Similar to not tapping into ANWR, the use of oil from the oil sands in Canada has been restricted by the U.S. Congress.

Section 526 of the Energy Bill signed into law in January, I think, states that the U.S. government will not purchase transportation fuel from nonconventional petroleum sources that have higher life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions from production and combustion than equivalent conventional fuel.

That means that the US military, the postal service, government fleets, all of it - can’t use tar sands oil. Or oil shale. Or coal to liquids.

So, the U.S. military cannot buy oil from a source that is both one of the most secure and has some of the largest oil reserves in the world. The oil from the oil sands in Alberta may cost more, but the amount of oil in them is trememndous. Still, the U.S. Govt. has said it does not like this oil. So, instead, we need to buy it from sources in nations not as friendly to our views, and transport it further distances.

That may be...but...

Right now there is big controversy over 2 pipelines being built which will export over 1.5 million barrels of Bitumen a day from Alberta oil sands to the US to be converted into Crude...that's 1.5 million more than we're exporting now (which is a significant amount).

I feel compelled to add that in 2005 Canada only produced 1 million barrels of Bitumen a day.

Whatever oil lives below ANWR does fall under US jurisdiction, and honestly I don't know how anyone expects to price the production from any proposed oil fields. The usual 'free market' (ignoring the billions of US government subsidies for the moment) approach would be for private oil companies to bid for the concession, and extract the oil and sell it to the highest bidder. If I'm not mistaken that concession bidding has already taken place, several producers are chomping at the bit to get at ANWR. The point of my email was if you wanted to guarantee $2.50 per gallon gas for Americans, you have to price that into the concession somehow: a guarantee that the US would buy every drop of the production at $2.50 does nothing, nearly any bidder on the open market will make the same guarantee. So if you want an oil company to go to the expense of production, you need a price guarantee, and that price guarantee should be approximately how the free market for oil will value it at.

Leaving aside also whether any amount of production could guarantee $2.50 gas: the US consumes far more oil than ANWR can produce, so we have to buy more expensive oil along the way. You could incrementally lower the price of gas through additional government subsidies, or forcing the ANWR concessionaires to limit their sales for US consumption. The first I could see from the current Administration, they have proven an excellent source of free money for the oil companies, but not the second. The next Administration, maybe things swing around the other way - no subsidies, but limits on where they could sell it. (BTW when Hilary or PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. make some controversial decision around oil production and policy, have a heart and try to remember the catastrophic results from the current Administration's policies - those hundreds of billions were spent in your name, and from your pocket). Either way, it interferes with the vaunted operation of the free market for oil, to little or no effect.

I was going to mention the massive US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, that can arguably be related to our nation's strategic interest in protecting a fair chunk of our chosen oil supply (Saudi), but that trillion dollar boondoggle verges on the political and I personally doubt it only has to do with protecting oil, so I'll shut up. Pretty quick the whole situation just gets me angry these days.

Americans have already shown the oil companies and the government that it will sit still for inflated gas prices, and inflated everything-else prices.

If we started big-time drilling in ANWR today, sucked out all the oil, and were able to refine/use it in an ecologically sound way, do you think that the price of gasoline would drop? Or even not go up?

They don't HAVE to drop the price! For them, it isn't high enough yet.

Sue

Well, I never said we'd actually get gas back down to $3.00 or so a gallon, only that when the price gets much higher than it is, it will be a lot easier to use that as an enticement to circumvent the already weak environmental restrictions. Whether or not we reap the economic benefits or it all goes to China is, as you say, a matter of marketing. Right now it looks like China has a bigger stack of chips than we do, and unless we intend to start defaulting some of our markers abroad, we are only going to continue heading downslope. From a planning perspective, I think it would merit consideration as to logistics for transportation for the average joe, either to buy ever smaller, more fuel economic vehicles, or else to co-locate to someplace within walking/biking distance to/from work.

I am planning on becoming a teleworker in the next few years, mainly so that I can stay on the farm and work my other job, which will be running the farm, but also because 90% of what I currently do can be done from any location, including home. That ought to save me on fuel costs. Now all I have to do if find a 20 mule team to pull the combine so I am not pouring precious gasoline into mechanized farm equipment.

Welcome to the last phase of the industrial age; globalization. If there's one resource China and India still dominate, it is cheap manpower. We could probably cut our highway construction costs in half if we could employ a thousand chinamen at the Chinese market labor rate with picks and shovels in place of one track-hoe. Come to think of it, didn't we build a railroad that way?

I'm with you porkchop. I drove for a couple years as a company driver and my SO is an OO. We're going broke. So broke that I'm looking at returning to driving as a co driver just so we can make ends meet.

Just to give some of you a little added perspective. He and I just sat down while he was home last week and figured out that at the current fuel prices it's costing him an average of $0.80 per mile JUST for fuel. Running 3k miles a week that adds up.

I don't think there's going to be a huge "strike" that happens but I was talking to him on the phone earlier and he said I-40 is backed up because all the trucks are going slow. A slow down is different, stuff still gets delivered, it just takes longer. He'll be home tomorrow and isn't going back out for a couple days so ...

A new poster. Welcome to the forum. Stick around.

Welcome Newguy!!!

Welcome to the forums Newguy and stay a while.

Lee

If the gooberment would quit taking their cut gas would be that expensive, or would it?