Practically Classics Forum

Can we blame Canada then? Everything's their fault.

Ethanol is a scam, it's down to corn subsidies that farmers over here get. Also explains why everything here is sweetened with that evil horrible High Fructose Corn Syrup instead of Sugar.

if there is so much oil in reserve why is it so naughty word expensive?

In our case it's the high levels of duty charged, plus all the 'easy' oil is out already, what's left is getting harder and harder to find and extract. There will come a point fairly soon where unless the price goes sky high it becomes economically unviable to get it out- and of course if the price does go too high nobody will want it, not for motor vehicles anyway, particularly as economic fuel cell production isn't that far away now.

I read an article last year that claimed the USA is shutting down a lot of the currently running oil wells and using overseas oil; this means when world stocks start to run low they can reopen them and thereby have oil for longer than the rest of us...! It's a bit like the Japanese who are heavily over fishing tuna and freezing the stockpiles; when the tuna becomes fished to extinction they can corner the market and sell off the frozen fish for vastly inflated prices.

Ready cooked unless this power station is made safe.

rich. wrote:if there is so much oil in reserve why is it so naughty word expensive?

Becaue it's traded on financial markets and a lesson was learned very quickly in 2008, it is largely price inelastic. I have filled my BMW at prices anywhere from 79c/Gallon in 1999 to $4.59/Gallon in 2008. That's roughly anywhere from 13p-75p a litre. Right now it's about 55p/L here or $3.29 for regular and $3.50 for premium for a US (3.8L) gallon.

If Cadillacs doubled in price, people would stop buying them, ditto CDs, Coca-Cola, etc. But when fuel doubles in price, the drop in consumption is very slight.

A friend sent this link toi me

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011 ... -video.php

CNN correspondent Nic Robertson has a bone or two to pick with Fox News, which reported today that he and other journalists were used by the Libyan Ministry of Information as human shields, in a successful bid to block a coming, second attack on a compound in Tripoli, supposedly controlled by Qaddafi.

"[T]his allegation is outrageous and it's absolutely hypocritical. When you come to somewhere like Libya, you expect lies and deceit from a dictatorship here," Robertson told Wolf Blitzer. "You don't expect it from the other journalists."

We ( UK USA etc ) have no place in Libya. Like Gadafi said to Obama " What would you do if rebels tried to take over your country " ?

The one concern that I have is... are these rebels worse than Khadaffi?