looks like oil is going to spike again. Strike in Britain's oil fields. Traders are having a field day . Any negative tends to boost the price 3 to 5 points.
Maybe governements should put a cap on traders activities, this commodity is too important for market makers to play with. Last guesstimate I read was that traders had at least a 35 point speculative "tax" on the product.
no doubt, the major companies posted a $40BILLION + profit last year, why? you can't take it with you to the grave people!!!
should be a major investigation into corruption and graft by the oil companies, I say no more than $25 per barrel, delivered.
think on it though, realistically, $1.25 per litre X 4.546 and you get........$5.6825 per Canadian Gallon the U. S. is paying roughly the same, I think. but the conversion to the U.S. gallon is 3.7854
time to put the oil companies in their place, methinks
It can't all be price collusion and such, it's a finite resource with ever growing demand. Isn't China going to put a few million cars on the road this year or something like that?
"Energy producer Petro-Canada has reported a more than 80 per cent year-over-year jump in first-quarter profit, buoyed by higher oil and gas prices and increased upstream production.
The Calgary company said Tuesday that it put $1.07-billion or $2.22 a share on the bottom line in the first three months of 2008, compared with $590-million or $1.19 a year earlier.
Oil is heavily manipulated by OPEC and traders. It needs to be regulated. The economy can only take so much, and we aren't prepared to deal with the inflation that will follow should the price remain in the hands of traders and speculators.
We know what it costs to produce, we know the supply we have on hand, there should be no trouble working out a healthy profit and removing it from traders hands. Last I read, it cost Saudi Arabia about 7 bucks a barrel to get oil out of the ground. Ya think you're getting screwed somewhere along the line.
Freezing gas prices makes us no different than Chavez run Venezuela. Freezing gas prices impacts the bottom line of ALL energy companies and may actually make gas more expensive to produce. Should the government freeze gas prices what incentive is there for companies that do refining to continue? The refineries shut down or run at low capacity potentially causing shortages. Is the government going to start refining gas for Canadians?
Letting gas prices move with the ebbs and flows of the market forces us to consider our usage patterns and where we spend our money. I would like to see gas prices at $2/L and parking at over $10/day in Winnipeg. Perhaps we will see more people using transit and offices relocating to transit friendly locations. Hopefully there is a day when people get excited to be able to work in a location that only requires them to ride on one bus to get to work.
In Calgary my department (along with 100 other staff) are moving to an office outside of the downtown core (disaster recovery site) and the main objective for finding office space hinged on the proximity to an LRT station as more than half of the staff take public transit to work.
<blockquote><cite>Posted By: Mr. Nobody</cite>Oil is heavily manipulated by OPEC and traders. It needs to be regulated. The economy can only take so much, and we aren't prepared to deal with the inflation that will follow should the price remain in the hands of traders and speculators.</blockquote>
That would be nice, but next to impossible to implement.
Oil companies have a bottom line to meet (or exceed). Some oil costs more to extract than others. Canada's oil reserves are some of the most expensive oil productions in the world (apart from those still in the ground). Should one regulate the price per barrel then you will see the majority of our oil coming from overseas where it is easier to access. Canada's oil operations will cease to function and Alberta will focus their attention on natural gas instead.
If that happens where are the refineries going to get their oil from? If the demand is greater than the production who gets first dibs on the oil? China, India, Russia, the US or Canada? My suspicion is the Canada will be a ways down on that list.
<blockquote><cite>Posted By: smjpilot</cite>I work in a location that only requires one bus to get to work. And there was much rejoicing... yay!</blockquote>
When I worked in Winnipeg one of my offices required 3 buses to get to work. Had it been downtown it would have been one bus.
Needless to say I was driving 35-40 minutes to work when I would have rather just hopped onto a bus with a good book for 20 minutes.
While I dont care for the price of gas, I am certainly not in favour of regulation. The last thing we need is more government interference in our lives. We have far too much of it already and I have no confidence that some politician or bureaucrate will do anything that makes sense.
There are things a government can do to protect its citizens. Perhaps you should take a look at the fiasco down south to get a feel of what may happen.
Regulating oil by governments acting together trumps OPEC. Someone fed you a line that oil, regardless of where it is produced should be fixed by one entity. For all this talk of Free markets, it amazes me people support price fixing and manipulation of supply's to alter the price......its ironic.
Regulating the price of fuel stabilizes everything including the ability of refiners to continue their work. Should oil drop to below 50 bucks a barrel, and don't think it can't happen, Alberta is toast.
So again, we know where it is, we know what it costs, we build in a decent profit and that allows the industry to move forward while at the same time mitigate the disaster that is unfolding on world food markets, economy's of all scales, the way of life we are accostmed to. We aren't built for this and the pain will be felt across the board. We aren't China, where going back to a shack won't be a problem.
You worry about refineries shutting down, my guess is that if they continue and deepen a recession, they'll create their own problem.