That is measured in dollars. Given the way fuel prices has risen the last few years I guess it's no shock that fuel export dollars have risen alot too.

And by the way, some on the left are using this headline to deal a shot to the "drill baby drill" crowd. Not so fast. We (the U.S.) are still the worlds largest oil importer.

We're using less gas here so companies are selling abroad and making some nice coin. Nobody knows how to make a profit like the oil companies. Explains why they are complaining to lawmakers that they need more refineries. They should be a part of everyones portfolio, no matter how easy they are to hate.

So the price you pay at the pump has more to do with the greedy bastards, big oil and the speculators, than the supply.

There were big oil companies and speculators at the end of 2008 when the price of gas was $1.61 a gallon.

There were greedy bastards and OPEC on the day Obama took office when gas prices was $1.79 a gallon.

The price of crude is extremely high and we import more than anyone. No new areas in U.S. are opening for drilling and some old spots have been shut down. Also companies have had to shut down refineries in recent years due to regulations and see no profability in replacing them under current rules. They are complaining to lawmakers but nothing is changing.

Obama told you before the election that under his administration gas prices and electricity rates would "skyrocket". I played you the tape of the interview he gave, I believe it was a San Fran newspaper. I posted it at the old forum. Him in his own words. Don't look for excuses for him now that he's gotten exactly what he wanted.

Oh, and heard on the radio today that QE3 could be headed our way soon.

Where is Milton Friedman when you need him. - "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon."

More money you print the less it's worth and higher inflation is. Always and everywhere.

I love how the far left claim to be the champions of the middle and low class, yet their policies always lead to hidden and back door taxes that affect them as much as anyone. They are paying more at the pump too. More at the grocery store too. Their dollars are worth less too. They get sucked dry like everyone else.

seagull wrote:So the price you pay at the pump has more to do with the greedy bastards, big oil and the speculators, than the supply.

Duh!

I'm not on the side of any particular party at this time, I'm pretty much of the opinion that they are all the same (dirt-bag politicians ruled by lobbyists and super-PACs) except for maybe Ron Paul, and he isn't going to win anything.

Not taking any side in this discussion, but just to set some facts straight;

I remember paying over $4.00/gallon during my travels in 2008. There was talk at that time that gas would go over $5.00/gal. The chart I linked to will show this.

The only reason gas prices dropped to less than $2.00/gal. was because of the complete economic collapse that happened at the end of 2008. It was serious, severe, and world-wide. Pretty much everything in my career completely froze up at that time, locked up tight. I don't know what everyone else was doing but I was pretty sure we were staring in the face of a depression and a complete world-wide economic collapse at that time.

Just to put the gas prices into proper perspective...


http://66.70.86.64/ChartServer/ch.gasch ... t=US%20$/G

Mt.Fan:

Fair enough. But if you go even further back you will see that the average price per gallon through much of the Bush2 administration was around $1.50. I did, honestly, forget that it shot up before it shot back down again.

I filled up the other day and I have been getting more frustrated every time and I finally needed to vent.

I started working under Bush1, and under him and Clinton we paid an average of a little over a buck a gallon. Under Bush2 it was usually around 1.50 before it shot up in his second term as you pointed out. just don't understand why the hell it is so much higher now. But I feel like we're getting screwed somewhere and it pisses me off.

I try to understand. Bill O'Reilly has had a few segments on this issue in recent years. He, like Seagull, likes to think that speculators is behind it. But Neil Cavuto, the head of Fox Business network, argues with him on that point and says they are not the culprit. But the whole conversation ends up above my head.

No doubt that those on the left want to blame speculators and Wall Street types. They are the evil behind everything to them, despite the fact that our system has created the biggest and best country and economy in the history of the world, and nobody is even a close 2nd. I have a hard time believing it. But we're getting hosed from somewhere. I just wish we had leadership that would figure it out and fix it as opposed to being happy about it cause maybe people with drive their SUV's less.

This subject of gas prices rising and our president doing nothing to help us reminds me of a story I read of Kennedy battling the steel industry. And in using this example I hope I am showing that I am not trying to be partisan here.

When Kennedy took office he was concerned about rising steel prices. It had risen at a far larger rate than anything else in our economy. And at the time we didn't have plastic everything like now. Rising steel prices effected everything from toys to toasters to Thunderbirds.

He learned of negotiations starting between steel companies and the steelworkers and he pressured them to not raise wages to ensure that prices would not continue to raise. He also pressures the workers not to strike, which would have halted production and raised prices further.

Imagine, a democratic president telling union members to do what is right for the economy and their country...

Steel workers did not take a wage increase, they got some increased pension deal. But steel prices remained the same. Kennedy was happy. But then he got duped. Afterwards the chairman of US Steel announced he was going to raise steel prices anyway, and some of the other larger steel companies followed suit.

JFK publicly blasted the companies. Then got the press to help him pressure them further. Then he started to give government contracts to companies that had not raised prices, and since the government made up almost 10% of all the steel purachsed this was huge. And lastly, he got his brother the attorney general to start investigating some of these companies for price fixing. FBI agents came through the doors of their homes in the middle of the night to collect evidence.

Within a day or two the companies announced there would be no price increase.

Now JFK took some heat for his tactics. I'm sure he was called Hitler, I know he was accused of being a fascist. And if Obama did the same right now to oil companies I'm sure he would take heat as well. But sometimes the needs of the American people come first. Something JFK knew all too well. Something our current president knows nothing about. His ideology comes first, always. And his experience in community organizing has taught him nothing about having tough leadership.

Sen. Rand Paul detained by TSA in Nashville

Last Updated: 12:31 PM, January 23, 2012

NASHVILLE -- Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was briefly detained by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials at Nashville International Airport Monday after he refused a full-body patdown.

The search was ordered after a full-body scanner device detected an "anomaly" around the senator's leg, spokeswoman Moira Bagley told FOX News.

Paul offered to be re-screened by the scanner but refused a patdown "on the grounds that it [would be] infringing on his rights," Bagley said.

TSA officials escorted Paul out of the security area but allowed him to remain in the airport. The Kentucky senator, who has been a vocal critic of the TSA's patdown procedures, was then re-screened and re-booked on another flight without incident.

The TSA defended its policies in a statement released following the news of the incident.

"When an irregularity is found during the TSA screening process, it must be resolved prior to allowing a passenger to proceed to the secure area of the airport," spokesman Greg Soule said.

"Passengers who refuse to complete the screening process cannot be granted access to the secure area in order to ensure the safety of others traveling."

Paul was elected to the Senate in 2010.

I'm not on the side of any particular party at this time, I'm pretty much of the opinion that they are all the same (dirt-bag politicians ruled by lobbyists and super-PACs) except for maybe Ron Paul, and he isn't going to win anything.

Nailed it, Mt.Fan, as you so often do.

HB,

I don't have a clue as to what drives gas prices.

But one thing I do know for sure is, it sure as hell ain't supply and demand.


VT'er,

Aw shucks.

Think the prices are bad now, wait til the shit hits the fan in the Strait of Hormuz.

VT'er wrote:

I'm not on the side of any particular party at this time, I'm pretty much of the opinion that they are all the same (dirt-bag politicians ruled by lobbyists and super-PACs) except for maybe Ron Paul, and he isn't going to win anything.

Nailed it, Mt.Fan, as you so often do.

I love and admire the sentiment and accolades.

With a thought to boats. And falling out.

And hitting water.

I truly hope the governing folks of this country get good, and get good quick.

Think about this. What a great way to get more money out of the people's hand than to manipulate the price of gas. (by the government) Also, what logical sense is there for the stock market be as high as it is when the economy still sucks & unemployment &underemployment is 20% or more.

I don't have a lue as to what drives gas prices.

But one thing I do know for sure is, it sure as hell ain't supply and demand.

I'm glad you are sure of that, Mt.Fan, but I ain't so sure.

The current administration has allowed one off-shore drilling permit. One in 3 years. They are nixing the keystone pipeline. They won't allow drilling in a part of Alaska that almost nobody sees. Regulations on refineries have gotten so bad some have shut down and no new ones are opening.

As I said, we are still the #1 oil importer in the world. You can't tell me if American companies were able to drill off-shore and in Alaska instead of buying from OPEC, or buy from Canada through the proposed pipeline instead of buying from OPEC, that gas prices would not be cheaper. I am just not buying that for a second.

In other words, if we had more of a supply of American oil I think prices would definitely be cheaper.

May be other shenanigans going on as well though.

The feds have no problems investigating American companies for monopolies and price fixing but they have no problem bending over and grabbing their ankles while buying oil from OPEC.

The feds buy oil? For what, to fill the strategic reserve? That's all domestic oil. Otherwise they get their oil from the gas station like the rest of us. I'm not sure where the military gets theirs, but they're surely the biggest user of oil paid for by federal dollars.

Oil companies own everything, including politicians in all countries. And they dictate everything, including where they buy oil and where they move it around to. The rest is just political bullshit.

Lack of refineries more than anything else limits gasoline supply, and that comes from the NIMBY syndrome that exists everywhere in the US. Getting a refinery permitted anywhere is next to impossible due to local opposition except where they are already built. Even harder (or impossible) is getting any state to accept a nuclear waste disposal site but it's the same thing that stops them, no-one wants it in their back yard.

As much as anything all the different state gasoline regulations cause localized shortages due to the differing gasoline formula requirements that make efficient distribution impossibly complicated. One national standard would mean any gas could be sold in any state but that would require a federal energy policy, something we've never had.

There isn't any shortage of domestic oil thanks to the boom happening in North Dakota right now. Plus the natural gas boom in the east and elsewhere (and water disposal injection well earthquakes to go with it), plus the massive level of coal production equals lots of domestic fossil energy production. There is no shortage of conventional Canadian or Mexican oil either, they supply a lot of what we use here in Colorado. Hard to say that there's anything really holding it back except for a few places that don't matter that much anyhow. Price controls supply, and when the price goes up they have plenty of spigots to turn on... when the price drops they shut the spigots off. The deep water wells and the arctic wells are just a political football that both sides use for their own propaganda purposes. That stuff will all get drilled sooner or later and it doesn't make any difference if it happens right now or not. Those are just more spigots to be turned on or off whenever the oil companies decide they can make the maximum profit.

The Canadian oil tar product is not meant to be sold in the US. The purpose of the pipeline is to get it on to tankers in the Gulf so it can be shipped to China through the Panama Canal. The Canadians wouldn't allow them to run the pipeline on their own soil so they're going to run it through the US instead. If they can't run it through the US then they'll find an alternate route across the Canadian Rockies to get it to Vancouver, and it will still go to the same market (China) but through a different route. But it will be run through the US once they come up with an alternate route through the sensitive watershed area of Nebraska that has made them reject the arbitrary deadline that Congress railroaded through for purely political reasons. Hard to permit something when they don't even know exactly where they're going to run it (as of the last time I checked a week or 2 ago, haven't updated myself on this for awhile). Pure political crap there with both sides sucking up to their base. The only purpose for the pipeline is to give the oil companies a foreign outlet for their oil sand product via the Gulf. As I said it will get run once they find a route through Nebraska. In the mean time it just provides another political football.

Building the pipeline here would mean jobs, albeit temporary construction jobs. Plus maintaining the pipeline and cleaning up the spills (and there are always spills). Jobs is jobs, I guess we need all we can get even if it's just temporary pipeline construction so they don't have to run it across Canada. The shipping jobs on the tankers would be permanent, whether or not they go to US sailors is debatable.