Oil: Pre-buy This Year or Not

I want one of those solar powered water heaters. Anyone know anything about them?

It is, and it's only rising, and very rapidly. Suspicion is the Saudis are seeing the signs from their fields they're starting the long, slow process of running out. The supply of cheaply obtainable oil in the ground is finite. Look up "peak oil" sometime if you want to scare yourself to death. Some think it's already here. What we've seen over the last year has been a big spike run-up due primarily to speculation, and it should fall back again. But there's no escape from steadily rising oil prices. We'll be back at this price in a year or two and it won't ever go back down, is my understanding.

Not buying it. There's plenty of oil in the middle east. Don't even get me started on the oil outside the middle east. The oil producing countries are living high on the hog off of us. Reduce consumption and make 'em squirm!

I used to be a firm believer in the notion of "burn up their oil and sit on ours". That was when it was cheap. Now, I say ANWAR with protections, drill in the gulf (the Chinese are stealing our gulf oil), reap oil from the oil shales of Colorado (it has to be economically feasible to do so now), buy oil from Canada's oil sands, and liquify coal (yes, we COULD liquify coal and have the know-how today to do it) and run our cars on that. We're the ay-rabs of the world when it comes to coal availability. And I've heard we can liquify it at an equivalent of $54/barrel.

That's all to say "keep the status quo" on fossil fuels. Of course, weaning off Fossil would be great.

I second (forth, whatever) that you should not pre-buy now. It's at record levels, and it got there quickly. It is extremely unlikely to go higher than it is now unless there is more trouble in the Middle East (like if Iran gets bombed- which is looking a lot less likely). You can get a good idea of how prices are changing by looking here http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp for weekly updates.

I have 900 gallons of storage at my house, which means I only buy once a year (now that I have a wood stove maybe once every 2-3 years). I have only about 150 gallons left, and I'm holding out at least until September to see what the price does.

gibson said:

Not buying it. There's plenty of oil in the middle east.

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Sure there is.

But not CHEAP oil.

Peak oil doesn't mean we're all out. It does mean that every barrel from here on out is a little harder to get than the last one.

Google "Cantarell"

Why are we not running our cars on natural gas yet? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Natural_gas_production_world.PNG

*sigh*, that last image was supposed to be a map of world natural gas supplies. Also, check out this site for information on Coal-To-Liquids.

http://www.futurecoalfuels.org/documents/022208_ctl_fact_sheet.pdf

creditunion said:

derecskey said:

I used to be a firm believer in the notion of "burn up their oil and sit on ours". That was when it was cheap. Now, I say ANWAR with protections, drill in the gulf (the Chinese are stealing our gulf oil), reap oil from the oil shales of Colorado (it has to be economically feasible to do so now), buy oil from Canada's oil sands, and liquify coal (yes, we COULD liquify coal and have the know-how today to do it) and run our cars on that. We're the ay-rabs of the world when it comes to coal availability. And I've heard we can liquify it at an equivalent of $54/barrel.

That's all to say "keep the status quo" on fossil fuels. Of course, weaning off Fossil would be great.

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I agree. We have the largest coal supplies in all of the world! When we take that into account and adding in all the oil sitting off our own continental shelf, we have more oil than all of the Middle east has combined. Yet a minority of the "spawn" of the greatest generation won't let us go after it. That always riled dad who fought in the big war. My kids feel as dad did and can't understand our "leadership" not going after more oil. My daughter said not to worry though because when these people who still want to be and act like hippies start to die off, things will change. Dad would have been proud of that.

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Go ahead, guys and burn every drop of oil you can find NOW! Liquify and gassify all the coal you can scrape out of the planet as quickly and cheaply as you can. Dammit, the greatest generation deserves it, right? RIGHT? The next generation doesn't need it anyhow!

Chris

I believe the idea of using our fossil fuels here and now is to first, not be dependant on foriegn sources (become energy independant....or at least more so).......and secondly in the mean time begin/continue developing/delivering alternative energy sources.

Come on.....no one wants to completely use up all our current sources so that there's nothing left for future generations. Its merely a temp solution to tide us over.

Indeed... who would have imagined 90 years ago (imagine 1918 for a second) where our technology would be today? Now, fast forward... where's our technology in 90 years??? Mindboggling. In the mean time, let's use a little common sense and burn some cheap, local fossil fuels while working on something, ANYTHING, better than Ethanol.