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I'm in the "use less on the road more in the plane" crowd.
Oh, and hedge it with plenty of energy stocks. I started buying energy in Jan. 04 and have made way more on these than I have spent on energy. Buy some HAL or XOM and take some of their insane profits for yourself. |
I have a question, and I don't want this to turn into a flame-war on Auto Gas, but if you have a low compression Lycoming (less than 9:1, for example) why wouldn't you use it instead? I know about the risks of vapor lock, so I plan on avoiding fuel with Ethanol in it (simple testers out there for this).
An alternative would be to dilute your fuel mixture with auto-gas, like 50/50 so your valves get the lead benefit, but at a reduced cost. There are also lead addatives for this. I don't think in most cases that it's a matter of Octane rating, but that of needing lead for the non-hardened valve seats. I plan on using Mogas with my engine, but will follow the break-in procedures and use ONLY Avgas during that period. After that, I will run Avgas only as needed/required for the valve seats. |
How about the ignorance margin of the tax..?
The gov't. will also tack on as much tax as they think we will be willing to pay. At least the oil companies are giving you something for your money....
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Exactly!
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John Clark RV8 N18U "Sunshine" KSBA |
I sure have concerns about the people in the northeast where oil is the dominant method of heating homes in the winter.
I know people sayt hey're concerned; but I also notice people screaming past me on the drive home every night; so they're not THAT concerned. We can bring the price of oil down tomorrow if we put our minds to it. We just don't want to sacrifice in this country anymore... for anything. THAT concerns me much more than anything else. We blame everyone but ourselves. |
I'd be worried about the cost for heating and powering industry in the short term but high prices will spur inovation and new technology.
I still think however that the price of gas will have to rise significantly higher (10x) to make it's use for personal transport of any kind unattractive. MoGas in the UK and europe is 3 or 4 times the price in the USA, cars are taxed up the wazu, automatic speed cameras spew fines in the mail and tax dollars are poured into public transport - but the roads are still packed and you can't find a parking space! Humans really value the freedom that personal transport affords and are prepared to sacrifice other things for it. As for inovation, who noticed the electric Sonex at OSH? It is the very tip of the iceberg. I wouldn't worry about the price of crude in the long run. |
PBS did a great show on alternative fuels some years back; there was no magic bullet, and it was going to take many different sources from solar/wind, nuclear, hydro, etc, to help cut into our petro dependence. Ethanol used more energy to extract it out of wheat, corn, etc, than what was produced. It?s practical in Brazil since they use sugar, and get a much larger yield per bushel of that compared to only about 2.7 gallons of ethanol from a bushel of corn. Technology often takes so long to catch up, and thus far, all of the other alternative energy sources are still more costly than the petrol itself, and it takes government subsidies to keep them afloat. Petro based fuels and engines has also had over a hundred year head start. My own guess is that it will take many, many decades before anything looks promising to curb our huge appetite of petro.
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wj |
Hedging higher energy cost through stocks works best for the people who need it least. The more you invest in those stock, the more money you have and thus the more you can afford higher price versus a low income family who isn't likely to have any savings.
I lived in Europe, the high cost of gas didn't get people to slow down, but they did buy more efficient cars. European drive those small cars because they want to save on gas. We used to own a Range Rover. If you let the tank get close to empty, it would cost about 800 French Francs at the time to fill up, which at the time was $130 to fill up the tank and that was over 10 years ago! We still went and took leisure drive on Sundays, yet just drive to drive. We also had another car to get around and drove it most of the time. People only equate their saving at the pumps with current price, we don't aknowledge that if we all use less, price should drop (if other country demand doesn't rise while supply doesn't decrease, and that's a HUGE if). I still think the price at the pump needs to go above $5 before we start to really feel the effect. Let's say that you're burning 500 gallons a year through your car. If price goes to $4.5 at the pump, we'll complain but it's only $750 more a year. For most people that can be absorbed, it's the low income family that will be hurt. Start going higher, and you'll start hitting more people and that's where you'll start to have issues. Of course, this will play havoc with many other prices because value for almost all goods get added by something whose cost is in part related to energy cost which makes people feel more squeezed. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather keep that money in my pocket, but the bottom line is that it's not the end of the world as we like to make it out to be. The sad part is that oil at 88 is still cheap, most say it will go to $100, I wouldn't be surprised to see it go higher, specially is our feds cut again and others don't. |
I know it's a paradox but in a way high oil prices are a good thing. I thinnk this because here in the UK (and in europe) it has started to concentrate minds on alternative fuels and this is gathering huge momentum.
The governments of the west now recognise the importance of moving away from oil as their main source of engery, for no other reason than it is no longer (was it ever?) a secure source. At last there are political demands (and thefore market demands) for alternative fuel sources so the commercial companies will get their act together and pour R&D money in bucket loads and the results will come. In the short to medium term oil prices will remain high, but once those oil producing nations realise that their customers have gone elsewhere market forces will dictate that oil prices will have to at least match alternative energy sources. I predict that within the next fifteen years in Europe more than 70% of cars will be running on hybrid and alternative energy sources! And now in the UK even the "ecos" think the buildign of new nuclear power stations is at least worth debating! I don't really think that the west will allow this (oil) gun to be held to its head for much longer! Just my take on things. now I'm going to get back to building my seats!:) Martin |
I too think that higher oil prices are good.
Yes, it will slow down the economy and hurt many folks. But if we keep burning up fossil fuels at a high rate and tossing that CO2 into the air, we'll eventually have far more problems than high gas prices. By raising the price of oil/gas it makes it economically attractive to develop cleaner energy sources. |
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