I hear vehicles are lining up to top off their fuel tanks...i remember back in 73 some clown had a sign..."a bushel of wheat for a barrel of oil" Yeah sure buddy !
This also happened not so long ago when a hurricane shut down the refineries in Texas and Louisiana so gas stopped flowing in the Colonial Pipeline for a while - prices jumped, shortages, and panicking.
based on gas prices over the weekend, either we've still not recovered from the great Texas freeze that crippled refineries in the Gulf (or the companies are happy to reap extra profits from what had been a shortage), so now we have an East coast distribution problem that will pile onto the pumps' pricing
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"Save the USPS, buy stamps; save the hobby, use commemoratives"
Amazing how quickly they can change the price on the sign..how about the cheaper gas still in the tanks? . When i purchased my 2012 Nissan Frontier 16 miles per gallon on a good day...the gas was $4.00 a gallon...ouch. Of course some folks outside the U.S.will consider that inexpensive.
based on gas prices over the weekend, either we've still not recovered from the great Texas freeze that crippled refineries in the Gulf (or the companies are happy to reap extra profits from what had been a shortage)
The Texas and Louisiana refineries only service a limited part of the country, yet the rise in gasoline prices is happening nationwide. In fact the rise began long before the Texas freeze. It's simply a manifestation of the economics of supply and demand for petroleum and petroleum products. When prices for crude oil collapsed (they actually went negative at one point), existing wells were shut in and plans for expanded production to meet future needs were shelved. We were already in a situation in recent years where discovery of new petroleum reserves was not keeping up with rising worldwide demand. That situation is continuing and has actually worsened in the past couple of years. The cheap oil has been found and most of it has been used. The remaining oil will be far more expensive to produce, and the uncertainty imposed by today's political environment adds to the rising production costs. Add the increasing gasoline taxes in recent years along with rising inflation now, and rising gasoline prices are likely to be a fact of life for quite a while. It's not a pretty picture!!!!
Tom
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"I no longer collect, but will never abandon the hobby"
And of course now that the governments are wanting us to switch to Electric vehicles, the revenue from oil/gas/petrol will diminish so now they will have to increase taxes on electric/hydro.
Bad enough that we are depleting the worlds stock of rare minerals very fast, at enormous environmental cost, replacing batteries in vehicles is not going to be cheap. Not now and certainly not when rare earth prices sky rocket.
I'm still uncertain how they will work in a Manitoba winter when it's minus 40 and I'm stuck on a closed road overnight or longer, reckon they will need a lot of tow trucks to move us all, with our dead batteries from trying to keep warm. That is all apart from the limited range which cannot get me to Winnipeg (200 Km)and back without recharging.
Que sera, sera
Sheepshanks, i always wonder how the indians survived in the winter...how far could they migrate ? My son was watching a show with Bob Dylan talking about when he was a kid in upper Minnesota...he said it was just cold and people did not have the clothes they have now.
The lunatics are definitely in charge of the asylum these days.
Here in Scotland they want to shut down our oil and gas industry completely because of "Climate Change".
The fools have no idea how to replace the thousands of jobs and they don't realise that oil is not just made into petrol/gasoline.
Where would the world be without polypropylene, nylon, rayon, viscose etc etc etc. Do they think our computers, tv's, fridges, game consoles and mobile phones can be made of wood?
Even if they could be made from wood there will be no wood available as they are burning it in biomass plants to generate electricity!!
Phil, reckon the natives kept warm with the fur coats from the wildlife that sustained them.
We really noticed a difference from UK when we moved over, at first it didn't seem too bad but over the years it gets into the bones. Thank goodness for thermals! Modern materials have really made a huge difference in that they are fairly lightweight but still warming. Means you can still get work outside done, not pleasant but possible.
It is mainly the wind that makes the old bones groan somewhat, might be minus 35c but the windchill makes it feel like minus 50, exposed flesh freezes in mere minutes. Good days for working on stamps.
Not sure how electric vehicles are going to cope if stuck on a closed road during a blizzard. If you continue your journey on a closed road you invalidate your insurance and the emergency services are unlikely to come out until the road opens again, which can be the next day.
On 24th. May 2004, when we had family visit, we had an Alberta clipper come through and they shut the highways for 24 hours, just on 6-8 inches of snow overnight.
Ground freezes during winter to 4 feet down, as the xmas carol says "earth as hard as iron".
Ah, the joys of Manitoba living.
I watch gas prices closely (auto only, not heating fuel, etc), and prices at the pump were remarkably stable for months until the freeze, when they started and continue to shoot up, now 20% higher than pre-freeze ($2.50 vs $3.05 in upstate NY).
I don't wish to pawn myself off as an energy expert; i'm not. And, yes, the landscape is changing fast, fuelled (sorry) primarily by LNG and fracking (alternate electricity will contribute an ever growing amount, but it's dwarfed by oil and LNG).
Colonial is running again, but they don't know when they'll reach former throughput.
David
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"Save the USPS, buy stamps; save the hobby, use commemoratives"
For those who may be interested in the pitfalls related to transitioning from fossil fuels to the green energy options, the Wall Street Journal published an interesting piece this week.
A couple of the long-time advocates of green energy are also speaking out about some of the problems we face in trying to migrate away from the fossil fuels too quickly. Look for books or blogs or other online information from Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg. Steven Koonin has just published a new book. It's attracting a lot of attention, but I've read only reviews and watched a TV interview so far. He was an Obama adviser and has concerns about the scientific basis for the current climate change thinking. I recognize an energy transition is inevitable, but the discussion has become far too political and irrational. Few people realize how difficult and disruptive that transition will be, much less how costly it will be and how many decades it will take.
Tom
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"I no longer collect, but will never abandon the hobby"
keesindy, thanks for the link. Backs up what some of us have been thinking and saying for years.
(Now you know why Trump wanted to buy Greenland)
It is courageous of WSJ to highlight the obvious practicalities of changing energy systems that your normal "greenie" has not taken into account.
The costs of changing are horrendous but don't worry the big banks are already pumping billions into "Green Energy". They know where they are going to make their "big bucks"!
Back in 1970 when our North Sea Oil started to flow we were told that we would have cheap energy. Did we? Did we *******!
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"StayAlert.......Control The Virus.......Save Lives."
I read as far as the pay wall would permit. I agree with it all.
And it applies equally to such things as iphones, androids, computer chips; and at one time it applied to those contraptions that replaced their equine predecessors.
In half a generation, warships went from wood to iron; in another, different half generation, my rotary telephone has become obsolete (except during power outages); and in another half generation, coal will be left where it lays and we'll find if people have stomach enough for the immense quantities of formerly clean water that LNG turns to Flinty pops.
I get it; every new invention has costs: physical, financial, and often environmental. Most trade-offs come with trades, many unforseen until, well, we wait for the next replacement.
I know that turbines produce noise (unlike strip mining) and kill birds (unlike fracking) and solar requires rare elements.
Heck, I tried to get geothermal and solar for my house, but it's not tenable, or wasn't. And my wood box probably contributes more to green house gasses than my oil boiler.
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"Save the USPS, buy stamps; save the hobby, use commemoratives"
We built a sunspace on the front of our house in 1980, It wasn't very effective. SO we remodeled several years later to incorporate that space into the house in a way that left us with ordinary large south-facing windows and an addition that didn't look like an addition. We also looked at geothermal back then, but it would have been a closed loop system. Aside from the high cost, the problem was the fact that we and our neighbors are all on water wells and I was concerned the geothermal system could spring a leak and contaminate all the nearby wells with the antifreeze. There's always a catch!
Tom
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"I no longer collect, but will never abandon the hobby"
Most of the area gas stations are still out of gas. Some have had deliveries but they will sell out within a day so doubt we will be back to normal today.
When making a conversion one must not forget that the U.S.gallon differs fron the imperrial gallon. The beauty of not using the metric system. This reminds me in the 70s when, at the time Boeing converted to the metric system, one aircfraft run out of fuel 30000 feet above Canada. The pilot was mixed-up between gallons and liters.
That was Air Canada I think. He made an emergency landing at Gimli, Manitoba!
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Harvey I think, therefore I am - I think! 22 May 2021 10:14:36am
re: Crikey shades of 1973
I believe that plane ended up being called "the Gimli glider". Check it out online for the full story, the pilot became a hero for gliding the plane to the nearest airport.
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