Tuesday, April 25, 2006
There's an alert on CNN today that reads "President Bush to temporarily halt deposits to strategic petroleum reserve to make more oil available for consumers ..." ...
That doesn't sound good. Am I the only one for whom this brings back memories of 1973, where gas stations ran out of gas, and the ones that still had it had queues a mile long.
Of course the thing back then was OPEC refused to ship oil to us because we didn't denounce Israel after the Yom Kippur War. Once it all got smoothed out, the spigot got turned back on, and life returned to normal.
The big difference now is that OPEC is pulling out of the ground as fast as it can. And oil is still over $70 a barrel!
Yesterday CNN reported that two thirds of Americans are saying the high cost of gas has caused them hardship, with 23% of those calling it "severe". I suspect at this stage that a lot of folks would be giving up their SUVs if they didn't owe more than they're worth (thank GM and Ford's financing incentives for that one).
The real irony is that gas in the US is still a fraction of its cost in Europe and Japan where people already drive more fuel efficient cars. In the UK its threating to top £1 a litre, which is $6.75 per gallon. And trust me, folks in the UK aren't earning much if any more than folks in the States.
Now if only the US Government would be more aggressive in demanding higher fuel efficiencies, then perhaps we wouldn't be in this crunch in the first place.
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That doesn't sound good. Am I the only one for whom this brings back memories of 1973, where gas stations ran out of gas, and the ones that still had it had queues a mile long.Of course the thing back then was OPEC refused to ship oil to us because we didn't denounce Israel after the Yom Kippur War. Once it all got smoothed out, the spigot got turned back on, and life returned to normal.
The big difference now is that OPEC is pulling out of the ground as fast as it can. And oil is still over $70 a barrel!
Yesterday CNN reported that two thirds of Americans are saying the high cost of gas has caused them hardship, with 23% of those calling it "severe". I suspect at this stage that a lot of folks would be giving up their SUVs if they didn't owe more than they're worth (thank GM and Ford's financing incentives for that one).
The real irony is that gas in the US is still a fraction of its cost in Europe and Japan where people already drive more fuel efficient cars. In the UK its threating to top £1 a litre, which is $6.75 per gallon. And trust me, folks in the UK aren't earning much if any more than folks in the States.
Now if only the US Government would be more aggressive in demanding higher fuel efficiencies, then perhaps we wouldn't be in this crunch in the first place.
1 Comments:
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Doing anything short of draining the strategic oil reserve is simply symbolic. While the reserve holds approximately 700 million barrels, the US could live off of that oil, at current consumption rates, for about 1.5 months. | ||
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By Fraize, at 4/25/2006 8:01 AM |
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