U.S. oil prices top $63

[lovuian]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=d40bf03c2f298f05

Crude-oil prices began the year on a higher note Tuesday, rising $2.21 to $63.25 on the New York Mercantile, highest intraday level since Dec. 14.

February heating oil also was on the rise, gaining by 4.27 cents to stand at $1.8125 a gallon. February unleaded gasoline traded at $1.7475 a gallon, up 2.01 cents
more...

Up Up And Away!!!

[radfringe]

1. drove past my regular gas station around 3:30pm yesterday

regular gas was $2.29/gal

just after 5pm, my partner drives past it - gas went up to $2.35/gal

we won't see a drop in prices until congress ( :eyes: ) calls for an investigation

[Gman]

2. More of an investigation than

4 CEO's sitting in chairs, unsworn like bumps on a log and repeating "I dunno."

[radfringe]

3. sad but true

as long as the Gas-Oil-Petroleum party is in charge we (the 'merican people) will continue to be tinkled-down on

[radfringe]

9. went up to $2.39/gallon

yesterday afternoon (1/4/06)

that's 10-cents within 24 hours....

[obreaslan]

4. I got gas on Friday and paid $2.01 per gallon....

By Monday, the same station went up to $2.17. :grr:

[Earth_First]

5. It's already back into the 2.45/2.55/2.65 gallon here in Rochester...

after making very brief rebounds into the 2.33/2.43/2.53 range. I listened locally to the station that carries AAR that deals with local issues, and the claim made that Rochester has the second highest national average currently...

Here we go again. What's the 'excuse' this time?

[LostinVA]

6. Almost $1 more a gallon than last year

There is no real excuse, not when the oil companies are making incredible profits. They were making these when gas was $1.50 a gallon, but now...?!

[Tesha]

11. "Because we can!"

> Here we go again. What's the 'excuse' this time?

"Because we can!"

What more of an excuse do they need? :-(

Tesha

[WePurrsevere]

7. Great... we're juggling funds as it is. We just had a delivery of 150 gals

... at $2.29 per gallon which we hope will last through the month with the thermostat set at 65 during the day and 60 at night. We used wood for a bit (the house we just bought last Spring has an old dual furnace) but with my husband being disabled it's been difficult for him to keep going down to the basement every four hours to keep the fire going. We'll still use wood now and then but as backup and in the heatalator assisted fireplace... well, once we get the new glass doors installed.

As for heating oil being more expensive then unleaded gas... other then supply and demand there's really no logical reason that I can remember off hand for that since if I remember correctly it's actually less processed then unleaded gas.

[Javaman]

8. They realized that I quick jump pissed everyone off...

We are now getting the slow squeeze.

[depakid]

10. Expect a lot more price instability

The depletion models are pretty well in agreement that rather dramatic price swings will be common during the end of production plateau period, so what you need to follow is the moving average over time.

That will continue to rise- and if Simmons' analysis of the Saudi oil fields is correct (and there are increasing indications that it is) then we may well already be past peak production, and steeper rises may be closer than people think.

Just a hunch-, but I look for the moving average to start hovering around $90.00 a barrel in 2007- and that's not something entirely attributable to the oil companies- or to OPEC.

[Texifornia]

14. Exactly

I saw an important non-official indicator of Peak Oil over X-Mas.

I was visiting downtown Houston and went by Brown's Book Store, a very famous technical book store frequented by engineers in the energy industries, to shop for my own technical library.

On the featured book table was Simmon's "Twilight in the Desert".

Brown's is probably the most conservative non-religious book store ever conceived and they cater to the Oil Patch. They do not readily ascribe to fringe theories especially when hydrocarbons are involved.

It probably means nothing...I'm sure the oil will last for ever and ever....


We are in for a big fat slap of reality in this country.

[depakid]

18. We also have a "little" problem with natural gas

in North America that nobody likes to talk about.

Although he's not an energy investment banker like Simmons, Julian Darley wrote a well researched book called "High Noon for natural Gas" that's a bit disturbing. We've already passed peak production- and so to keep up with rising demand (or to exploit the Alberta tar sands)- the deficit will have to be made up by LNG... and guess who's got most of the remaining natural gas... those same nations who don't like us very much.

America's in for a wake up call, that's for sure. It's just a matter of when.

[Strelnikov_]

20. So Will We Have To Revise The Tar Sand Description To

"Making (really) expensive oil from (expensive) natural gas".

And, yes, the name of one of the countries that has the largest reserves starts with an I and ends with an N.

Is it possible to make LNG tankers (that have the explosive energy of 20 Hiroshoma bombs) RPG proof? Sure hope so.

[NickB79]

24. Unless they build nuclear reactors ON the mining ranges

And use them to cook the tar to oil. No need for natural gas, but still going to be very, very expensive oil being produced. Then you have the issue of water supplies already being strained to wash the tar out of the sand in the first place. Maybe a pipeline from the Great Lakes to Canada?

[Strelnikov_]

23. And The Data Just Keeps Getting Worse

How soft a powerdown will there be with a 5% worldwide depletion rate?

- Depletion rates for the North Sea and North Slope fields are running much higher than anticipated (10%+).

- A recent study indicates that the much ballyhooed EOR simply produces more now with the result of a higher depletion rate later, and no appreciable gain in recovery.

In this paper we use results from the Hotelling model of non-renewable resources to examine the hypothesis that technology may increase petroleum reserves. We present empirical evidence from two well-documented mega-oilfields: the Forties in the North Sea and the Yates in West Texas. Patterns of depletion in these two fields suggest that when a resource is finite, technological improvements do increase supply temporarily. But in these two fields, the effect of new technology was to increase the rate of depletion without altering the fields' ultimate recovery - in line with Hotelling's predictions. Our results imply that temporary low prices may be misleading indicators of future resource scarcity and call into question the future ability of current mega-oilfields to meet a sharp increase in oil demand.

[Bigmack]

12. "The Long Emergency"...

Last night I was re-reading "The Long Emergency" by James Kunstler.

Oil was $10 a barrel when Dumbya took over. If oil had gone up that much on Clinton's watch, the repubs wouldn't have impeached him, they would have lynched him.

[Ezlivin]

13. How can you read that before bed????

I've read "The Long Emergency" and it just made me despondent. Every time I thought I had an answer for a problem, Kunstler just rained all over it.

Do you feel like you are witnessing the most immense slow-motion train wreck ever?

[Strelnikov_]

19. Yes, I Do

And even here most think we can wave a magic wand and it will all go away.

[Lochloosa]

15. Ok. Explain this to me like I'm a three year old child

Prices are at 60 to 63 a barrel. Right where they were after Katrina. So why are gas prices still around 2.30 to 2.40 a gallon? Shouldn't they be at 3.10 to 3.30 a gallon like they were after Katrina?

[Roland99]

16. Oil was at or above $70 right after Katrina.

Also, gas supplies were interrupted in the gulf resulting in shortages throughout the southeast which put further price pressure on gas.

[hatrack]

17. Because we got huge infusions of refined product from the EU & SPR

Those stockpile releases are now approaching pretty much used up, and with some of the Gulf Coast refineries still offline, the short-term (i.e. a couple of months) relief is now officially over. Still, there's some of that refined gas and diesel filtering through the system.

Post-hurricane, there was also a lot of panic buying, which as you probably remember caused spot shortages in Atlanta, New Jersey and other areas of the SE and Eastern Seaboard. That, along with general uncertainty as to just how bad the damage was to the oil patch, really pumped up pump prices.

Also, we're not a peak travel season - January's about as far as you can get from Labor Day in terms of leisure travel.

It's worth noting that oil at $63+ is still only about 10% below post-Katrina per-barrel prices. I'd say that price increases are going to continue.

[LeftHander]

21. Ghost of Christmas "Low Gas Prices"

Has given up the ghost.

How transparent. the gas prices plummet after bad press right before Christmas to give everyone that happy warm feeling so they spedn a little extras this year. After the wrapping papaer is tossed out nd the first Credit Card bill comes in...

WHAM!

Gas is now 2.54 as of yesterday in Milwaukee and will be over 2.70 tommorrow with oil $63 a barrel.

What a sham. Lowered prices to boost the economony at xMas.

[NickB79]

22. For comparison, here is a news article from 1 year ago (oil $49/barrel)

http://www.nacsonline.com/NR/exeres/0000711alpfizawytsgoyzgd/NewsPosting.asp?NRMODE=Published&NRORIGINALURL=%2fNACS%2fNews%2fDaily_News_Archives%2fJanuary2005%2fnd0125051%2ehtm&NRNODEGUID=%7bCF81EE11-3F4F-4977-B6A9-5C6317C9D40C%7d&NRQUERYTERMINATOR=1&cookie%5Ftest=1

"NEW YORK -- The average retail price of gasoline in the United States increased a nickel per gallon over the past two weeks --and could climb even higher, according to an industry analyst.

Reuters reports that the national average for self-serve regular unleaded gas reached $1.8463 a gallon during the two weeks surveyed through to Jan. 21, an increase of more than 5 cents per gallon from Jan. 7, according to the nationwide Lundberg survey of about 7,000 gas stations."

Yesterday gas prices here jumped to $2.39 in the Twin Cities.

So, in Jan. 05, gas prices were $1.85, and jumped to $3.00 by late summer. In Jan. 06, gas prices are $2.39. What are they going to jump to in the summer of 06? My guess is at least $3.00, and probably $3.50 or more if another major hurricane hits oil-producing regions of the Gulf. And I do fully expect summer 2006 to be another bad hurricane season.

[Strelnikov_]

25. Another Rita That Tracks 80 mi. Further South

and runs its storm surge right up the poopshoot of Galveston bay and the Houston Ship Canal, it's game over. Forty percent of the nations refinery capacity gone, access to most of the SPR oil gone since the pipelines will be wiped out, major transshipment (imports) point gone.

Isn't a non-redundant energy infrastructure great.

Then again, we are now managed by a faith-based government. Maybe a national prayer session will just bump it toward those brown people to the south.

[catmandu57]

26. It's just getting started

When people start driving more as the tempraturee warms the price will rise with the increased usage and by the time the hurricane season hits this year we'll already be approaching 3.00 a gallon.
If we take a direct hit on the refineries we'll be up the creek, if I were a reptile in the congress I'd be nervous about this, high fuel prices, especially near an election tend to piss people off, and a pissed off electorate is nothing to take lightly.

[u4ic]

27. Jumped 6 cents a litre here yesterday afternoon

and before I had a chance to fill up. :grr: