Posted on 05/30/2013 11:45:13 AM PDT by Obadiah
For anyone still questioning whether the U.S. shale-oil boom is a historic reshaping of the U.S. energy market, today’s Energy Department report on domestic crude-oil stockpiles offers a striking statistic: The U.S. currently has more oil in storage than at any time since 1931.
Commercial crude-oil stockpiles rose to by 3 million to 397.6 million barrels last week, the Energy Department said in its weekly Petroleum Status Report. Oil stockpiles are up 10% since the start of the year and 30% since May 2008.
All that extra supply has kept U.S. oil prices under $100 a barrel even as prices overseas remain in triple digits. (Nymex crude-oil futures were recently 33 cents higher Thursday, at $93.46 a barrel, supported by a jump in gasoline demand.)
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
ping
It’s absurd that small US oil companies cannot export oil and get a fair price.
I contend that we have a refinery bottleneck in the form of EPA-mandated formulations of boutique gasolines limiting refining capacity. Get rid of the EPA nightmare and watch what happens to gas prices. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
As soon as you supply O-dinga and his cronies with moohlah, you'll be able to demand lesser prices, isn't that how they play?
It's a brother's plan for keeping us down. Dig yourself out of one hole and they make sure ten others are placed in your way, it's the Chicago way...
Good collateral when the Chinese loans come due.
We are sitting on our natural resources while using others.
Time to replenish the strategic reserve.
We do have a refinery problem IMO. When they reformulate each spring and fall, the prices spike. That shouldn’t be taking place.
Fracking has made nat gas cheap and the industry is out ahead of the EPA. But give them a year or two and fracking will be heavily regulated or outright banned and probably for no good reason. See California... it has already started.
I have always wondered if the real drive here is to make energy expensive so that we use less of it and then polute less. Ignore the clains that extraction might be unsafe for the enviroment. The real goal is to force us to use less energy.
A decade of sustained cost pressure will force Americans to buy smaller cars, make our homes more efficient, etc. etc.
We are being “nudged.”
According to a “unimpeachable source” the production cost of oil from Bakken and Eagle Ford is around $70 per barrel. That pretty much pegs the price of gasoline right there. Unless you would rather purchase “cheaper” oil from abroad, exporting our dollars and jobs overseas, and empower our enemies.
The era of $10/barrel oil is not coming back. And I don’t want it to. I’m actually fine with gas in the $3-$3.50 range as it is necessary to support our own production. As long as the price is stable, the economy will adjust.
But somehow, there are people like preppers who seem to live in a constant mode of concern that there is currently or will soon never be enough and it is that fear that seems to be the “fuel” that keeps driving the market in this case.
No doubt.
Rhetorical question: Which fed agency or agencies get to decide if a new refinery is built or not?
Wrong. The goal is government control, the ultimate goal of Marxists since forever. They want central planning for transportation, housing, vocations, etc.
Energy usage is merely the means to an end.
The SPR currently holds the equivalent of 80 days of import
protection (based on 2012 data of 8.72 million barrels per day of net petroleum imports).
No big new refineries in over 25 years. The old ones keep getting modified to meet epa rules and regs and they do “up” their capacity but with the “summer blends” and the “winter blends” and spring time and fall time and solar equinox time and all the other crap I can see why it’s hard to run them. Their profit margins are small and the gov gets more per gallon than “big oil” does. How frickin’ stupid? John Stossel had a good article on Townhall.com yesterday about that very subject.
So making energy expensive will force us to look to the goverment for our salvation.
And in typical government fasion, they won’t be prepared if what they want actually happens.
Example: Libs are/were pushing electric cars but no one is planning for the massive upgrade in the power grid that will be necessary to support all of the electric cars.
No jobs, just like in the 1930's. People don't need the gas to get to work anymore. There is no work.
? ? ? ? ? ?
Also, please consider the falling value of the dollar when comparing prices over time.
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