Gas price check up

[Snowman]

C-O-L-L-U-S-I-O-N  Collusion
\Col*lu"sion (k -l  zh n) , n. [L. collusio: cf. F. collusion.] 1. A secret agreement and cooperation for a fraudulent or deceitful purpose; a playing into each other's hands; deceit; fraud; cunning.


(Message edited by snowman on November 26, 2004)

[ovr50]

Snowy, you and I disagree on the "collusion" issue with gasoline retailing. What you see as collusion, I see as a few (less than 10) companies working in very competitive and visable market with the base product pricing set by global market forces. I suspect we will never agree nor do we have to - but I'm right....

[Snowman]

From the desk of Snowman:
Definition of Collusion
Col*lu"sion (k -l zh n) , n. [L. collusio: cf. F. collusion.] 1. A secret agreement and cooperation for a fraudulent or deceitful purpose; waking up every third Tuesday to find all the gas prices to be $0.15 higher at every petroleum retail outlet in the city; deceit; fraud; cunning.

[safristi]

Monopoly...a great game where ya can move around the city in an old boot,a doggie.a cannon or a top hat...Safristi longtime MONOPOLY WINNER.What gets my go direct to jail and don't collect $200 goat is the differential for Sunoco 94 from regular up to 13cents a Litre,no reason for that.
aside for Snowy Sunoco94 is what we in syphllisation use instead of the stuff wrung out of a wet coal dust soaked rag..!! available in Inuit country....

[ovr50]

Snowy, wrong!!! Why can't that scenario occur if each retailer immediately adjusts the price to match every other retailer? No secret about it - hell, there is no more visable price than the price of a litre of gasoline. Since all retailers prices are open and visable, they adjust immediately. When a price war erupts, as often in the Fraser Valley, prices may move either way more than once a day. Are you saying that is because of a secret agreement? BS, plain and simple. Millions of dollars have been spent on govt. studies to see if there is price-fixing in the gasoline prices. Every one has reached the conclusion there is not. Are you saying these study authors are all stupid? People believe what they want to believe and since most people can't figure how oil is priced on the world market and therefore, can't figure out how gasoline is priced in the local market, they yell "conspiracy" & "price-fixing". But it isn't and that's been proven.  

If you're looking for deception and collusion, look to the world scene when the MAIN reason that the US is in Iraq has nothing to do w WMDs, terrorists, or taking democracy to the Iraqi people; it has lots to do w the Iraq being the 2nd largest holder of crude oil after the Saudis. The US relationship w the Saudi dictatorship is a love-hate one and the US is fearful it could blow up one day, thus seriously impacting the world (US mainly) supply of cheap crude. If the US can control by influence Iraq, they then have a card to play against Saudi Arabia. If the Middle East blows up, and oil is restricted, the world free-market economy is destroyed. You think gasoline is expensive now!! This is VERY serious stuff to the US (rightly so) and is the main driving factor in this administrations actions in the Middle East. Oil is vital to "US national security" and they will do whatever they think they need to in order their supply be protected. That's includes spilling the blood of their own military young men/women.  

There are far bigger issues here than just the price of gasoline (which is cheap by world standards). Maybe the NA nations should try to scale down their oil consumption per capita which now is about the highest in the world. And now China wants to be just like us and have all the material things (like cars). It looks very scary to me and there's not a damn thing you can do about it....

Rant off (for now)..........

[safristi]

Ovr..."Conspiracy THEORIST"...It would be cheaper to buy Middle East oil than spend 100's of Billions freeing them...after all it is a depleting commodity soon(45years) to be gone...
CHEAP CRUDE ??last time I looked it has gone from the mid teens to the 50's per barrel in a few short years....

[Snowman]

I’m not going to debate the price fixing issue any more….I must be imagining the every third Tuesday price increase.
 
I do however support American foreign policy it’s presence on the globe to protect my way of life.  

[ovr50]

Snowy - no, you are correct in seeing price increases on a regular basis, every third Tuesday or whenever; all I'm saying is that those changes are not price-fixing per se.  

As to second para - agreed, we really have no choice.  



Regular is 88.5 here this AM.

(Message edited by ovr50 on November 26, 2004)

[Snowman]

83.9 now fer regular in Suds

Ontario boosts required levels of ethanol in gasoline  

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041126.wethan1126/BNStory/N ational/

[davidm]

82.8 less the usual 3.5 cents this morning in Vancouver

[Turbo Bob]

People in the UK have accepted a long time ago that the taxes on fuel don't go anywhere near the road network.  Trouble is, the money for other things (schools, hospitals etc.) will have to come from somewhere, if they cut fuel duty. (e.g. income taxes would go up, personally I think a flat rate tax would work best, but that's another issue

As the majority of our petrol prices are taxation, this deters enough people with access to public transport to use it, but our public transport is pretty cr@p really, and quite expensive.  Also the oil companies don't make nearly as much gain as the treasury do when the prices fluctuate.

What I can't understand is that everyone knows that the oil will run out sooner or later, it's only a finite resource (when, is the matter of much debate), but economies like the US seem to pride them selves in building cars that guzzle more fuel than anything beforehand, I just don't understand this..?  Surely everyone should be conserving oil reserves as much as possible now?

Can you imagine in the future, when the oil does run low, people won't believe the speed at which we are consuming it today, knowing that every major oilfield is reducing it's capacity. I mean the Ford Excursion, what's all that about !?!

[ovr50]

You're right, Bob, and the US is placing it's own economic well-being at risk by becoming more and more dependent on Middle East oil, which is risky business. You will see the US meddling more in the Middle East so as to ensure their continued supply of oil. Oil is vital to the US economy and they will go to extreme lenghts to secure it. It's a very dangerous situation for the world and will become more dangerous in the future. Just my opinion.

[Snowman]

Dow and GM Launch Phase II of World's Largest Industrial Fuel Cell Program

Monday November 29, 9:02 am ET  

MIDLAND, Mich., Nov. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Dow Chemical Company and General Motors Corp., today launched the second phase of their joint project to prove the viability of hydrogen fuel cells for motor vehicles and possibly for distributed power generation. The project has now expanded from a single GM test cell, installed in February 2004, to a multi-cell pilot plant at Dow's Texas Operations in Freeport, TX.

In the first phase of this project, we collectively learned a lot about generating power from byproduct hydrogen via fuel cell technology, and now we're ready to build on what we've learned," said Gordon Slack, Dow's Global Business Director for Energy and Climate Change. "Dow is excited to contribute to this important project. It represents another step in the search for cost-effective fuel alternatives, with the potential to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
 
From a Test Cell to a Pilot Plant
 
During the second phase, the fuel cell pilot plant will be integrated into Dow's chemical and plastics production facility via the power distribution grid and Dow's hydrogen clean-up and pipeline system. While generating real- world data to enable further development of the technology, these fuel cells will also supply up to 1 megawatt of energy for use in Dow's Texas Operations.
 
Phase II objectives include: building on key learnings from Phase I and demonstrating fuel cell reliability for Distributed Generation; improving and optimizing the reliability of power from the fuel cells; investigating fuel cell waste heat recovery opportunities; and understanding hydrogen purity requirements.  
"The biggest benefit for GM is learning to work with real world hydrogen that has some impurities in it, and not the pure hydrogen you get in a lab setting," explained Timothy Vail, GM's director of business development for fuel cell activities. "Not only can we test the effects of hydrogen purity, we can also test different generations of fuel cells, all in a controlled setting. We learn about durability and reliability. GM is excited about the progress of the Dow installation. Moving from the test stage to the pilot stage represents a big leap forward in system design."
 
A Step Toward Cost-Effective and Sustainable Energy
 
If Phase II proves successful, the project will transition to Phase III, large-scale commercialization by 2007. Ultimately, Dow and GM could install up to 400 fuel cells at Dow facilities, to generate 35 megawatts of electricity, equivalent to the amount of power needed for 25,000 average sized American homes.  
"This project is yet another demonstration of our commitment to exploring cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels for power generation," said George Kehler, Dow's Commercial Manager for Renewable and Alternative Energy. "We strongly support efforts to increase fuel diversity in the U.S. and to reduce our nation's dependence on extremely high-priced domestic natural gas. Inflated and volatile domestic energy and feedstock costs continue to undermine the global competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers. For the sake of our nation's economy, we need to find better solutions. Fuel cell technology can be a part of that solution in the future."