This is INSANE!!

We won't be able to afford food. I say landscape the lawns with vegetables.

You can't really compare by minutes when you're talking about fuel costs. In some cities it could take you 45 minutes just to travel 5 miles. Even sitting in traffic idling, you're not going to be using as much fuel as a straight out 30 mile+ drive. Many people in urban areas could get to work just as quick riding a bike or taking mass transportation. They just choose to drive instead.

Sure, there's some people in urban areas that travel 20-30 miles to get to work. But unlike many rural commuters, they have other options. Mass transportation, more opportunities to carpool, more types of jobs that can offer telecommuting and more job opportunities closer to home.

Many people in the suburbs drive to the city to work out of choice. Many rural dwellers have no choice but to drive long distances to find work.

It's not just employment considerations either. How far do you drive to get a grocery store or any other routine places? When I lived in Montana, it wasn't uncommon to drive 70 miles or more to get to the nearest grocery store, bank or even a gas station. People would routinely drive 200 miles to Billings to shop for vehicles, appliances and such. They had no other choice.

Of course high fuel prices are affecting everyone. But it's rural areas that are going to be hit the hardest.

Is everyone on this board so young they didn't live through this before? Why is everyone so surprised and caught off gaurd by this? Do people actually believe that someone driving a gas guzzler is the cause of fuel prices? Do people actually believe that gas prices are going to go down to the point of being cheap? Does anyone really believe that we as a nation are going to cut our use of oil? Does anyone realize that gas for their cars is just a small portion of how oil is used in this country?

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"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence"
Robert Frost

Hi Orville.

I agree with you 100%, the Senator's comments make no sense at all ... I would love to know who said that ...


Food For Thought:
-----------------

I. Regarding Conservation

Facts:

1) The USA currently uses approximately 20.9 Million Barrells of Oil per day
2) Of this 20.9 Million Barrels approximately 14.2 Million Barrells of Oil per day is used for Transportation.
3) Of this 14.2 Million Barrels approximately 1.8 Million Barrels are used for Jet Fuel

That leaves roughly 12.4 Million Barrels for Autos, Trucks, etc ... By using more fuel efficient vehicles we can conserve an additional 2.5-3.75 Million Barrells per day. Would that help? ... Let's take a look at the numbers behind our current predicament ...

Facts:

1) Roughly 11% of Refining capacity in the USA is currently out of commission
2) Colonlial and two other critical pipelines were out of commission for 3 days but are starting to come back online and should be running at full capacity shortly.

Let's see 11% of 20.9 Million Barrels is what ... roughly 2 Million Barrels per day ( give or take ) ... Once the distribution issues are resolved, if our vehicles were more efficient, we would not have any shortages whatsoever ...

II. The World's Demand for Oil is Growing ...

Sure is, and it is a train that is out of control. *Something* is going to derail this train ... I am not sure what . The world supply line is so tight right now that one Hurricane can make everybody throughout the entire world *very* nervous ... This has *never*happened before. Did Hurricane Camille threaten the US or world supply chain in 1969? ... It is not one single problem either ...

Light, Sweet, Crude has peaked, this means that refineries have to adjust to processing different ( heavy, sour ) kinds of oil ... No new refineries have been built in the US since the 70's, so prior to the storm, USA refineries were working harder than they have ever been working. These refineries were straining because there was no downtime for maintenance. Meanwhile, everyday, the US is producing less oil ( because our oil production peaked in 1970 ) and we are having to rely more and more on less reliable *international* producers like OPEC and FSU ( Former Soviet Union ). Meanwhile, China, India, and a lot of 3rd world ( AKA Developing Countries ) are using more and more oil every day ... Current Estimates are that within 3 days to 3 years we will be demanding more oil than we can supply on a global level .... Yep ... *SOMETHING* is going to derail this train ...


III. We Need to Produce More Oil

Yes we do!!! I am a realist however ... And although I am not a very smart man, I do know how to read a Bell Curve ... The fact is there are a growing number of respected Geologists, Physicists, and Oil Company Executives who believe that world could hit its peak oil producing capcity within the next few years. If they are correct, this event will make New Orleans look like a Sunday afternoon picnic.

Conservation may *seem* like only a small part of the solution. Quite honestly, however, if the world is within even 10-20 years of peak oil, then conservation is really *Just The Beginning* of a long, and difficult process ...

Honestly, I don't know how much time we have ... I don't know if it is 10 minutes or 10 years ... I *DO* know that we are behind the curve however and I *DO* know that everyday Americans are wasting a precious resource ...

That is why I am here on this board and now that I have said my piece I will focus on what I can do to take care of and protect my family ...

Thanks For Listening ...

My local gas station is now out of gas... and I'm in rural IL.
Anyone else in IL out of gas???

I don't know if it's an isolated incident from the locals stocking up or not. It's the only station for about 20 miles, but they've never run out before, much less all 3 grades.

Ouch!!!

God Bless You!!!

Do you have enough to get through the next few days? Where is the next closest station? Do you have their phone number? Can you call them to find out if they have any and if so how much?

The next closest town still has gas, so I'm not sure what's going on. I'm headed up that way tonight though, and hopefully can find out. It's a Casey's gas station, maybe that chain is having supply problems??

I have a couple hundred gallons of diesel on hand & enough regular gas to power a generator for about a week, so I'm not too worried. Yet.

The heart of the matter is that we have a finite supply of petroleum on the planet.

That petroleum is used for transportation fuel, lubricants, storage containers, medicines, some food additives and clothing, just to name a few derivative products.

Even if the United States conserves on fuel usage, we will still be needing an increasing amount of petroleum over time as population numbers increase. The same will occur for other nations. It makes no difference if we as a nation or we as a planet conserve on petroleum. Why? There is a finite supply.

We can argue over who is to blame for high fuel prices. We can call for conservation. We can drill and mine for every possible source of fossil fuel that can be turned into petrofuels. All of this will make no difference save push back the fall of the petro-economy for perhaps a year to a decade depending on a variety of factors. The only solution is to find ways NOW to get out of the petro-economy. If we don't, the rest makes little difference as we will soon reach a point where we have no real economy to speak of.

On the bright side, land in the rural areas will be increasingly cheaper as fewer will be able to live there as easily. This will allow those who want rural land to homestead upon a better opportunity to buy it.

In the end, we can reduce our fuel consumption, but it changes little in the greater scheme of things. We may help our own individual situations, but it won't change things on a national scale.

__________________
Those who refuse to respect the natural rights of the individual and uphold their oath to protect and defend the Constitution deserve the punishment they receive.

Maybe the tree huggers in California will figure out they need to build a refinery or two out there!

__________________
Alice
* * *
"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

What makes you think there are no refineries in California?....your kidding.....right?

Chicken, we live in rural illinois too. Our town has 4 gas stations. Two of them are above $3.00 as of yesterday. Another one (casey's) was out of all three grades, and the other one we didn't drive past to see. BP had gas at 3.09 and Amoco was at 3.19.

Sorry to bump this up, but I just wanted to share what one gas-station employee told us about why prices went up so quick. She said that they didn't know how much gas was going to cost them when their tanks ran low, and if they didn't raise prices now, they might not be able to afford to get more. Unfortunately, gas stations can't purchase a partial tank, they have to fill their tank or forget it. Many of the gas stations around here didn't raise their prices right off--probably figured they'd wait until their next shipment since they had relatively "cheap" gas sitting in the tanks. Now, all of them have run out and aren't buying anymore because wholesale price is about $3.50/gallon up here for some of the smaller stations, so they're forced to charge at least that (usual mark-up is around $.06 per gallon), plus the gas tax (which here in VT would put the price just under $4.00/gallon I believe). Some of the larger stations probably get gas for a bit less, but not many. We've had one of the three gas stations here in town stop selling gas, and the other two are around $3.50/gallon. Managed to find a place today that was only $3.19/gallon on the way to help out some friends. Thank God we carpool, as we drive 70 miles round trip to work every day (at less than 20 miles/gallon, it's costing us over $12.00/day to go to work and back.)

I don't even want to know how much heating oil is going to cost this winter...probably will run $3.00/gallon or more, and since we use about 800 gallons in a good winter, that's $2,400 for heat for one season! Man, I wish we had a woodstove!

This makes some sense ... Like you said, many stations aren't charging an extreme markup ( I don't consider $0.05-$0.10 a gallon to be extreme ), yet once you include taxes, etc ... it starts to get pricey ...

Re: Heating Oil: It won't just be heating oil. Don't forget Natural Gas production has taken a serious hit as well. Over the past year or two, Natural Gas and Heating Oil prices have moved in tandem. This will hit practically everyone ... The only way you can avoid taking a hit is if you have a well designed, passive solar, house that has a solar water heater and uses wood or *maybe* a pellet stove for a little supplemental heat ...

Of course it would also help to have a diesel or ethanol capable vehicle along with a still that can allow you to produce your own fuel ...

Food for thought ...

California exports surplus refined petroleum products to Arizona and Nevada after meeting our own needs.Numbers I found is we produce 6 billion gallons of gasoline in 4 months,while consuming 5.1 billion.(5.1 billion gallons consumed in 120 days,gas produced 50 million gallons a day)

36% of crude refined in California is foreign,41% is from in state sources,remainder from Alaska.

Calif. is #4 oil producer in the USA.We are #3 in refinery capacity in the USA.

Dont know what that really means to us,just found it interesting.

I could be wrong,I used the Calif. gov. energy site and the Modesto Bee(?) to get those numbers.If anyone has different numbers,far be it from me to refute them,just my quickie search turned these numbers up.

BooBoo

Yes, another "quick fix" that means nothing. Conserving oil and changing our ways is the the only way to solve this. It will take 10 years to get the little bit of oil that might be there and we will ruin the area in the process. We could have solved this in the 70's, but didn't. Anything Bush does now will have no lasting effect except to further degrade living conditions at the expense of oil profits.

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Cindy in PA

greetings from canada. daer hubby and i truck for a living .we came from langley b.c. on friday and we are sitting at the flying j incannonsburg ky.this morning.we haven't had to pay more than 3.00 gal u.s. i'm just praying it dosn't go higher. ....the traffic has been very very light. it's been really odd to drive thruogh the big cities and meet maybe 75 to 100 vehicles and maybe 20 to25 vehicles in an hour in the countryside.the up side of this is there will be less accidents this holiday.p.s. we love your people and your country.....don't listen to the news nuts that say the nieghbours don't like you. last week we went to alaska for the first time!!!!awesome i'm bitten we can hardly wait to go back. fireliteca

Greetings to you too! Flying J is my 'Bestest Friend' when traveling,good gas at a good price,always.

BooBoo

Thanks Sparkey !! God Bless you !! Sometimes, I feel like I must be missing something you know ... like I don't have a clue ... Mainly because many folks I know think I am crazy ( there's plenty of oil ... this will *never* happen ... )

You are absolutely right about preparation ... we should have spent a lot more time "preparing" over the past 30+ years ... Unfortunately, we haven't and I think we are going to pay dearly for this ...

Me, I am trying to prepare for what I believe is the inevitable. I have purchased some land in Oklahoma and I am starting to work on learning everything I need to know to be as self-sufficient as possible. My wife is one of those folks that thinks I am crazy ... I love her very dearly so I am trying to *ease* her into the homesteading lifestyle ...

Thanks Again !! Your kind words of encouragement are most helpful

you're in luck then cause I was in the retail nursery business for over 20 years. Th key to growing anything outdoors is water. Too much water is the number 1 reason that houseplants die, but not enough water is the reason trees and shrubs die. If you fertilize with straight nitrogen you'll get really rapid growth that is too soft and will bend over, so the key is a balanced fertilizer like 5-10-5 or 10-10-10. the last element number is potash or potassium and strengthens the plant. Don't use anything stronger as it could burn new roots if the trees were just planted this year. If you could water deeply for a long time, that would be best. Just like a long soaking rain that lasts for days is better than a really hard rain that is over in a half hour. Mulching the trees would help alot too. Just don't make the mistake of making the mulch hill up on the tree trunks.