How come we're doin all the work in the middle east..?

Question

but gas price is now abouve $4 a galleon? What will t hey blame it on now, golbal warming>? I cant wait till we switch to ethanol corn oil engines..yea right...

Its always been volatile though, and it seems like the policys we project to that region does'nt help matters in the least. And I bet the western corps involved there dont mind at all the profits..just look at the bonus their execs get. No one minds except the consumers who are gettin shafted..

Answer 1

I agree with you that this is frustrating, but I think it is our own fault. Who else should be helping us?

The United States uses twice as much gasoline per person as the Europeans. They have much better public transport and are much more advanced than we are in alternative energy. So, basically, they dont care nearly as much as we do what happens in the MidEast. A new oil crisis would have far less impact on them than on us.

Gasoline prices are slowly increasing because the supplies are less and the demand is much greater than a few years ago. Look up on line and see what year was the peak production year for each oil producing state in the USA. You will be pretty surprised to see how far oil production in the USA has fallen over your lifetime. And internationally there is WAY more demand for oil now than a few years ago. China was an oil exporter until 15 years ago, now they are the number 2 importer and the number of cars in China will double in the next few years. When someone has oil to sell there used to be only one or two hands raised at the auction, now there are 20. More demand means higher prices. The prices could go up or down in the short term but they are definitely going up over the next decade. You will soon be looking back fondly at the time of $4 gas.

About 2 -3 gallons of ethanol can be produced from a bushel of corn. Last year the total US crop of corn was about 12 billion bushels. If you do the math you will see that all the corn produced in the USA would give us the equivalent of less than 2 months supply of gasoline. And that would mean no corn for cattle or swine, and no corn for the 2000 or more different food products in the supermarket that contain corn, corn starch, corn sugar, corn syrup, etc...

There are some very practical solutions to the gasoline problem -- immediate MUCH higher gas taxes; lower speed limits to 50 or less; subsizide hyrbid cars and give heavy tax penalties to low mpg cars.

I don't see any of those solutions being very popular, do you?

Answer 2

A switch to alternative energy forms is inevitable whether it happens now because of high gas prices or later because of declining supply.

The reason for the high prices is that despite the great amount of world attention in the middle east, it remains a relatively volatile and dangerous area.

The gas price includes the cost of pumping out oil, transport, company profit and the danger that the oil companies go through.