THE PRICE IS WHAT!

(Washington Post, Gas Buddy, Anita Hamilton, World Fact Book)

(Forbes, Dave Siff, Green Bay Press Gazette, Frazer Chronicle)

 

You can imagine my surprise when I ambled up to my local gas pump, (I’m the only one who uses the pump), and I discovered that some jerk had been messing around and put the wrong price on the pump screen. $3.97.9 was just wrong…..way wrong. I keep a pretty accurate record of the prices at the pump, and just a couple days ago the price was $3.87.9.

 

After filling up to the tune of $79.00 I rushed home, my gas pump is only a couple of blocks from my house, got on my trusty computer to check the prevailing per gallon prices and discovered the price was $3.98. I was really pissed, how could I have missed this impending spike in the price of gasoline at my pump?

 

Further north and to the west, Minnesota, gasoline prices spiked at an astounding $4.24 a gallon rising more than .30 prior to the annual gas raping over the Memorial holiday. I didn’t really pay much attention to the prices because my wife had told me that she “heard that gasoline prices were due to drop before the holiday week-end.

 

Only thing was, and is…..the price of a gallon of petro went up from $3.67, to $3.77, to $3.87, to the present $3.97 for a gallon of refined liquid that we need to operate our combustion engine automobile. Can you say, “they got us by the short hairs?”   

 

The Federal Energy Information Administration’s weekly petroleum report blamed the sharp price increases in the Midwest on both planned and unplanned refinery maintenance. How in hell could a branch of the petroleum industry plan a refinery shut-down during a peak driving time, (Memorial week-end)?

 

Okay here’s the deal…..refinery utilization in the Midwest region, which stretches from Ohio and Tennessee to the Great Plains dropped to under 80%, according to the Energy Information Administration in the week ending on May 10, down from 94% a year earlier. I don’t know about you, and I can’t speak for my wife, but for me, dropping protroleum production from 94% to less than 80% before a driving holiday would seem like a move to drive up gasoline prices.

 

IS THE UNITED STATES ADICTED TO PETROLEUM PRODUCTS

The short answer is…..I hope so, my brothers-in-laws and my wife own the mineral rights on a 16^th of a section of land in Michigan. There are wells to the North-East, and to the South-West, and our land is smack dab in the middle of all the activity, so it stands to reason we will be next.

 

We are all just waiting for word of a strike and we’ll all get Cadillac Escalades and drive around the region naked as Jay Birds drinking hundred year old Scotch, and hollering at the moon. Well at least I will…..I can hardly wait.

 

Seriously you could say that I’m addicted to some of your dollars through the discovery, development and sale of petroleum from my spigot, and yes the United States is addicted to petroleum, the products produced from it, and how we use more gasoline than any other country in the world today, close to 20 billion barrels of black gold, Texas tea, crude oil a day.

 

The European Union is next at close to 14 billion barrels a crude a day, while China and Japan are 3^rd and 4^th in oil gluttony, failing to have learned a single solitary thing from the United States and its dependency on foreign oil. In fact it’s so bad, that if you took the European Union out of the equation and the 13 billion barrels a day, it would take the next five nations to equal what America’s use a day.

 

The bottom users of gasoline, 205 through 209 use less than 13,000 barrels of oil a day and the kids at Christmas probably hope for a wooden stick under the Christmas tree for a present so that they can make a fire.

 

Gasoline and related petroleum products actually are the drugs of choice for United States, a day without gasoline for the country would quickly lead to withdrawal and cause all sorts of connected problems. Transportation would be crippled, business would cease in some quarters and the connected snarl would be almost unbearable just in one day…..imagine two or three days or a week.

 

The amount of gasoline that the United States uses is almost an unimaginable number to comprehend, unless you’re used to dealing with big numbers…..I’m not, but anyways, for those of you who are used to big figures, try these on for size:

1. 367.8 million gallons

2. 8.74 million barrels

The first figure is the amount of gallons that are used in the United States on a daily basis, and the 8.74 million barrels, filled with 42 U.S. gallons that we consume in an average day. Of course holiday driving kicks the amount that we use upwards by several million gallons.

 

Two Senators in mid-May attempted to have Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz use his regulatory authority to prevent the simultaneous shut-down of Midwestern refineries in a single region to no avail. It’s funny, Steven Brown, vice president for federal and government affairs at independent oil refiner Tesoro said that “planned turnarounds, (shut-downs) never create supply disruptions, as it is not in anyone’s interest to jeopardize existing retail market shares.” However “unplanned outages is when trouble starts.”

 

Okay I get it Brownie, you don’t plan shutdowns of refineries, dry up the supply of gasoline, but it just seems to happen on accident during the beginning of summer driving, and to use Stevie’s own words, “unplanned disruptions can’t be easily mitigated”.

 

Let’s see, mitigated, exactly what does that word mean…..I mean to an average citizen, mitigated, “partly excuse a crime, less serious, more excusable, less harsh, okay Brownie I get it…..nobody is to blame, once again the consumer simply backs up to the gas pump and takes a high hard one up the tail-pipe. Thanks for that enlighten opinion Mr. Brown.

 

Of course this is the same Steven Brown who argues that the Keystone XL pipeline will create long term, well paying jobs for thousands of locals along the proposed route. Of course left out are the possible breaks along the pipe during the transfer of the tar-sand like oil that is super abrasive and will require an extremely watchful eye.

 

AH YES, THINGS ARE LOOKING UP

Now for the good news, help is on the way, pretty quick we can all buy those big gas guzzling SUV’s or the Cadillac Escalade’s and motor around not worrying about the price of gas, or the scarcity either, just over the next horizon is the following:

Ghawar, West Qurna, Rumaila, Mojnoon, Khuzestan, Ahwaz, Khurais, Tupi, Carabobo, and the North Slope in Alaska.

Never heard of these places, well join the club, neither have I, but they are all listed in different publications as part of the ten largest oil deposits in the world today…..that have been discovered. Depending on which periodical you read, the locations, and the numbers of trillions of barrels of oil can vary exponentially.

 

Of course along with the silver lining in the cloud of oil, is a rumble of thunder that every cloud must have, our oil future is no different. Iran, Russia and Iraq dominate the futures of oil reserves…..so I guess we’ll just have to continue our FOOT-PRINT in the Middle East for a while longer…..like until some other form of fuel is developed.

 

Me and my personal gas pump…..I’m thinking of trading the damn thing in for a bicycle, no worries about gas, or oil changes, just park my truck and watch it so I don’t get my pant-leg caught in the bike chain and keep an eye on those skinny tires for wear and tear.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!