold. First, from a personal-finance perspective, it's a great time to rework the sums on the back of your envelope to factor in the higher prices. You'll pay more for fuel, and you'll pay more for other things. Plan to deal with it. Save a little more each week. You can handle it.
From an investing perspective, you'd be wise to ignore the chatter that these prices will dampen summer travel. Last year, analysts suggested staying away from companies leveraged to leisure travel. If you did that, you would've missed a nice run-up in Carnival (CCL1) and Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL2) from the spring through the summer. In fact, once most people figured out that the gloom-and-doom predictions for summer travel weren't playing out, it was too late: The money had been made and investors bailed on travel stocks. That pattern isn't guaranteed to happen this year, but it certainly could. Many of the same themes from 2005 are being muttered about now: high oil, strife in the Middle East, rising interest rates, a spat between Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest. Companies dealt with all that just fine last year. They can do it again now.
Finally, this is a great chance to take yet another swipe at conventional wisdom. In investing, it almost never holds, nor is it often profitable. It's the contrarian view that often leads to the biggest gains. While other investors are placing bets on a slowdown in the economy by getting defensive, it may be worth taking a look at the companies leveraged to discretionary spending. That's where the bargains will be found, I'd wager.
Of course, I might not be around to see if the theory plays out. I'll be on holiday.
3 Ray Hennessey is editor of SmartMoney.com. Email him at rhennessey@smartmoney.com4.
URL for this article:
http://yahoo.smartmoney.com/editorspage/index.cfm?story=20060418
Why not just have the oil companies make ethanol from ethanne gas and water, as I proposed back in the mid-80's? There is plenty of ethane in natural gas that we can use to make as much drinking alcohol as we want! Tank up our cars, and ourselves...on BP or Shell Vodka!
We'll be remembering $3 gasoline with fondness, and fifty years from now when we tell our grandchildren they won't believe any of it.
