I seriously fear where we are going to be in the next ten or twenty years at this rate. We are selling ourselves to the Chinese and other countries.

The possible bright side to this is polution might go down some. The bigger cities should beef up their bus and subway systems while they can. Maybe bring back more of the electric cable cars.

In any case, we just have to embrace the change as best as we can because we keep hearing about all of this from the press and media, but the average citizen being able to do anything about the rising fuel costs appears to be out of our realm. Let’s see, the media is cramming doom and gloom down our throats at an alarming rate. The world is basically crumbling in every sense of the word. Global warming, panic and speculation leading to instability and rising costs in the fuel and food markets, and most people are too busy trying to survive and make ends meet to be able to find the time to do anything about all of this. Or, maybe if we stay glued to the TV long enough they might tell us what we can do.

You know what I say? ….. THROW THE BUMS OUT!!

The second cause of gas prices is related to the fact that we have not brought any new gasoline manufacturering facilities online in more than 20 years due enviromental extremeism. You can not only build more production capacity without harming the environment, but also find new sources of oil in kind, without harming the environment, including exploration in Alaska. Again much like the speculation on the futures market, lack of capacity for production, is keeping the demand artificially higher than the available supply.

For the short term, I don’t see any of this changing. Especially when we have so called shortages of oil and gas and record high per barrell prices of oil, yet the oil companies continue to make record profits. One of the big oil companies last year made over a million dollars a day in profit. That’s not cash taken in per day, that is what was left over after all of their expenses, meaning the $120 a barrell, exploration, development, salaries, gas production, every expense they had. So if they spent 5 milllion a day on expenses they took in 6 million. From their perspective, what’s the problem?

The solution to this problem is simple, yet one that may cause us all some pain in the pocket book while it works its way out. What is this solution you ask, supply and demand. May of you now are probably laughing at this point saying I just told you supply and demand was being manipulated, which I did, but it is also the solution and and it is a simple one. While currently there does not seem to be a lack of demand for gas at the current prices, at some price point however demand will start to fall, because the average citizen will not and many cannot afford to pay $100 to fill up their gas tanks on a weekly basis. So people will start conserving gas, making less trips, staying at home, looking for alternatives to driving. Which not only will hurt the oil and gas companies, but other business, which will in turn put more pressure on the oil companies and drive the price down. We also should not forget all of the products besides gas that are made from oil. If the price continues to remain high, other things made from oil, will start to increase and unlike gas, you can more immediatley stop purchasing those products thus forcing the manufacturer’s to find other raw materials to make their products from.

And last but not least, supply and demand in the automobile industry will also have its effect on oil prices. The longer oil and gas prices stay high, the less demand their will be for cars and trucks that do not get 30 to 40 mpg or more. Again consumers will demand through sheer buying habbits these types of vehicles and those companines that are willing to make those types of vehicles will profit and those like the former big three in Detroit will fail. Now don’t think all of this will happen overnight, it will take some time, but eventually the market will correct itself and supply and demand will run it’s natural course, as long as we don’t allow it to be artificially manipulated, by the speculation, and limits to production and exploration by the environmental extemist movement.

I will leave you with this final thought, if we are really running out of oil, why aren’t the oil companies shedding their oil and gas assests and looking for other sources of revenue. If as many claim the sky is falling wiht regard to oil supply, are they just going to go out of business, when the supply runs out. When we start seeing companies like Exxon and Chevron getting out of the oil business, I would say that’s when we need to start worrying about the oil supply.