I dont really understand about the price of oil per barrel etc. I do know petrol is about to go a  $1.50 per litre..but thats it.

Why are we paying so much for petrol. Is it oil shortage..Iraq war?..any infromation would be appreciated.

I think we are being ripped off a lot of the time.. Will naming and shaming service stations who take advantage of us , work?

Thanks for that.

Last year I watched a program on ABC called "Crude".. from what I saw it was thought by some that petroleum companies are exaggerating the scarcity of oil..

Some say there are large areas of likely locations yet to be researched and developed..hopefully this is so..or the day of the petrol driven car will be replaced with what? Great for the environment of course.

Not to mention the thousands of household products we take for granted that come from oil.

They do withhold it because they know the western world is hamstrung by environazis- and they're laughing all they way to the bank.

The ME where the majority of the oil holdings are realise that we are being held hostage in regard to fossil fuels- no one is prepared to invest in expensive funds to find new oil fields when they will spend all the money prospecting only to have the chance on return lessened by freaks with an agenda who declare the rare 'southern orchid spider' etc which they haven't discovered before- because no one actually looked for it- is in critical danger- woe is me.

Suck it up leftards- you're to blame more than anyone

mantra wrote on Mar 20^th, 2008 at 6:16am:


The two bolded statements appear to be contradictory.  You say 'neocons' only think that the witholding of oil reserves is because new exploration is delayed by environazis.  Then say new exploration should only be considered a last resort for environmental reasons.

I expect you will see the 'neocons' concerns are justified by your very own statement.

The problem with biofuels: http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1169519086

OPEC is withholding supply to push the price up, but they only own about half (I think) of the world's oil. There are plenty of oil shales and tar sands in Canada that we can make oil from if we get desperate. You can even make it from coal, but it is probably messy and expensive.

The biggest problem with oil at the moment is that it is too cheap. Until recently, the efficiency of American automobiles had actually been getting slightly worse over several decades. We have a long way to go before it becomes a real problem.

Another issue is that people will start stockpiling oil as it runs out. The US government has a small stockpile. Of course, the easiest way to store it is to just leave it in the ground. This will help reduce the economic shock as it runs out.

Sprintcyclist wrote on Mar 20^th, 2008 at 8:22am:



http://www.caltex.com.au/pricing_his.asp

This might be a place to start.  At one stage I was charting petrol prices in different currencies to see if they accounted for currency fluctuation (they do).

Suggest we work off the mean city wholesale price for mainland states of Australia (leaving out the NT and SA) then add 5 cents which is a typical retail margin. That was 131.7 cents per litre for February. The NT is artificially high, and SA is artificially low. Retail prices fluctuate too much to be of any value.

Maybe FD can start a new thread. We should think of an appropriate (small) prize.

Vic: 131.8
NSW 132.4
ACT 131.0
QLD 132.3
WA 130.9
Mean Wholesale 131.7 (Mean Retail 136.7)

So far for December 2008 we have :

sprintcyclist .....$1.64 per litre (you can change it if you like)
musician35 ......$2.50 per litre

I have some limited inside information, so I disqualify myself from winning the prize.

musician -  Sounds like an scientific method of agreeing on the price.
What s say we use this formula

Average petrol price = $1.64 + the price at my local pump - the price at my local pump ?? 

cheating is allowed, if you have inside information, use it to your best advantage.

we have too many threads as is. Want to put it on your forum ??

When is cut off day for all changes , guesses ? End of financial year ?