For my own part, I like paying $11.00 to fill up the bike, and $30 or so for my little car – just last summer I was planning my driving habits around being close to an base exchange when the needle hit “E” and digging ever deeper each go-round.
I’m not sure I’m 100% in love for the reasons underlying the recent price decline, however: Global economic malaise, financial upheaval, reduced demand.
Jules has the round up for those most personally affected:
Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, director-general of Saudi satellite TV Al-Arabiya and columnist for (and former editor of) the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat offers an uncommon perspective on the challenges facing the Gulf countries in the event that crude prices dip all the way down to $20 a barrel. He considers the shock a blessing in disguise, a warning for self-reliance, and an opportunity for reform. The reform, according to Al-Rashid, must focus on the education system: “We do not need $100 a barrel to reform our education. Teaching students more chemistry, physics and mathematics will not require a single additional dollar, but will produce more than our existing educational system…Weak instruction produces [an] emaciated society.”
And:
Iran, the second largest oil producer among OPEC members, is likely to feel the pain of declining oil prices more severely than any other oil-producing country in the Middle East. Unlike the GCC member countries, Iran’s price stabilization fund, which was to receive windfall profits to be used when oil revenues decline, has been nearly depleted as a result of poorly managed economic policies by the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The criticism in the Iranian press of Ahmadinejad’s stewardship of the national economy is a daily occurrence.
Good.
heh.
just plain “heh”.
Oh — and don’t forget our Slavic “buds” in the hurtin’ category as oil prices drop…
- SJS
IF we reach $20/barrel (and that’s a mighty big IF), there certainly won’t be much oil drilling or exploration occurring where it needs to occur…. offshore. While I agree that we need to make better use of American resources, the plain truth is digging holes 16,000 feet down into the ground isn’t cheap. It costs a million dollars a day to drill, with a regular roughneck team, and usually over 30 days to drill to 16000 feet. It costs even more to do that at sea, as CAPT Lex can attest. Doing ANYTHING at sea costs more than doing it on the beach.
Additionally, there is a breakeven point for oil below which oil companies won’t put up the funds to explore for more. No payback. We are getting close to that level right now.
State Oil Companies (Saudi Aramco[Saudi Arabia], Statoil[Norway], Petrobras[Brazil], etc.)… may be willing to pay more to explore, but the private companies can’t They don’t have a national treasury backing up their failures.
So hopefully we won’t go too low on the price or 5 yrs from now we’ll be back here again, just after we climb out of recession and need to be cruising along with a STABLE commodity price for oil. Ups and downs happen. The oil industry would be just as happy if the price would sit there and not move while they made their plans for exploration. Of course, that’s not gonna happen either.
What dismays me is how the Chavez’s, Abdullahs, and Ahmedinejad’s of the world can actually stick it to us for so long (remember this summer with $4/gal gasoline), and our economy can take it, and then when something else slows it down, they can all drop their price by 60% almost overnight! These aren’t US traders causing the price drop. It is the nationalized oil companies manipulating America and the rest of the world to make profit. They don’t care how much they make poor folks hurt. Just so America keeps on buying their oil at the highest price possible for them.
When you go looking to blame someone for the high price of oil (this means you, Bill O’Reilly), don’t go looking at Exxon or BP. Look at Hugo Chavez, King Abdullah, Imanutjob, and Mexico and Brazil for their manipulations. America’s not the cause of this recession, just the target of it.
Subsunk
Subsunk,
You’re running hot and true with those comments. BZ…
To my mind, NOW is absolutely the best time to drill for new oil, and expand our available resources as well as add to the reserves. That way, when the prices rise again, and the fat foreign oil regimes start to lick their lips, we can say “no thanks! We’re dining at home tonight!”.
respects,
AW1 Tim,
I agree 100% with you…….and as, I believe Subsuk mentioned, the oil companies don’t partiularly want to drill because of the lack of profit in it. If we could figure out a way around that roadblock, we’d have the problem solved.
Guy
Subsunk/AW1–unfortunately, IMO the last election cycle pretty much put the kabosh on any common sense solutions like “Drill here, Drill now, pay less” . We are sitting on the solution to our energy needs, but BHO & those who are holding the cards in Congress are no friends to big oil. Hope I’m wrong about that, but haven’t seen any indication that they understand dire our situation is. RE “Bill O’Reilly”: He may have missed the mark, but it’s hard to explain your not the cause of the problem when consumer dollars are going to your oil company and you, as the big exec are knocking down obscenely high salaries and perks. Makes you and you cause look bad, kinda like those “Big Three” auto makers pleading poverty, but still able to fly in on those corporate jets, dotcha think?
That last word is poetry in brief:
good
Yup.