"U.S. mayors are adding their voices to those raising concerns about energy produced from Alberta's vast oilsands.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors, meeting in Miami this week, has approved a resolution calling on its members to ban the use of energy from unconventional sources because of its impact on the environment.
"We don't want to spend taxpayer dollars on fuels that make global warming worse," said Eugene, Ore., Mayor Kitty Piercy, who submitted the resolution.
"Tarsands oil emits up to three times the greenhouse gases in the production process per barrel as convention oil production. Our cities are asking for environmentally sustainable energy and not fuels from dirty sources such as tarsands."
What station do I go to, to fill up my hydrogen powered car???? Just like the natural gas powered cars of a few years ago, not enough places to get it.
Just heard a new mileage report...We have NOW driven 40 BILLION miles less this year than this date last year. They've run outa places to store the stuff. We're drowning in it is why the price is now falling.
fireman148 wrote: From what I've read, Iranian crude is more difficult to process and the refineries that are capable of it are down right now for maintenance.
If I remember correctly, Iran has high sulfur oil making it less desirable for refining. Seem to recall T Boone Pickens mentioning this on a program I was watching on tv about a month ago.
plenty of crude and if more was drilled/pumped it would be just be more crude sold/higer profits at world market prices which at this time is speculator driven. Just like the Alaskan pipeline that was suppossed to make us energy independent and cheap crude, LOL. Its going for world market prices just like any new crude will go. As other have figured out high fuel prices are driven by lack of refining capacity and the particular type of refinning proces that big oil in the US uses. With 50 percent of refinerys shut down , since '00, and the fact US refiners get only 15 percent diesel/50 percent gas from a barrel of crude through the catalytic cracking process diesel will be high. High diesel fuel prices = high cost of living. Diesel runs this country and until refinners change to hydrocracking proces as Europe uses which gets 25 percent diesl/25 percent gas. Europe sells diesel to the US at this time according to Al Mannato, a fuel issues manager at API. Many issues regarding refiners and crude producers and speculators and.......... for higher profits. Changes are needed as right now its business as usual in Washington with big oil holding the options and the profit.
'03 2500 Dodge/Cummins HO 3.73 6 speed manual Jacobs
'97 Park Avanue 28' with two slides
Does anyone even read the original post before wandering off into fantasy land? It was titled; Oil Oil everywhere...what shortage?
It suggested that there were numerous oil tankers in Iran that were not being sent out to sea. Apparently even the original poster didn't bother to read the article he posted. It gave the reason. Just read...
Iran Has 15 Supertankers Idling in Persian Gulf, Signals Show
By Alaric Nightingale
June 16 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, OPEC's second-largest oil producer, has 15 supertankers stationed in the Persian Gulf capable of storing more than 30 million barrels of crude, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
That compares with data compiled a week ago, which showed there were 14 such carriers.
The Hengam, owned by National Iranian Tanker Co., has been at the Kharg Island loading facility since June 5. The carrier Homa signaled June 12 it's been there since May 25. One carrier, the Noah, which had been at Kharg since April 2, set sail for Ulsan in South Korea.
Iran, which had to use tankers for storage while its refinery customers carried out annual repair works, will start using the carriers for deliveries again by mid-summer, Hojatollah Ghanimifard, executive director of international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Co., said June 2.
Now, was that so difficult? There are a lot of oil tankers because they are being used for storage while annual repairs are being done on refineries. No conspiracy despite how badly people want one.
Also, 30 million barrels might seem like a lot of crude oil but we would not be "swimming" in oil if that much was sent here. It would last about 2.5 days. We use over 20 million barrels a day and 2/3rds of that is imported.
Speaking to the notion that there is plenty of oil; what makes so many here believe that? What data or facts are you basing that conclusion on? It needs to be more that just that it fits into your government/oil company conspiracy theory.
This bares repeating until it soaks in; The world currently consumes 84 million barrels of oil each and every day. The U.S. consumes 25% of that total. The worlds refineries have a total capacity to refine 84 million barrels a day. If somehow the output of crude was boosted to 90 million barrels a day, the refineries could not keep up.
This is where investors have jumped in to buy futures and caused the prices to rise dramatically in recent months. They saw that the ability to refine crude oil is finite. It has hit a peak. Yet the demand for crude oil is rising. It is predicted that it will rise dramatically over the next decade, due to development in India and China. China adds 25,000 new cars to it's population each and every day. That's each and every day. That's a million new cars every 40 days. I believe China uses a mere 8 million barrels of oil per day, compared to over 20 million the U.S. uses. China says that in ten years it expects it will require over 80 million barrels of oil per day. So China will require all the crude oil that is pumped out of the ground. They want it all.
So those investors/speculators were simply falling back on their high school economics lessons when they decided to risk buying crude oil futures. They expect that future demand in the world will increase the value of oil by a large amount. It will. Currently the markets are moving back down. Not below $80 but below $125 a barrel.
Now we can make claims about Exxon profits (half of which are paid back in taxes), or government inaction, or environmental regulation or whatever flavor-of-the-month conspiracy you want to peddle, but in the long run, if you should decide to look at the actual fact and figures that are available and not hidden in a secret vault, you'll see that it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world was able to become bigger and better consumers, just like the U.S., and that their consumption was going to be fueled by crude oil in ever increasing amounts.
So our current cutbacks in summer travel may cause us drop from using 21 million barrels a day to 20 million barrels a day. Good for us. World demand will go from 84 million barrels to 83 million barrels a day, but only for a month or two. China and India are increasing their demands and will quickly cause world demand to exceed 90 million barrels. And then 100 million barrels. And then 115 million barrels. They are not going to let environmental concerns stop them from building refineries to handle their future demands.
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