Oil hits record $135 a barrel

[Ro Bot]

Motorists were handed more grim news today as oil hit a new record above $135 a barrel on supply fears and US economic concerns.

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[Mike]

$3.989 is what I paid at the pump, last evening. Diesel was $4.699.

Maitland won't be shedding any tears for us, as he let me know prices were at $9.30/gallon in his area.

[Knockdow]

I dont see any slow down on consumption, the prices will continue to rise till we cut usage. Simple supply and demand ecpnomics with some ruthless corporations and nations at the controls.

[MiLadyCeilidh]

I fill up maybe every 6-8 weeks. Now does that tell you anything?

My hubby took my car two days ago and heading W-I-70. Get a phone call, he was rear ended IN MY CAR!

[Mike]

I can't do any more to cut consumption, other than buy a vehicle with better mileage figures. (And until you can show me the car that will save me enough fuel to make its own payment, I'm not interested.) I drive back and forth to work, to the bank on Friday evening and to the grocery on Saturday morning. That's it. I go nowhere else.

I heard a report on the radio, last evening. Apparently OPEC is now saying we can pretty much expect oil to reach the $200/barrel price range. And guess where they are placing the blame? On the declining American dollar. Gee, go figger, we're to blame for yet another world crisis. The report said we can almost depend on seeing a $4 increase per barrel, for every cent the dollar loses on the world market.

Riddle me this - we have oil reserves in this country to last us, at the current rates of consumption, for several centuries. Yet we are importing over 70% of our oil from other nations. And don't kid yourselves, as a large quantity of that is coming from Canada. We are also importing approximately 15% of our refined gasoline.

We're trying to use a weakening dollar on the world market to buy what we already have? Can someone please show me the sense in that little ditty?

And now, since we're panicked about rising gasoline costs, we're using approximately 2 gallons of petroleum to turn food into one gallon of ethanol. Fact - 1 gallon of gasoline will produce 130% of the power made by 1 gallon of ethanol. Fact - our food prices are going through the roof. Fact - third world nations are starving (and who do you suppose is getting the blame for that?). But we're using petroleum to turn food into an inefficient fuel? Sorry, but I must be pretty thick, as I fail to see any sense in that either.

I don't know, I suppose I am more sensitive to rising petroleum costs than most. My livelihood comes from people trying to make more power from their engines. And it's not cheap to make more power from an engine. It takes lots and LOTS of money to do that. And when people are pinching pennies to purchase gasoline that is priced 4-5 times too high, then our business suffers. And we've been suffering for about as long as we can suffer.

We have enough coal reserves to produce more energy than all of the oil in the Middle East combined. So why are we not burning it to make power? Why are we not using more wind-generated power? Why are our coastal areas not using wave-generated power? Solar energy technology has taken off in the last few years, so why are we not exploiting it?

Oh, yeah, silly me. if we were using FREE solar power, FREE wave power and FREE wind power, the rest of the flippin' world would not be able to hold us up and remove our dollars from our pockets. Amazing that Willie's NAFTA and W's CAFTA have actually left us any dollars, isn't it? I wonder who thinks they're going to be able to put that toothpaste back in the tube?!?

Yes, this is a rant. Just in case you were wondering...