norwegian Ram

Filled up today when the low fuel light came on, it cost $248. We are paying over $8 us dollars for a us gallon.

The worst is that goverment have said they will put a extra tax on diesel fuel,
Wish we had yor prices

Baja

...... kinda puts our woes in perspective......

1-2-3

"Why would the price go down if we lost a refinery? "

We're not losing refineries. The refineries are ignoring saftey violations and subsuquently blowing up. I don't consider that as "we" are losing them. The refinery operators are throwing them away and running them into the ground for all they can get right now instead of what they can get over time. Unfortunatley, we have to add the cost of the workers and thier families that are losing loved ones.

afoulk

Diesel hit $4.09 around here today. Its starting to get nuts now. I got rid of my Jeep cause I figured till I lifted it and put on 35's and a winch like I wanted, I'd be luckey to get 14 or 15mpg. I always wanted a cummins, so I traded it in on the one I have now. But only getting 16-17mpg with the truck, and the high cost of diesel, I don't think I would have been doing much worse with the jeep.

MAX340

I'm going to pull the 72 Dart out of mothballs. I'll be burning 3.25 fuel at 18mpg and pushing 350hp. Its not the cheapest ride, but its cheaper than the truck at this point.

wcbcruzer

Well, I'm here to share the pain with you all. I just talked to my my friend in Pasadena. Drum roll... $4.59/gallon! Honestly, I don't know what to think at this point. How is America going to cope with this? I mean in Europe people seem to manage high fuel prices, but their cities are also not as widespread and they've been driving small pieces of crap forever. In America, everyone's standards are much bigger. They're still selling brand new Dodge, Ford, and Chevy trucks like hotcakes. Do the people who buy them expect to park it in 5 years when fuel prices hit upwards of $6/gallon?

Since the oil supply peaked in 2005, they predict by 2030 the supply will be the same as it was in 1980. However, in 2030 the demand will be twice as great due to greater population. At one point something has got to change. Unfortunately, I think we'll see the most dramatic changes during our lifetime. Big companies don't seem to be doing anything to help save fuel either. Just recently I was reading a news article about how a lot of people were outraged that American Airlines flew a plane from here to Europe with only 5 passengers aboard. That flight burned something like 22,000 gallons of jet fuel.

Although a lot of reasons for high fuel prices mentioned here are reasonable, I don't believe that there's one or a few big factor causing these outrageous prices. There's many many factors that all contribute to increasing prices. China and India, for example, are now industrializing their nations like never before. This sort of industrialization calls for a heavy fuel demand that increases the bid for oil. Also, whether you want to believe it or not, the oil reserves are shrinking. I see it first hand in my own town. Companies like Halliburton are shutting down dried out oil wells on a daily basis. Optimistic estimates are that there's only about 35 years of crude left at the rate we are burning it (globally). Fuel demand will only increase with time as well. The oil reserves in Alaska are not that big either. We can drill it (and will) but it's estimated to only be good for a few years of supply.

I hate to think about this stuff but I can't help it sometimes. I wish I was ignorant to all of it. They say if the public knew exactly how bad our energy situation is, half won't believe it and the other half would go into panic. The problem is, we're fine for the time being; but we're definitely using more than we should at the present. That means that we're only surviving now because we're using up the future's resources; and by future I don't believe it's 100 years or even 50 years, it's much less. Global warming? Ha... I think there's much bigger things to worry about.

So what should the average citizen like me and you do? Start driving smaller cars? Or eventually adjust to the high fuel prices like people did in the '70's? Since wages haven't increased proportionally, many lifestyles will be affected for sure; but maybe not as bad we think.

Ok, that's enough for me.

Checkmate

I feel bad for the 20 year olds out there that move out to "make it on their own". I know how hard it was when at 18 I moved out, and I had a decent job at $6.00 an hour. Fuel was around 1.25 a gallon. I had a 30 mpg car and kept a 2 liter full of fuel in case I ran out cause I never had the $$ to fill it up.
With respect to those figures ($6 hr and fuel 1.25 gal) you would basically need a job paying around $18 an hr. Granted there are other variables, but I still don't see how the "McDonalds" gang survives.

xtoyz17

That 18/hr would only be comparable to someone who drives a 30mpg vehicle. I'm 21, make almost that, have my truck payment, get about 16 mpg, and a whole slew of other bills.

It sucks, but such is life. Only thing I can do from here is put the truck so that it can earn it's keep

TreeFarm

Well, no need to worry anymore. According to the US government, prices are well under $3.00 a gallon.

Here's a quote I pulled today from the DOE web site:

OUTLOOK FOR 2007 AND 2008

Retail diesel fuel prices are likely to remain elevated as long as crude oil prices and world demand for distillate fuels remain high. EIA expects that national average retail diesel fuel prices will hover around $2.70 per gallon through 2007 and 2008, primarily due to the forecast for the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil to average near $64 per barrel.

It's good to know DOE still has an "outlook" for 2007.

BTW, has anybody heard any of the presidential wannabes discussing the price of diesel and its widespread economic ramifications? If they have been talking about it, I missed it, or the press isn't reporting it.

Patriot_Auto

I stoped in a friends shop yesterday. We had a long discusion about fuel prices and economy. He also owns a Cummins and at this point has been parking it for most of the year. He uses it to plow snow in the winter and tow the boat in the summer. Now we checked out a few economy cars that are now available from the Germans. BMW and MB both have brought thier "Smart" cars to the US. We came to find out those little two seater edit boxes only get 34 MPG. Needless to say I wasn't impressed. I value my family's safty and also my comfort. It seems these so called solutions to our problems are getting smaller and less fuel efficient. Now why is it that Chrysler (yes its a MB design ironicaly) can build a V8 350 hp 4000 lb + 4 door luxery car with a real trunk, and it get 28-30 mpg. The teknology is there people. Lets put two and two together and make a fuel efficient car that is practical for the American people.

I'm a full blow patriot American and I'm not going to sell my truck and buy some little pathedic forign made car that doesn't even get that great of milage. Us blue collar workers can't fit our tools that we use every day to make a living, into some little edit box of a car. Its just not practical. What is also not practical is paying what we do for fuel. I keep getting the comment from people, "Well why on earth do you need a truck that big" Well the answer is because working with my two god given hands is all I know and have. I have to feed myself and family. My truck is a tool, and a **** good one at that. The point of my rant is that not everyone lives on the big city and can drive a little fuel efficient car. There are still landscapers, carpenters, welders, and so on who need their trucks to make a living. So lets fix the problem of being ripped off on fuel price instead of everyone driving little efficient cars. Its just not practical for myself. I want an answer to why Diesel is costing what it does. I just wish I understood.

MAX340

I doubt that will happen, since our country depends on long haul trucks to get freight across country. Literally, the economy would collapse at that point. Second, its not about supply, since right now there are plenty of reserves stockpiled. It IS about the value of the dollar. THis will change, and soon. Its an election year, and economies always swing back after hitting an extreme. After the early 80's, we had 20 years of decent economy and fuel prices.


"Peak oil" is somewhat of a myth in my opinion. No one has proven that we've hit it, only standard reasoning. There seems to be as much evidence that oil is a renewable resource as there is that its finite. In addition, as time passes, sources of oil that were once deemed too expensive to explore will come to be affordable, thus, more oil.


The opinions on oil amounts vary. Personally, I'll never believe that Halliburton does anything simply for a profit. It is true that more demand gets higher prices. However, its clear from the reserves in this country, and overseas, that the demand isn't the major factor in rising prices. The drop in the dollar is a large part of our problems across the board.

I don't believe the current situation is "dire", but its time we started taking steps to avoid the 20-25 year cycle we've fallen into. The economy will come out of this, and oil prices will drop. How much and how soon, I don't know; I doubt anyone does.

Simply put, we are here because of typical American greed. When lending institutions will allow loans of 120% on collateral, and people will take such loans, we've gone too far. Now, the Fed is pumping millions of dollars into the econmy, thus lowering the dollar's value. The government is also seeking to "bailout" the mortgage lenders. This is hypocrisy. Those that took the risk should succeed or die by that risk. The rest of us are paying for it, and will pay more for it if the government spends the cash to fix it.

Next, we as a nation have failed to understand that mass transit is essential. We pave parking lots, and built infrastructure to move millions of cars, when the commodity is people. Any other commodity, and we'd be finding more efficient ways to move it. If the country were run my way, we'd spend money on fuel for fun, not to get to work. This country used to have rail lines crisscrossing the countryside, its not unreasonable to think that half of those lines could save us 75% of the fuel we now spend on truck transit.

We came out of the 80's, this too will pass.

LUKE-MM-PULLER

I think MAX340 is on to something, we did this to ourselves and now we have to live with the consiquenses. But we the people of this country need to hold our heads high and keep moving forward this will come to pass, we just need to have faith that everything will turn out alright.

billmac

I'll throw in a couple of reasons why diesel prices keep skyrocketing. This information came from a column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram March 2, 2008. The column was written by Ed Wallace. The diesel info was just a small part of the whole column. According to Wallace, a friend of his, who is a gas and diesel trader, said that "we have run out of desulfurization capacity to make the government mandated ultra-low sulfur diesel. Couple that with hugh demands from farmers who need the fuel for spring planting and our lack of ability to import more diesel because of worldwide demand".

Wallace went on to say that the smart thing to do would be to suspend the requirement for low-sulfur fuel until this problem passes. Of course that's not likely to happen. Anyway, Wallace's comments sound reasonable to me.

RAMRODD

One thing that would help is raise the legal load limits of Semi Trucks 10,000 pounds across the board. That would save a lot of Diesel and help out the trucking industry.
Do you know that in some states if you have a tri axil semi and a tri axil trailer you are actually punished because the Maximum weight can't exceed 80,000.

wyliek

MAX340 it is a fact that peak total production of crude oil was in February 2005, May 2006 peak total production of all liquid fuels. I believe price is closely related to the fact that far more gasoline is produced in the US than diesel, which is actually cheaper to refine. we need to ONLY produce diesel, **** gas powered anything over 500ccs