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 ?

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



Im converting my car to LP very soon..It cost me $73  to fill my 45 litre tank today...and thats not the end of this lunacy.

freediver wrote on Mar 20^th, 2008 at 8:11am:


As efficiency is well known to be the best way to fight the bogey of Climate Change that now appears on the(our, well atleast my) doomsday clock I find this method of stockpiling worth repeating.

 

IQSRLOW wrote on Mar 19^th, 2008 at 11:30pm:


If you're so far to the right then please explain how Nuclear Power works in your world...

 

Aussie wrote on Jun 11^th, 2008 at 10:20pm:


Yes quite small...4,000. pple

I have 2  6 cylinder cars.
I drive wherever I want whenever I want.

So the price of fuel makes no difference to me.

BatteriesNotIncluded wrote on Jun 11^th, 2008 at 11:48pm:


Yes death..It is all about efficiency and I have altered my driving habits too..not so many uneccessary trips as  I once would have done..

Id like to be able to drive around with gay abandon too[ not literally of course     ]but the price of fuel here at present is $1.65-7..so thats not something Id consider ..

Its only going to get worse.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23898033-2702,00.html?from=public_rss

Higher petrol prices appear to be behind a slump in the restaurant trade, a sharp halt to retail spending and a collapse in consumer confidence.

But that's basically as far as the bowser blues go. Australians are driving a little less, and this is having a ripple downward effect for many businesses. But consumer spending generally remains strong.

Higher petrol prices may even have indirectly led to a boom in the living-room economy, with a jump in demand for gadgets and household equipment and furnishings.

The Weekend Australian has trawled through the data, and interviewed experts and business chiefs to challenge some of the fuel myths.

The typical family is spending substantially less on petrol today, when unleaded is nudging $1.70 a litre, than it was a decade ago, when pump prices were $1 per litre cheaper.

For every $100 in real household expenditure in 1999, petrol accounted for about $3.70. The share was as high as $4.50 in the early 1990s, in the aftermath of the last recession.

The latest figures crunched by CommSec economist Craig James place the bowser's bite on the household budget at about $2.90.

Incomes have risen faster than petrol prices. Why else would the graph start pointing south from the mid-1990s, when the nation began its longest run of prosperity?

In the short run, though, Australians are driving less.

Consider the upside-down nature of the latest national accounts. They show total consumption rising by 4.3per cent over the year to the March quarter, hardly proof of an economy on the edge.

Break down the data for the six months to the March quarter, when petrol prices began their latest spike, and something fascinating happens. Total consumption rose by 2.3 per cent in real terms. Again, a robust number. But three big items of the household budget went backwards.

Spending on hotels, cafes and restaurants dropped by 0.8 per cent - suggesting a recession occurring in the after-dark economy.

Spending on running a car - on petrol and other costs - also fell by 0.5per cent.

The knee-jerk response to these two minus signs would be to assume that people turned to public transport or took cabs. But spending on transport services slumped by 2 per cent.

The real economy transaction goes something like this: motorists responded to rising prices at the pump by cutting back on the nights out, and on trips to some shops. But they still drove to work in roughly the same numbers.

The money saved at the bowser has been diverted to the living-room economy. The national accounts showed spending on furnishings and household equipment up by 4per cent for the same six-month period, and spending on communication gadgets up 3.4per cent.

This might explain why electronics chain store JB Hi-Fi has just lifted its profit forecasts, defying the general gloom across the economy. JB Hi-Fi chief executive Richard Uechtritz said that as more people stayed home because of rising food and fuel prices, many families were updating television sets and buying faster computers.

This is not to play down the slowing in the economy, but to place petrol prices in perspective.

The cost to families of servicing their mortgages now happens to take about four times as much of their budget as fuel.

For every $100 in disposable income across all households, the mortgage repayment chews up $11, while other consumer debts account for $2.90.

Look at these sums another way - the credit card bill is roughly equal to what people spend at the bowser. The big picture is the mortgage.

Unlike the car, which you can leave in the garage, or park on the street, home interest repayments have to be made each month, otherwise the bank gets edgy.

The retailer with perhaps the closest ear to the real economy is Gerry Harvey, chief executive of the Harvey Norman chain. He is downcast, but yet to call an end to the prosperity party.

"Money is very tight," Mr Harvey told The Weekend Australian.

"Things have not improved. Neither have they become worse. From January to now, things have become a lot tighter.

"But we still have full employment, the resources boom and a high Australian dollar, which have helped retail shops."

Mr Harvey predicted: "Things will remain the same or get worse in the next few months - but this depends on our employment levels."

It is time to stop the whingeing. While record high petrol prices are yielding all sorts of horror headlines, they haven't yet done that much damage to the real economy.

The simplest measure of this is monetary policy.

The Reserve Bank confirmed this week that it is not ready to begin easing official interest rates. In fact, it stands ready to raise them again if wage rises get out of hand.

By sitting on the fence, the Reserve Bank confirmed that the economy hasn't slowed enough for its liking.

I think these two gentleman and their over-friendly relationship have a lot to do with why the price of oil is so high



It is a well known fact that since the British established the "Grand 'ol Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" in the 1920's that the Western oil companies have pretty much owned the place as their own personal oil field. Today the British have taken a backseat in world affairs, so the Yanks have taken their place, but the Saudi Kingdom is still a personal possession of Western oil companies.

And strangely enough, in 2002, when the Yanks wrested control of the world's other largest oil fields from Saddam, meaning they now controlled about 80% of the world's known oil, the prices sky rocketed, and guess what?? American oil companies all of a sudden began reporting a 4 fold increase in their profits... Funny that, isn't it?

Or if you like we could always just blame "Those damn ay-rabbs" and carry on about "applying the blowtorch" to them.

sprint thanks for the welcome.

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In the period 2004-2006, there was a surplus each year in oil supply, yet the price still kept rising. Also due to the "Energy security" policies of the USA and her allies, the oil supply is now more firmly under the control of the USA, so why would there even be any speculation of a lack in supply? If anything, the price of oil should've dropped, since the uncertainty about being able to extract it has been reduced.

Quote:



US oil companies are able to increase profits due to the fact they now have firmer control over more of the supply. Have you noticed the price of petrol in the USA has not risen as sharply? They still have some of the best petrol prices in the Western world. So we went to war, and sacrificed our sons for their gain in wealth and control over the world's economy? And what do we get for it? Higher prices at the bowser.

Quote:


4 fold increase is pretty good, considering how huge their profits are to begin with. Anyway the timing of the massive increase seemed to perfectly coincide with the invasion of Iraq, very strange indeed.

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Nor kissing for that matter.