tank truck driver was a metaphor. on to the larger picture.
reuters, msnbc et al are NOT proof. in your world maybe, but in out of context, unproven news quips there is… hmm, how to say it… room for fudge factor?
you have never seen incorrect news on tv or in print?
i have been in the petroleum transport industry for over 30 years. while i can’t say i have never seen a loaded tanker leave a US port, that would be a true rarity. we do not export diesel enmass, we IMPORT.
often the tankers may leave a port partially loaded, but invariably are headed towards another US port to finish discharging cargo.
if you want proof, look up US, import/export, trade imbalance, and petroleum import on google. then your fact about us exporting diesel is all washed up!
it is NOT port dependent on which refineries export. it is driven by supply and demand. i know that one state actually made it illegal to remove diesel/home heating oil from the state last winter. supply is king, and demand is the law.
my brother in law owns a mobil station. he is ALLOWED to sell a certain percentage of non mobil brand without penalty. do you really think he only buys the mobil brand?
…no-name convenience store gasoline stations are not subject to anti-trust laws that branded gasoline stations are.
To what antitrust laws are you referring? Please be specific, and please provide the section of the law being violated when a branded station chooses the most economical refinery from whom to purchase gasoline.
What you suggest in not possible for most Americans. If the only way to change bad corporate behavior is to take over a company, then there is no hope for the masses.
You are right on one count. Heroes are rare these days. And even heroes need help on occasion. Not that even remotely think that I am one or capable of being one. I honestly feel very sorry for the people who are being hurt by the oil companies greed. My only motive.
I’m actually looking for that trike. I might have found something from a neophyte company in southern CA called the TriRod. I’m wating for the brochure to come in the mail. The website was impressive but lacking in some critical specifics.
I don’t think it is quite as simple as that. Oil companies are taking advantage of the limited competition, but the real issue is world prices. Those world prices are partly driven by the third world countries who are becoming second world and second world countries becoming first. Each step increases demand for oil.
The one thing that will help is to reduce our consumption. That may not cause a decrease in oil prices, but it will cause a decrease in how much we spend on oil.
Wise words, Joseph! I’m puzzled why the entire US congress can’t grasp this. A world authority on oil prices addressed our conference last week. He showed with graphs and photos exactly what you just said. I paid $42 for a rubber chicken lunch to hear him say that!
The US is a NET IMPORTER of diesel fuel to the tune of 9% of its consumption!!! Diesel fuel is often shipped by barge or tanker from the refinery to the point of use or distribution. So, a tanker might leave Houston for New York, for instance.
The American Petroleum Institute and the US Department of Energy have detailed statistics on all this. If you tell them 85% of US diesel is exported they may ask what you have been smoking!
When you look at what the Wall Street hedge funds take for their share of the fuel market, what the govt takes, what the credit card companies take, what the banks take, dividens paid out to oil investors, it makes the oil profits look pretty small. It is just a bunch of new Enrons with different names.
You would think the oil companies would not have to pay off so many people to operate a business.
There is about four layers of bumpkins who need to get out of the market.
I don’t get this “treating us unfairly” claim. Are they charging higher prices for people who drive “liberal” cars or vice verse?
If oil companies are making “excessive profits” how about baseball players, famous rock stars, and Bill Clinton who charges more money than I make in a decade of hard work for a single speech? How about the cast of Jerry Seinfeld? They each make more money for filming a single show than I will make in a lifetime. Should we punish Bill Gates for excessive profits? Should we force the Rolling Stones to play nightly concerts for $15 per ticket?
What if this boycott idea actually worked, we drive one oil company into bankruptcy and then what? A whole bunch of unemployed former oil company employees? People who’s 401K included a lot of stock in that oil company seeing their retirement plans go down the drain? And, the remaining oil companies left with one less competitor.
There are somethings oil companys don,t want you to know. A company has come out with a H2o system for your car or truck. iI HOPE CARTALK CAN FIND OUT IF IT WILL WORK.anyone with info let us know.
“There is plenty of oil left in the ground, it’s just either difficult and costly to get at, or it’s been made off limits by misguided tree huggers…”
The typical response of the uninformed who wants to simplify the problem. Oil companies have permits already for drilling in many oil rich areas but choose not to and sit on the reserves. Even many conservatives in congress who are willing to ultimately permit drilling in ANWR and the like, but will not until other areas have been tapped are unwilling to do so now. Drilling off the coast of many states, esp. Jeb Bush’s Florida may be such an economical hardship to tourist rich ares that again the Feds are reluctant…it’s not the tree huggers.
Get with the progrsam and off the propaganda.
Refineries are best built near the crude sourse…we have all the functional refinery capacity we need…any more would be redundant. So please do a little research other than listen to the Fox station.
You are right in that little can be done to hold any individual oil comp. accountable. They work together in both their distribution sources and competitive market areas.
As I’ve stated before, the oil companies have little incentive to drill for new oil. Exploration and drilling is expensive and risky. They are already making record profits, so why would they bother sinking a bunch of money into potentially dry holes right now? They’ll save the proven reserves for when they start making less money. Their only obligation is to turn a profit for their shareholders.
What offends me more than oil company greed is government greed and excessive regulation and taxation.
Government greed and excess regulation caused the refinery here to go under a bit over 20 years ago, leading to the loss of a great company and a large number of jobs.
no wonder we can’t get anything accomplished as a group of consumers. well over half of the comments in here are about why this couldn’t work. maybe instead of everyone wining about the prices and wringing our collective hands in worry and the belief that nothing will help, nothing will work - we are doomed. why the hell don’t we give something a try - if it in fact doesn’t work - who cares, we tried and we’ll try something else untill we find a solution. blindly following our president who has repetedly lied and misled us, lets try something.
since the exxon valdez accident i have not purchased mobil or exxon fuel. not because they had an accident but because they tried to cover it up. i have also read that they purchase a large percentage of foreign oil. i try to only use bp/ amocco they use us oil almost exclusively. remember a movement starts with 1 more person. or you you could just sit on your ass and complain about how nothing will work.
“We as citizens have lost the control to monitor and punish bad corporate behavior.”
What on earth does that statement even mean? What makes you think you have a right to “monitor and punish bad corporate behavior”? If you don’t like a corporation’s behavior, unless you are a stockholder of that corportation, your rights are limited to not patronizing it. Just because this is an oil company, and you want the oil doesn’t mean you get to decide how the company will be run. You don’t get to determine price, and you don’t get to determine profit margin.
You can buy the product, or you can not buy it. In America, you can even protest peacefully in front of the corporate offices if you like. But you don’t get to “control” or “punish” a company because you don’t like it.
I’ll bet we can all guess who you’ll be voting for.
By the way, if you really want to “control” some entity over the price of gasoline, why not try to control the federal govenrment. They get about 4 times as much of the price of a gallon as the oil company gets in profit.
Thank you for your statement. I got so many “nothing will work”, stupid ideas, and who do you think you are wanting to change corporate behavior, I couldn’t really believe it. This is not the America I grew up in. These are a bunch of old scared men and wimps. I was starting to agree with the Tommy Lee Jones character in the the Valley of Elan movie. It might be the time to start flying our flag upside down.