Don't Pump -- May 15th

im actually quite interested in your job and knowledge on the subject. what variables really do have an affect on gas prices, because this is a topic i never really fully understood. for example, ive heard that refinery problems have caused the recent spike in prices, is the true or myth?

people will just fill up the day before of the day after

i guess i'll do it i hope alot more people do it too

i dont think one day will do anything

People don't buy gas because they want to. They buy gas because they have to. It runs our modern world. You are obviously some 14 year old kid who knows nothing about the world so your comments can be taken with a grain of salt. However I will explains some stuff to you.

You are correct, cost of living raises do not match the cost of inflation. If you can correlate this to blame a petroleum company then you are digging pretty deep.

I'm not really sure what "influx of gas prices" means but I think that you are saying that they are increasing. Well ya they are. About 25 years ago the US reached its top production levels and about 5 years ago the world reached its top production. Also I don't see any less cars on the roads or plastics being made or ships cruising across the ocean or jet liners transporting people. Demand is up supply is down so price increase. And in the oil industry the price has increase at very slow rate.

Only about 25% of crude oil is used in public transportation such as cars and buses.

As for saying that people who work for petroleum companies. Supplying the world with an invaluable array of products as well as its primary fuel should "find a new job" is moronic. What if I said that I don't like paying for beef so everyone should stop eating beef and everyone is the beef industry should find another job. Doesn't that sound silly?
"That argument is moot"... you are a moron.

Why would a company want someone to save money. Their job is to provide a service or product and in return they are compensated by money. What good company doesn't have money as a primary goal? Stop saying fuck you it cheapens your arguments and reinforces the fact that your are an idiot.

Don't give me this mother earth shit. The earth is a resource and in order to survive we need to utilize this resource. A drilling rig takes up all of about an acre and drills a 12" hole in the ground. Afterwards the area is reclaimed and all that is left is a small well head that takes up about the area that a telephone pole would. If you want to talk about raping mother earth look at the suburbs, international trucking, strip mining, deforestation, pretty much anything humans do can be consindered raping the earth.

Petroleum companies make a profit because they provide a product that everyone needs. Its not easy to get oil out of the ground. Trust me I am a petroleum engineer. It takes a lot of time and money to get oil out of the ground and there is no guarantee that you will even be able to produce a well. I have worked for 3 companies 2 of which no longer exist.

So basically do a little bit of research before you start running your mouth about shit that you know nothing about.

in 1970 gas prices were about $1.50 per gallon. At a current government calculated cost of living percentage increase of 2.25% gas prices in the year 2007 should be $3.74 per gallon.

Keep in mind this is the cost of living increase not the actual inflation increase.

Everything gets more expensive especially if that something is soon to be in very short supply. I'm not mad that people are not spending their money on gas on the 15th. I'm mad that people don't understand what oil is and how petroleum is produced and managed. It would be better for this world if people tried to use less oil and gas. But not buying gas for one day and then buying the same ammount is not a solution to the problem.

Oil is getting pretty hard to find and the technology doesn't exist to replace it as a form of fuel. If a solution isn't reached the world will be changed. Cities will be redesigned the suburbs will become slums and a 3,000 mile chicken sandwich will no longer exist.

the electricity from my house comes from a hydro plant

yay! let's run everything on hydro-electrics!

im not buying gas that day neither are any of the kids that i race with either

Not neccessarily, alot of people buy gas for recreation too.  i.e. Boating, road trips, skiing, fourwheeling, whatever they may want to do that takes a motorized vehicle to get there.   The US has HORRIBLE public transportation unless you live in a big city.  In fact it seems they actually dont want to build an efficient public transportation for people because they know they can just reap the benefits.

Oh yea, of course the petroleum companies should be donating alot of money to help save the environment BECAUSE THEY ARE THE BIGGEST CONTRIBUTORS TO POLLUTION DUMBASS.

Im pretty sure people survived just fine before Automibles ever existed, fool.

everything you own, your computer, your food, your chair, your TV, everything you own, at some point, used oil to be made and transported.

like the dude said, and you should trust him, he works with this stuff, 25% of all oil consumed in the USA is used in private transport and activities... the rest is used to create everything you see in front of you...

You buy oil indirectly every time you buy anything in the western world. Get off your high horse.

Listen, I understand that.  This thread is about the common mans price he is paying at the gas station, thats it.  You can't tell me that alot of these big truck companies/corporations do not get cut deals for purchasing large amounts of gas/diesel?  pfffft.

There is a fuckton of oil in the United State right now that we could be using instead of using every other countries oil and then having most of it spill in the ocean because of dumbass people in the tanker crashing it. 

Instead we just sit on our own oil so people know their families down the road will still have a shitload of oil.  Anyone that tries to come up with a newer technology is quickly either bought out or covered up.  Ethanol takes like a Barrel and a half of oil to make one Barrel of Ethanol.  Im just sick of this primitive ass fuel source that has us all by the balls.  Its like the oil comapnies dont want to evolve because they just see $$$ from something that took the earth billions of years to create....

I'm sure they spilled it all just to spite you. The nerve of those people!

read this:

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/april18/ethanol-041807.html

Basically, a big point I want to make, is that do NOT be fooled by these oil corporations.  They want us to believe that the human race is somehow totally 100% dependent on oil.  Which is not true.  The first Mans to break off from the Apes was about 1 million years ago.  The 'Modern Man' was pretty solid about 10,000 years ago.  So, my point is that the Human race was not founded by oil companies or some shit and that is the reason we are here today.  The fact that you are here today means that humans survived that oh so rough life without oil products. 

So what I want to say, is that everyone either needs to come up with new technology to surpass oil or think about how you can possibly make things more 'primitive' in your life to avoid the unneccesary costs and wastefulness of oil.  I understand that being able to travel quickly by plane or car etc is not something I will stop, but I will not be wasteful about it.  Grow a garden, do whatever you can to avoid having your whole life relying on oil because that is exactly what the oil companies want.  The oil companies want you to be lazy and not do anything for yourself.  Well if you forgot a point to this post, read the first paragraph to this post again...

Judging by the way humans have acted throughout history, I really doubt we'll voluntarily switch energy sources. We're going to be dependent on oil until we expend all of the worlds reserves.

Thank you for that.

Now, get off your computer, go find a cave to live in, make your own clothes, grow your own food, and stop skiing. Then you'll be practicing what you preach, and you may have some credibility.

Hippies using the internet always seems counter-intuitive.

my bicycle has a flat...

There is so much wrong with this paragraph. There is almost no oil in the united states anywhere. The wells I work on produce at most 5-20 barrels per day. And these wells are screaming. In Saudi their wells are somewhere in the area of 200-10,000 bbls per day.

In fact the only place in the US that is actually has a chance of producing a measurable amount of oil is Alaska. And there is obvious objection to drilling there.

Tankers almost never spill oil and the last incident was a long time ago. It is now one of the most heavily regulated industries on the planet and maintain an excellent safety record.

Truck companies buy diesel from pumps just like other people if they get a discount it is because they have some type of frequent user discount. They do not ever deal with oil companies... EVER.

If you are refering to the national petroleum reserve there is not very much oil there. About enough to run our country for 6 months max. So we are not sitting on much.

BP is the largest spender in alternative energy and is constantly making strides in all types of alternative fuel technology. There is no conspiracy theory cover up. The technology doesn't exist and if it does it is not economically of environmental enough to be implemented.

Oil is produced in millions of years not billions.

Oil companies are not evil they are people like you and me. They do care about the consumer and you should be very pleased that gas prices are as low as they are.

Really oil companies only have a small say in the price of gas at the pump. The price of a barrel of crude oil is decided daily by a group of independent wall street annalists, government officials, oil company execs, and consumer demand. The oil is then processed at a refinery where the actual gasoline is sold into a pipeline or trucked out. At this point the buyer of the gas adds additives and then ships to the retail area. Here it is taxed heavily by the government and marked up by the retailer depending by area.

So in total an oil company gets about 1/8th of the cost of a gallon of gas. If they are only a producer and not refining the crude the take home is much less.

Bottom line oil is profitable at times and not at others it is a political industry and very important to our modern existence. Companies both profit and loose money getting this stuff out of the ground. They are trying to make a profit and provide a product they are not trying to screw you out of you 8 bucks an hour.

the oily companies will know about this, so gas the prices will be high before the day, and drop on the day.

I'm totally down, but I need gas now so that has to be done tomorrow.

NOTHING WILL CHANGE IF YOU DO THIS>

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEADS.

THE ONLY WAY TO ACTUALLY LOWER PRICES IS THE GET EVERYONE INTHE COUNTRY TO CONSUMER LESS.

Hahaha, when I was in Toronto I was zoning out and had a daydream that I was a billionaire, opened up a gas store, lowered prices to a buck and then other places had to lower gas prices and everybody loved me... then some kid at the Cummer skate park busted his head open and my daydream was ruined. Fuck.

Just checking in a monh later to ee how this worked for all of you.










Told ya so.

haha gas prices went up

The USA has a lot of oil, you cannot sit there and tell me there is a shortage, its under the ocean on the shorelines.  They just dont want you to know that.  Who gives a fuck if we have a shortage anyways, i hope we run out so we have to move on from oil because its a shitty deal all around for everyone.  There are other fuel sources that can be made to burn hot and quickly to run engines, its not that complicated.

Ahaha, nooooo its not. Very few places on earth exist where oil fields can form, they're not just sitting offshore everywhere. That is one of the most wacked out conspiracy stories I've ever heard.

dude, there are alot of oil drilling rigs on the ocean right now, so how is it a conspiracy theory.  You forget that the ocean didnt use to be as high as it is now in alot of places (im talking like millions of years here, glaciers held alot of water) and life existed out there.  Plus there has been life in the ocean forever (fossil fuel? get it? oil is made from organic material, there has been life in the ocean for longer than on land)
If there are only so many places oil can form, how come there is probably an oil rig in every 50 states?  And if its so rare, how come we use the shit out of it everyday.  We consume billions of gallons a day, so its not rare, they want you to think that though.

Anyways, here is a dope website i found for the consumer to get back at the oil tycoons.  Find the cheapest gas place near you.
http://www.gaspricewatch.com/new/default_V3.asp

No.

Believe me, I'm familiar with the processes it takes to make oil. But you are really wrong. There is not oil off every coastline in the world. Even half of the coastline, probably even under 10% of them. I realize that due to plate tectonics, land masses have shifted, lowered and raised over time. But as I previously stated, like fossilization, it takes a combination of many factors working all at once for many years to turn organic material into hydrocarbon fuels. Just because organisms once existed in a local doesnt mean you will find oil there.

All 50 states do not have oil wells. Beds simply do not form in some regions, such as the Appalachians, where the geological processes encourage coal to form instead of oil. While much of the world has yet to be acutely prospected, scientists can make pretty accurate guesses to whether or not the area will have oil based on the type of geological processes and rocks you'll find. Oils also need to be 'trapped' in between layers of rock after they form, otherwise they seem away and disperse. Being under the sea, you still need these same stipulations for oil beds to form. Oil we can collect is not everywhere, not by a long shot. I would love to hear a shred of evidence supporting your claim, because many geologists would tell you that you are incorrect.

the gas companies were too smart