As much as it's easy for politicians to foment popular indignity with regard to industry profits; you pay more in taxes at the pump than oil company profits. Here is the EIA.gov's estimate of state and local taxes levied on gas and diesel:


https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=10&t=10

So let's see if state and local governments (who do not explore, extract, refine, deliver or dispense) are making record tax revenues. FYI, the estimate is low for those of us in Pennsylvania. Former Governor Corbett happily increased our burdens to subsidize municipal transportation authorities while the whole thing was sold as road and bridge repair. (I-81 is still a buckboard).

Even Politifact; hardly a oil company mouth piece puts this in context.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2 ... eaking-pr/

Here is another commentary about petronomics in context with the carnage of 2020:

https://www.convenience.org/Media/conve ... Gas-Prices

And when I say carnage; I mean government-induced carnage; we briefly had negative oil prices that year.

https://econbrowser.com/archives/2020/0 ... oil-prices


While I think business means exposure to the cycle; government never seems to forego its cut. The same people peddling red dots and catnip in the form of new taxes (which we will pay, as they'll be passed on) to the felines that can't help their instincts weren't offering any windfall losses credits in 2020-and they caused them.

This is an interesting chart that allows you to view oil prices over time:

https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude- ... tory-chart

Simple, put up Catenary wires and run electric locomotives, because, you know, electricity is free, you can just tap into those electric car charging stations....

Well, with regard to the cost of gasoline and diesel, I have not noticed anyone making much of an effort to slow down a bit to conserve fuel. On three recent trips on the PA Turnpike and other expressways, most traffic seemed to be rolling along at 70-75 mph, with the outliers running even faster, changing lanes like maniacs. Even on local roads, 60 and 65 are not uncommon speeds.

In my personal vehicle, I can see a decided decrease in miles per gallon between 65 and 70 mph. A 100 mile trip at 70 mph takes about an hour and 25 minutes, while the same trip at 65 takes and hour and 30 minutes. What's the big deal about 5 minutes, pray tell?

Chatting with a financial guy whose knowledge and opinions I greatly respect, his observation was that the current oil problems can be traced to the war in Ukraine and the refusal of oil companies to increase their exploration and drilling. It makes much better sense to them to jack up their prices, thus goosing the stock price and dividends. If Putin dies tomorrow, the price of oil will tank, he believes.

The oil companies are refusing to increase exploration and drilling?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate- ... ing-pause/

PC

Yep, nothing but preservation commentary found here on the day before an election.

I'm not sure what going Karen on other motorists has to do with preservation but....

I have a Subaru with an MPG meter. Every couple of weeks, I drive the 90 miles to see my Mother, about 75 of them on I-81. I notice that at 60 miles per hour (5mph below the posted limit); I can goose about 32-33 mpg out the car, but generally go 65-73 where I get 26-28 mpg. Is that significant?

My reasoning is simple: At 65-73 is where I can minimize chances of an irate trucker lashing his 80,000 pound behemoth to my rear bumper and flipping the lights on and off-actually happened in the Pine Grove (MP 104) cattle chute a couple years ago. Bad move on his part. I don't tolerate people screwing with my breathing. I followed the SOB for 20 miles until I could get close enough to read the carrier, trailer and tag enough times to memorize them, pull over and write down-the next morning I called the carrier and reported the behavior to a safety manager. It was better than what I else I contemplated, I assure you. The safety manager thanked me for my report and not disabling his driver.

Additionally, the PSP generally doesn't bother you unless you are going over 75 and I haven't accounted for the idiots in F-350's or the New York/Massachusetts plated cars and their aggressive driving.


The entire trip, averages just under half of the 15.9 gallon tank (depending speed, road conditions, a/c use..)

So what do I gain by going 65 and hitting 31ish mpg? I use 4.8 gallons over that 150 miles of Interstate. The time involved is about 2:18 both ways.

Now if I'm going 73 and getting 27? I use 5.6 gallons over the 150 miles, but the trip takes about 2:03.

At the prevailing price of 3.80, it costs me 3.04 cents more for 15 minutes. The left constantly tells us a $15.00 minimum wage is inadequate and you want me to work for $12.16? Of course, I'm not working, I'm foregoing 15 minutes more with mom-well to quote an old commercial-"that's priceless".

Dr. Thomas Sowell has said something to the effect that a lot of ideas get tossed if people just asked "and then what".

If you would read the article that PCOOK posted in this thread, you would see that the administration has set a goal of blocking/slowing down/impeding as much oil and gas production as possible. That certainly impacts the cost and availability of fuel.

This narrow minded view of what is and is not relevant to preservation does not serve us well. If we do not understand the forces that influence and impact our industry, we cannot make sound decisions to amplify or mitigate those forces. I am trying to broaden our horizons and get us to take off the blinders that for way too long has left us ignorant of the world around us until it is too late.

I will tell you that I have found the threads that generate the most complaints for being "off topic" are the ones that usually contain the most useful and insightful information that can be used to guide us into the future. I don't put on blinders, I look far into the horizon and both left and right to figure out where I am and where I need to go to assure success. If you just want to talk about paint colors then you might not want to follow this thread. But for those who do wish to discuss this topic, we would like to do so without the rest of you complaining about it. Just head over to the threads that interest you.

To recap his parts of the article PCOOK posted:
- Biden paused new oil leases.
- The courts blocked the pause.
- While the block was paused the Biden administration held the largest oil and gas lease sale in history (80 million acres), but oil companies only bought 1.7 million acres.
- The courts unblocked the pause.

So regardless of what Biden did or didn't do the oil companies didn't try to buy new leases, probably because they're happy with record profits and don't want to increase production, which they've stated multiple times.

If you want to expand preservation in to fuel sources and option that's fine, and yes, even appropriate for this forum, but adding jabs like "Biden has put the oil companies on death row." just means you want another echo chamber to complain about politics.

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Whatever the oil companys' guidance for their exploration and drilling decisions has been, I cannot fault them much, because despite never having worked for any of them, they have made my retirement quite comfortable at a time when many other retirees have suffered steep losses. But I also owe that to a friend (a former student) who is an oil company executive, who gave me the best investment advice of my life - "Bet against everything Biden does because he has been on the wrong side of every issue for decades".

Primary mission of a business is to be profitable so it can stay in business. Otherwise is closes and nobody gets anything, no product, no jobs, nothing. You guys who operate museums should know that.

You know roughly what a locomotive costs. A land drilling rig has an underframe, a diesel engine, generator, electrical cabinet, and control equipment. They are several million dollars now, long lead time items, not available off the shelf, and few new ones are being built due to tier four requirements.

Just look at the confusing sequence of events relating to exploration and drilling. Trump says GO, Biden says STOP, Court says GO, Court says STOP, etc. etc. Not a very attractive environment for making tough and expensive business decisions.

In such a situation the only winning move may be to not play the game.

PC

I told this forum two years ago about all of this and more, and everyone got butt hurt and cried like babies. I can tell you what else is coming too, but its going to hurt your delicate flower sensibilities.

I’m very nervous about what is coming in 1-2 years. Scary times. The cost of playing choo choo is the least of my worries.

Once again, the difference between urban USA, rural USA, and REALLY rural USA.

Five minutes, you say? I've wasted lots more time than that just idling at badly-timed Baltimore traffic lights traveling halfway across town.

A couple weekends ago my wife and I did a 450-mile round trip to Tucson and back for a "once in a lifetime" concert, mostly divided-highway/Interstate running with a couple business/pleasure side trips (antique mall in PHX, brewery in Tucson, etc.). The speed to not get flattened on I-10 between Phoenix and Tucson was mostly 80-85 mph.
Had we driven the whole way at 55 mph, which would only have been made possible by removing all the other Interstate traffic, each one-way trip would have been four hours. I clocked the actual running time, minus stops and factoring in a fuel stop each way at the site of a price war between stations, at slightly less than three hours. That extra hour made the trip much more enjoyable for us, save for my driving stress. I calculated the actual fuel consumption both ways, including a 3000-foot loss/gain of altitude, at 27.2 mpg--marginally better than I get running about town. And the car I was driving is "streamlined" and now qualifies for "antique" plates if I wanted them.

"Time is money."

I have read car experts claim that the wholesale switch from carburetors to fuel injection and computer engine calibration in American autos have largely eliminated any fuel-economy gain to be had in reducing driving speed limits. And, having driven the long, flat, open stretch of highway where driverless trucks are being tested (in part because UP's intermodal terminal is in Tuscon with no such facility on UP in the Phoenix area), I understand why even foreign transportation experts decades ago called the 55-mph speed limit "the big national joke."

All that being said, I have an opportunity to go down to a major RR book sale this weekend in a southern suburb of Phoenix--a 236-mile round trip--and the cost of gasoline (basically $27-30 if I make no side trips to brewpubs) IS weighing into my hemming and hawing over whether I'm going or not.......

It's entirely possible that oil companies regard political impediments to exploration and/or extraction as barriers to entry. This is what billionaire Warren Buffett calls a "moat" around a business or industry. Pro Tip: Warren Buffett is not a great sage or national uncle-he looks out for himself and his shareholders. Anybody with a brain understands he wanted the pipeline nixed so the oil would be sent in tank cars on BNSF, which he owns.

Economist Russ Roberts illustrates the "strange bedfellows" convergence of political and business interests with his "bootlegger and Baptist" allegory.

The Baptist pursues policies that prohibit or restrict alcohol out of conviction; but the bootlegger understands that restricting or inconveniencing the legal sales imposes a cost on drinkers, and he will have an increase in customers.

You won't always see this in operation. An example is there was a time Otis Elevator was agitating for an increase in the minimum wage-because it would incentivize the sale of their automatic elevators by making the generally elderly male "elevator men" more expensive to retain. You have to have been born in the 1950's or earlier to remember these fellows; those of us who were born in the 1960's might vaguely remember them. I guarantee the people who make those annoying grocery scanners that constantly chide you to hurry up love minimum wage increases, because they want to affect the relative price of human checkers as opposed to their self-scanners.

The reality is there is no good substitute for petroleum that puts concentrates that much energy in such an easily storable and transportable medium.

But it costs money to find, extract, transport, refine, and dispense. Last I saw, the break even was $56 per barrel. It's around 90 now, depending on the grade-the bottleneck is processing.

There were huge losses when it plummeted a couple years ago. The same people who complain about oil company profits now, weren't lamenting losses then and don't give a rat's posterior about the profits reaped by big Pharma or the NCAA's crypto-professional sports operations-which are tax exempt. Both are "rents".

So how about a little balance and a little less impulse to circle the wagons around politicians (of all parties) that are often peddling private interest as public goods.

Opinion: This is irresponsibly fanning the flames of panic and fear. The price of everything is up and globally, not just in the United States. Discussing the cost of Diesel fuel, cord wood, and anthracite coal is not at all offensive. Dancing around a political bias is.
If you want to point a finger accurately, point it a Vladimir Putin.

Just my opinion, not a "swing" thrown at any individual in the group.