were you on a sales pitch to Dunder Mifflin's offices there?!


Seriously though, the push up in gas prices thus far has been the refiners passing on some of their own costs down to the retail customers. The price jump that will go into effect now will probably be a step increase as the summer blends start to get pushed thru the supply chain. So yes, even if oil comes back down a bit, gasoline prices are likely set to go up. That's why some independent refiner stocks are now bouncing back from their abyss.

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Remedy for Electile Dysfunction: http://www.votenader.org/index.html



9/14, quote on elections, because shosh had to put up that thoughtful writeup on mediocrity and elitism:
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." — H. L. Mencken

I am so happy my employer's major focus industry is energy, both nuclear/hydro and also O&G.

I've been watching the layoffs in the Financial district over on Dealbreakers.com, and I'm sipping my latte coding stat models at the office with at least some hope that I'll be gainfully employed through all this mess.


I am pumping up my savings account as fast as I can though. My 3 month cushion needs to be 6 months. I'm hoping I can divert a thousand-a-month to savings so I can build it up quickly and lock 25% of it at a time into a 6-mo rolling CD to recover some of the inflation cost.

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Buh-bye.

I forgot that other people actually watch that show

You work for McDermott or Shaw Group or Fluor or one of those?

Good luck with getting much on a CD, unless it's more than $25,000. I was enjoying close to 5% last year before the rate cutting spree began, now my yield is around 3.2% I believe.

If I were to get laid off or fired right now, I would go in such a cost-cutting mode that my checking account (checking acct pays more of an interest than the savings account at Wells Fargo!) could see me thru for easily at least 15 months.

__________________
Remedy for Electile Dysfunction: http://www.votenader.org/index.html



9/14, quote on elections, because shosh had to put up that thoughtful writeup on mediocrity and elitism:
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." — H. L. Mencken

I can't think of anything else Scranton is more famous for, right now!

__________________
Remedy for Electile Dysfunction: http://www.votenader.org/index.html



9/14, quote on elections, because shosh had to put up that thoughtful writeup on mediocrity and elitism:
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." — H. L. Mencken

I'll give you two words that will clue you into whom I work for (if it's really killing you, I'll email you my employer's website).

ETA: Oops it appears that my subtle clues revealed too much

I PM'd you the info about whom I work for.

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Buh-bye.

well, i can be thickheaded sometime even with real clues. hehe

i only thought of the EPC companies, not the ones that provide computer software to them!

__________________
Remedy for Electile Dysfunction: http://www.votenader.org/index.html



9/14, quote on elections, because shosh had to put up that thoughtful writeup on mediocrity and elitism:
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." — H. L. Mencken

malvernfederal.com has a checing account that pays 5% interest provided you generate fees for them on a monthly basis.

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"You down wit OPM?"
Fumo: "Yeah, you know me!"

Here is a good piece that breaks things down succinctly but effectively. Boy that Iraq war was just a great idea wasn't it and it wasn't about oil either...LOL!

I have also included the US Army Report on Peak Oil.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...is-834023.html

Highlights:

The invasion of Iraq by Britain and the US has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone.


The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war.

Dr Salameh, director of the UK-based Oil Market Consultancy Service, and an authority on Iraq's oil, said it is the only one of the world's biggest producing countries with enough reserves substantially to increase its flow.

Production in eight of the others – the US, Canada, Iran, Indonesia, Russia, Britain, Norway and Mexico – has peaked, he says, while China and Saudia Arabia, the remaining two, are nearing the point at of decline. Before the war, Saddam Hussein's regime pumped some 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, but this had now fallen to just two million barrels.

Dr Salameh told the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil last month that Iraq had offered the United States a deal, three years before the war, that would have opened up 10 new giant oil fields on "generous" terms in return for the lifting of sanctions. "This would certainly have prevented the steep rise of the oil price," he said. "But the US had a different idea. It planned to occupy Iraq and annex its oil."

At just under 86 million barrels per day, global oil production has, essentially, stagnated since 2005, despite soaring demand, suggesting that production has already reached its geological limits, or "peak oil".

Peak oil
After 150 years of growth, the oil age is beginning to come to an end. "Peak oil" is the common term for when production stops increasing and starts to decline. At that point what have been ever-expanding and cheap supplies of the resource on which all modern economies depend become scarcer and more expensive, with potentially devastating consequences.

Pessimists believe that production has passed its peak. Optimists say it may be 20 years or so away – which would give us some time to prepare – but are now muted. Last week the hitherto optimistic International Energy Agency admitted that it may have overestimated future capacity. Chris Skrebowski, editor of 'Petroleum Review' and once an optimist himself, believes that the world is now in "the foothills of peak oil". Prices may ease a bit over the next few years, but then the real crunch will come. The price then? "Pick a number!"

Travel
Oil provides 95 per cent of the energy used in transport, so this will be hit hard and soon. People are likely to go on using their cars, but airlines are expected to be the first to suffer. On Thursday, British Airways' chief executive Willie Walsh declared that the era of cheap flights was over, suggesting that those environmentalists who have made them their main target for combating climate change may have been wasting their breath

Cars
The world's biggest oil well, it is said, lies beneath Detroit. US vehicles get an average of only 25 miles per gallon. Dramatically improving this would do more to ease the oil crunch than any likely new discovery. But new measures recently approved by Congress would increase the average only to the 35mpg already being achieved by China. Europe does better, if not well enough, at 44mpg.

Shopping
Effectively, almost everything is partially made of oil, and so is going to get more expensive. About 10 calories of oil are burned to produce each calorie of food in the US, and farming a single cow and getting it to market uses as much as driving from New York to Los Angeles. Some 630g of fuel is used to produce every gram of microchips.

Emerging economies
China and India and other developing countries will help to drive up demand for oil and compete for scarce supplies. This has already helped to raise prices: demand for oil from Western countries has actually fallen over the past two years, but the emerging economies have more than made up the slack. And they have the money to do so.

Chinese and Indian consumers have so far been insulated from the effects of the price increase by heavy government subsidies, and their industrial revolutions and rapid growth are largely fuelled by oil. There is little sign that the growth in demand will slacken These countries are also likely to follow the time-honoured Western tradition of making deals with oil-exporting countries – and backing unpleasant regimes – to try to secure supplies.

Conflict
Last week. the embattled Gordon Brown – "incredibly focused" on oil, according to his spin-doctors – began playing the blame game. "It is a scandal," he said, "that 40 per cent of the oil is controlled by Opec and that their decisions can restrict the supply of oil to the rest of the world."

Someone should tell him that he should be blaming geology – or God – and that, as oil production peaks, Opec countries simply will not be able to pump more. But he is not alone; four US senators warned Saudi Arabia that if it did not step up the flow, the US might withdraw its military support.

There will be much more of this as supplies tighten. Three years ago, a US army report predicted oil would soon peak, and security risks increase. Expect oil wars. But, of course, we have already had one – in Iraq.

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RELATED:

US Army: Peak Oil and the Army's future

“The days of inexpensive, convenient, abundant energy sources are quickly drawing to a close,” according to a recently released US Army strategic report. The report posits that a peak in global oil production looks likely to be imminent, with wide reaching implications for the US Army and society in general.

http://www.energybulletin.net/13737.html

PDF: http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTR...c=GetTRDoc.pdf

From the Financial Times...


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9dda5012-2...077b07658.html

Summary:

With the oil price heading upwards and President George W. Bush heading for Saudi Arabia, as part of a Middle Eastern tour, it is time to accept the truth. The pursuit of oil is fundamental to US foreign policy.

The importance of oil to American foreign policy is both obvious and curiously difficult to acknowledge in public. In the run-up to the Iraq war it was left to the left to make the argument that this was a “war for oil”. Establishment people – those in the know – rolled their eyes at this “conspiracy theory”.

Yet in recent months, both Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Senator John McCain have come close to saying that Iraq was indeed about oil. In his memoirs Mr Greenspan said he regretted that it was “politically inconvenient” to acknowledge that “the Iraq war is largely about oil”.

Earlier this month Mr McCain, who will carry the Republican banner in this year’s presidential election, promised an energy policy “that will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East” and so “prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East”.

Both Mr Greenspan and Mr McCain subsequently issued “clarifications”. Mr McCain now says that the conflict that he was thinking about was the first Gulf war of 1991. As for the Iraq war of 2003, that was about ... whatever he said it was about at the time: weapons of mass destruction, probably.

It is unfair to mock. The Iraq war was about lots of things: WMD, remaking the Middle East, democratisation, human rights, Israel, terrorism, the desire for a massive demonstration of American power. But oil was certainly among the motives. It is common to say that the Gulf is a “vital strategic area”. “Strategic” is shorthand for saying that it is home to two-thirds of the world’s known oil reserves.