OT: The price of Gas..
 

I just did a comparison and found this info..

Gas Price US = 1.71/Gal
Gas Price CA = 0.71/Litre

A Gal is 3.784 * a Litre so that means Canadians are paying $2.69/Gal.

It seems to me that even with the exchange rate, we Canadians are getting stiffed at the pumps.

I noticed this because the Canadian dollar is up near .75 US and it was not long ago at .62 US. I find it strange that there has been little or no 'change' in pricing to reflect this 'Stronger Dollar' in our economy. So, where IS the price difference? Who is grabbing all that 'exchange' money? I have made a few purchases recently in US Dollars and it seems that there is still about a 40% exchange rate on the bottom line.

I buy something for $39.95 US, (+$3.50 S&H) it is converted to Cdn$ ($57.36) Taxes are added GST/QST ($4.02/$4.61) and I have a new total of $65.99Cdn. to my dismay I find that there is a $7.92 Duty charge. (Taxable) for a new total $74.47Cdn

That's a whopping 186% wow!

The thing is, the same product was available here for 59.95 Cdn. I thought that it would be cheaper to order Online. Oh well, live and learn.

At least I can be happy knowing that more people got rich than just the retailer and government.

nuf said, Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

We pay about US$5 a gallon so dont moan

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

You may be getting stiffed at the pump because of your own government. Check your gas taxes, I know many European countries have taxes so high they can make up to 40% of the total cost..

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

Haa ! In UK gas cost around £0.76 per litre. £1~$1.85

Horror !! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Tigger was faster http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ February 11, 2004, 15:51: Message edited by: oleg ]

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

The gas and oil companies know that they have at tops about 50 years before all oil on the planet is depleted, so they lie lie lie lie there way into getting more money per gallon.

In the winter the prices goes up because of heating costs. (BULL ****) In the summer costs go up because everyone is driving (AGAIN BS).

The poloticans that stand up and say that we need to investigate this price gouging simply dissappear after a nice contribution is made to their campain or someone mails them a nice annonomious check for a few hundred grand.

Gas and Oil are a cash cow industry. The costs of refining it is so little to the profit that it is all nearly profit to them. They have 50 years to make as much money as they can and this time next year the price will be higher. Soon only the rich and privilated will be able to aford the price of fuel.

Keep the poor poor. Get less and cost more is the way of the future.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually its about 75% of total cost over here...

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Really? Prices are more like US $1.60-1.80 a gallon around here!

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Really? Prices are more like US $1.60-1.80 a gallon around here! </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Prices in the part of the US I live in are around $1.50 per gallon. Two years ago the prices were down to $0.70 per gallon; man was that nice!

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

About a year or so ago I posted about a seminar I saw on Public Television hosted by a mathmatican who talked about the Bell curve for oil production and how it will effect Population growth.

this link http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ talks a lot about what he said, and it is truth, not fiction, and it is happening now. The more population grows, the more less we have, the more everything costs.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

Actually the price of Oil in the US is pretty cheap. Even though $1.50 sounds like a lot if you adjust that to the rate of inflation gas is the cheapest it's ever been. Most americans would rather pay for the social cost of cheap oil with their lungs instead of with their pocket book.

Most Europeans would be shocked to learn how polluted our air is from emissions. I live in the central valley of California where the car is king and there is urban sprawl. There are days in the summer where it's recomended not to go outside. We also have an asthma epidemic here. It's the same in most american big cities. Cheap gas encourages people to drive, gas guzzling suvs, and urban sprawl while discouraging public transit.

[ February 11, 2004, 17:57: Message edited by: rextorres ]

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

I remember someplace I heard that the oil companies are pumping something like 10 galons of fresh-water into the oil wells for every 1 gal of petrolium that they take up. So they might run out of fresh water before they run out of oil. (and to think they could be pumping sea water instead. but they prefer to use fresh watter.)

Oil we can find ways to live without, fresh-water on the other hand is necessary for life to exist.

I see big problems comming in the future.

I guess we are cursed to 'Live in interesting times'.

Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

What gets me going more than the price of gas at the pumps? Is the cost of Milk, I pay $2.80 to $3.00 per gallon. Now I know there are no refineries like gas to process this stuff. So why does milk cost more than gas, false market. Their industry is artificially supported by subsidies, bah, open it up to a free market bastards.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

yep, around 0.75-78c/L here. all the gas companies change there prices at the same time and what does the government say? that there is no price collusion between gas companies. yeah. right.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Do you have any idea how much fresh water there is? Far more than us humans could ever make use of.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You might check your history, also check sociology world-wide. Industrial agriculture is incompatible with 'free market', and requires some amount of socialism.

Personally, I am pleased with the small amount we have in the U.S. I am also pleased that dairymen aren't killing each other in South Dakota over the 'free market' value of their milk. The free market is, on occasion, a bloody, bloody affair. While the current system of agricultural subsidies has room for improvement, it is preferable to the anarchy that results from total deregulation of certain industries.

Of course, I might be wrong. (But really, let's try to keep war out of South Dakota for a little while longer.)

[ February 11, 2004, 19:18: Message edited by: Loser ]

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Save money, buy a few goats, drink better milk. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

I am just coming up on my second year of ownership of a Honda Insight hybrid car. As my only car, I used a total of 140 gallons this Last year, or $200 total for gas. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Of course I sit at home and play SEIV most of the time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Do you have any idea how much fresh water there is? Far more than us humans could ever make use of. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">But not in Saudi Arabia for sure http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Of course there is nothing underhand here, it is impossible to use salt water because salt will sediment inside tubes and clog them VERY fast.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Do you have any idea how much fresh water there is? Far more than us humans could ever make use of. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is very wrong. Fresh water comprises a small fraction of the water available on the planet. You can't drink salt water, some of the 'fresh' water is polluted beyond drinkability, some of it is too deep to access or locked up in inaccessable ice, etc.

All of these can be solved, but doing that takes energy. Quite a lot of it in some cases.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

Of course water is a renewable resource. We get it back once it takes a trip through the water cycle. So as long as we don't pollute the air too badly, and don't use more fresh water then we get back when it rains, we aren't ever going to run out. There are temporary shortages, and regions that don't have enough. But it's a matter of distribution, not supply. You can't say the same for oil. Regardless of where exactly you believe we are on the oil supply, you must conceed that for practical purposes the supply is finite. The question is are we going to run out before or after we don't need it anymore.

[ February 11, 2004, 21:08: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Do you have any idea how much fresh water there is? Far more than us humans could ever make use of. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yea and a good chunk of that is in Canada. Best thing that could ever happen for Canada's economly would be a masssive global water shortage. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif (PS just in case anyone missed the smily no need to tell me all the ways a global water shortage would actually hurt http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif )

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If only they were that low. In canada it is about 50%

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

You should figure out the cost per milli-liter of a Theater bought beverage. $3.00 for a medium Coke. Now that's profit.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Water floods use salt water pumped from water supply wells out of water bearing rock strata, filtered down to 5-20 microns (and sometimes chemically treated) and then injected into the target oil reservoir in injection wells, which are drilled in a carefully calculated pattern designed to allow the water to "sweep" the oil toward producing wells. Normal oil fields have a recovery efficiency of 8 to 13%. Water floods can sometimes increase this efficiency to 30%.

Water requirements for a flood are huge and fresh water is not really a viable alternative in most cases. Salt water is available in the earth in huge quantities. Also, few things are more destructive to oil and gas reservoirs than fresh water, which causes clay swelling, emulsions, precipitates and other nasty things. Many wells are completed using fresh or salt water treated with chemicals, but the volumes are small - a few hundred or thousand barrels. Waterfloods require water volumes in the hundreds of thousands or millions of barrels, even when the water used is produced and recycled into the flood.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

You know if you want to reduce youre oil and gas usage the following things will save money.

Dont buy SUVs or humbies lol - the ultimate fuel guzzlers - go for more fuel efficent and hybrid petrol electric cars.

Use proper insulation at home

Seek out energy efficent appliances

Recycle

Simple approaches that will reduce oil and gas usage. Plus discussing new technology as i do on investment forums.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If you have the large amount of money to buy one, sure. You will save a lot more money by getting a normal car than one of those hybrids, as the (useful) hybrids are quite expensive.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

Yeah, I hope the price on those hybrid cars come down. It would be nice to fill up half as often as a regular car and drive around the same amount...

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

we need a solar power satalite or a few hundred. i don't know how many, but they could supply us with all the power we need, and if we lengthen out the wave enough, other people on here have told me there's no risk of cancer.

scientific facts aside, i'd still want to test that out for a few years on lab animals. large amounts of anything tend to be bad.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

You can still get cancer from long wavelengths, it just requires having them have a relatively tremendous amount of energy (much more than is possible from something like a cell phone). Beaming energy down from solar collector satellites might just be enough energy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

Hopefully, the satellites would transmit the power in the form of a tight beam, precisely aimed at the receiving stations on the ground.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It would have to, otherwise you'd lose so much that the technique would be useless.

The question is, where do you put it?

Perhaps it would be best to have three or four in equatorial geo-synch. That way, even on those rare occasions when one is eclipsed by the earth, you still have a significant percentage in operation. Additionally, this may make it easier to keep the beam focused.

Or you could put one huge solar energy collection structure in an orbit Trojan to Earth's (that is, Lagrange points 4 or 5 on Earth's orbit around Sol). This would have the advantage of being forever in direct sunlight, but would have to generate a truly Herculean amount of energy, as it would be the only thing supporting Earth and because it would lose so much over the distance.

In order to mitigate loss of power in the transmission, it would be best to use coherent microwave, or 'maser' (may-zer), technology. This is basically a laser, but in the microwave range of the spectrum.

The beam would need to stay precisely on target, as it would have a rather destructive effect on anything that got in its way, so the speed of light may limit this possibility. I'd ask someone else to do the math, because it's early here, but I believe there will be quite a few seconds of delay between Earth and a point sixty degrees away in Earth's orbit.

So yeah. Back to fusion.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What a great weapon.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

Just looked at Atrocities' Bell curve post. I was reading and reading and wondering when they would get to the sell. And here it is:
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm all for slating the oil companies and resisting short-sighted wanton consumerism but I think that article is more than a little hysterical.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm all for slating the oil companies and resisting short-sighted wanton consumerism but I think that article is more than a little hysterical. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Everything is to be taken with a grain of salt, but remember what they said about the guy who thought the world was round and NOT the center of the universe?

Often time more than not, information like this is viewed as a joke, and then later proven to be accurate.

Look at what happened when the Army Pilot said the Pearl Harbor was a target way back in I think 1932, and was court marshelled out of the service only to later be proven nearly 100% correct.

Or about the people who said putting a man on the moon was utter insain nonsense.

Laugh now, it is easyier to ignor and ridicule than to accept and believe. I think the same thing happened to a guy named Jesus once.

Then again, Oil will Last forever and always be afordable. We will never run out of food and our populatio growth will never reach 7 billion.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

What about the millions more lunatics that were ignored and turned out to just be lunatics?

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclose.../manson190.jpg
Hi, my name is Charlie and these are my Angels.
http://www.black-dahlia.org/images-m...y-Portrait.jpg
They work for me.
(saw this on a T-shirt recently. Wrong, wrong, wrong. But clever enough to repeat.)


Not all crazy people are prophets or visionaries. For example Manson's war, Helter Skelter, never happened. Which is good. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ February 12, 2004, 19:04: Message edited by: Loser ]

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

Argue as much as you like but it is a proven fact that right now the ratio of newly discovered oil reserved to the oil consumed during that time period is 1:4 - it used to be 3:1 in 70s... The correct estimate may vary but even the most optimistic ones state it will take more energy to extract oil from future reservours then they contain.
Edited for many mistakes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ February 12, 2004, 19:57: Message edited by: oleg ]

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True, Hybrids cost more than a Hugo or German Trabant, but they cost about as much as a normal American car. Less than half a standard SUV. I doubt you will save enough in gas to totally pay for it, but you will save something.

Useful depends on the person. If you have kids, go Offroading, or take multiple people in your car than the Insight is out. Used for commuting to work and normal driving, I think it is great.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

I just filled up my car today. I usually buy the 'regular' fuel, not the more expensive stuff with extra octane. The price was 72.9 cents per liter, so it cost me $35.00 to get 48.008 liters. I am happy to get that price, because the price was higher just a few days ago. But I remember a time when the price was about half of what it is today...

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

I saw this when it was published in my society journal in October, 1980 to help educate people about oil and gas. For those who are interested:

The contents of a common barrel of crude:

Gasoline-------------- 46.2%
Fuel Oil-------------- 28.6%
Petrochemicals*----- 10.1%
Jet fuel--------------- 7.4%
Asphalt--------------- 4.0%
Kerosene------------- 2.1%
Lubricants----------- 1.6%

Petrochemicals include: pLastics, nylon, rayon, cosmetics, detergents, paint, drugs and tires.

Courtesy of the Society of Petroleum Engineers
Source: U.S. Bureau of Mines

[ February 18, 2004, 02:01: Message edited by: solops ]

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

Imagine a chart showing the price of gasoline against time (months, years, whatever). This will be a squiggly, upward-moving line, or curve.
Now picture similar graphs for alternative technologies, superimposed on the first. While the prices for these technologies are currently higher than the price of gasoline, it is also true that the curves for the prices of these energy sources are flat, or even downward against time. When the economic situation is such the curves are about to intersect, we will find a very rapid transition to alternative energy sources.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

There is problem with that...
Oil/Gas is far superior to alternatives in such areas as: Energy Density per volume/weight, Safe handling, Distribution/Transportation, and Refueling ease/speed.

The Global Economy depends on the economies of scale.
Large scale resouce centers for lumber, food, minerals, and fibers depend on cheap transportation.
Large scale manufacturing centers depend on cheap transportation for recieving raw materials and delivery of goods.
Large scale retail centers (malls, big box stores, supermarkets) also depend on consumers with cheap transportation.
Large scale population centers depend on all the above three.

AND all of them use energy/oil while taking care of buisness.

A quick radical change in oil/energy prices will devastate the global economy. It would be difficult to prevent further collapse of society/population. (No nation is more than 3 meals away from a revolution). Reorganizing energy production/comsumtion without the energy to bootstrap the change could prove impossible.

Slowly rising prices would increase transportation costs, thereby causing large scale centers to be reduced in size and dispersed. This could result in lower production and higher costs overall. The farming and food distribution systems would sustain fewer people than before.

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">LOL what does this have to do with the price of oil? Maybe if you started a thread like... strange anomalies

Re: OT: The price of Gas..
 

Wardad...when I say "quick," that's a relative term in this case. It will be quick when compared with the length of time we have known the crunch has been coming. It will naturally take several years to accomplish.