U.S. vs Opec? sounds interesting

[TSmiley98]

U.S. House passes bill to sue OPEC over oil prices

The House overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.

more stories like thisThe bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.

The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.

The legislation also creates a Justice Department task force to aggressively investigate gasoline price gouging and energy market manipulation.

"This bill guarantees that oil prices will reflect supply and demand economic rules, instead of wildly speculative and perhaps illegal activities," said Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, who sponsored the legislation.

The lawmaker said Americans "are at the mercy" of OPEC for how much they pay for gasoline, which this week hit a record average of $3.79 a gallon.

The White House opposes the bill, saying that targeting OPEC investment in the United States as a source for damage awards "would likely spur retaliatory action against American interests in those countries and lead to a reduction in oil available to U.S. refiners."

The administration said less oil going to refineries would limit available gasoline supplies and raise fuel prices.

Foreign investment in U.S. oil infrastructure has declined in the last decade. But the state-owned oil companies of several OPEC nations are owners of U.S. refineries, and those investments could be affected if the legislation becomes law, said Arlington, Virginia-based FBR Capital Markets Corp.

The bill also requires the Government Accountability Office to carryout a study on the effects of prior oil company mergers on energy prices.

The Senate would still have to approve the House measure.

The Senate previously approved similar legislation as part of a broad energy bill. However, the OPEC-suing provision was removed after White House opposition in order to get the underlying energy legislation signed into law.


From: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washi ... il_prices/

[Gunslinger]

why dont automakers start developing and mainstreaming more eletric cars, instead of putting up with this shit? the goverment (assuming they really are concered, could help fund it to get it started)

[zxtwou2]

why dont automakers start developing and mainstreaming more eletric cars, instead of putting up with this shit? the goverment (assuming they really are concered, could help fund it to get it started)

becuase to get the electricity to fuel the cars takes fossil fuels for the most part. so what would be the gain? switch from one non-renewable resource to another? plus, it's more inefficient. every time you change one energy to another...ie mechanical energy to electric to mechanical..you lose some. also, distribution of electricity causes losses also, like in transforming and delivering the power. your range also decreases, and the fact charges aren't instant.

hydrogen FTW.

[DaviDawg]

coal could be turned into gas but idk how it take to turn into nor how much the gas would cost. the sun is free, solar power would be great. take the enrgy from the sun for free and energize your battery in your car. im sure its much more complicated than that. like, solar panels arent free and blah blah blah. im sure in 3-7 years the damn panels pay for themselves. put em in the desert and sent the energy to the places that already have electricity that ahve the infrastructure as well.

[TSmiley98]

they are working on wind energy to produce electricity,. there are a ton of wind generators in the northern part of Iowa, and in Texas .. among other states. They tried the electric car idea then after the govt changed its laws auto companies took back all of the leased cars and crushed them, check out a movie called who killed the electric car.

[TSmiley98]

http://http://youtube.com/watch?v=jbeylQN8PAc

[Buster]

Sorry, but they're fooling themselves if they think any single nation, even OURS can make OPEC and the oil producing nations even blink because of a lawsuit.


In a perfect world, our nation would be receiving a better price because we buy in such a huge volume.

However, the sellers aren't in the business to make customers happy.

Instead of useless talk like this, Congress SHOULD have moved on opening up ANWR last week.

[Gunslinger]

yea OPEC is like the empire and shit. i wonder who the lord of the sith would be though

[JonsZX2SR]

Solar energy is not free, the cost of building the infrastructure and photovoltaic, thermoelectric or solar powered steam generating plants is enormous. low efficiencies (you're lucky to hit 10%) are enormous impediments.

Synthetic fuel from coal using a modern Fischer-tropsch process would cost about $6.00 to 7.50 per gallon. The problem is building this kind of infrastructure and modifying refineries would take 10-20 years. There is also the problem of foreign entities owning a lot of facilities in the US.

This is something we should have started in 1990-5 but the political will of the American people (many of whom WHINE about wanting cheap fuel) just didn't support the effort.

What we should do is convince the public the cost and effort to develop technology to make sunthetic fuel from coal costing $9-10 per gallon is necessary for national security. We simply don't want to be dependent on foreign powers. The probelm will be the same, getting the WHINERS to shut up. Becoming independent of the entire geopolitical petrolem mess is something we should strive for with a wartime mentality.

Imagine if we invested everything we spent in Iraq into developing synthfuel technology from coal. We would be well on the way to being more secure than the invasion of Iraq gained (or lost) us.

My biggest fear is the petroleum producers will decide to shut the US off no matter how much we would be willing to pay per barrel. That is already happening. Why do you think the price keeps rising ??

No lawsuit can ever solve that problem.

[Gunslinger]

having said that, i hope it happens. then america would get back to being inventers again

[ImCrazy]

We should over take opec, we over took iraq for less useful and important reasons.

[david gettle]

Two possible solutions:

1. Create a union of food producing nations and every time OPEC raises oil prices raise what they have to pay for food. Then see how quickly oil prices would drop. While working to replace oil with another fuel source.

-or-

2. Better yet, convince congress to allow U.S. Oil companies to do more drilling here untill we can develop an alternative (or synthetic) fuel that will work in place of oil.

Both of these are as likely as finding a hen that has teeth, but the way I see it these are our best options.

[RedRacer99]

yea, but other countries are smart and grow their own food. how many people actually know how to farm here? we are TOO dependent on foreign nations. i have walked to work before and considering it again today. tommy lee jones possibly said the most true statement i have ever heard in the movie Men In Black: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it"

[ImCrazy]

if we can make synthetic oil why not synthetic gas?

[david gettle]

We still export more food than we consume. The federal government currently pays farmers not to plant portions of their farms, we may not have as many farmers as we used too, but the farmers we have are able to make better use of the land than their predisessors. Most OPEC nations import food. IE. the failed UN oil for food program for Iraq. As Ronald Regan put it "A buchell of wheat for a barrel of oil".

[TSmiley98]

i heard on the news radio yesterday that china and cuba are wanting to drill for oil off of the florida keys, but the U.S. has no intentions of this..

[inis]

i heard on the news radio yesterday that china and cuba are wanting to drill for oil off of the florida keys, but the U.S. has no intentions of this..

go figure

[JonsZX2SR]

having said that, i hope it happens. then america would get back to being inventers again

I never stopped... It is one reason I find myself very employable. Sadly, the percentage of truely creative minds among young people is decreasing.

I attribute it to too many young people living in the video game world and not knowing what to do when things don't go as planned in the real world.

One of the positives for each new generation are the kids who get into hands on stuff (cars, RC planes, etc.) These are the ones who are going to be innovative.

if we can make synthetic oil why not synthetic gas?

As I noted before, we can and we should. However, creating the infrastructure will take 5-20 years and would need gov't support until it becomes profitable. One of the games OPEC can play is after the synth-fuel producers have made a large investment, drop oil prices so synthfuel is unprofitable and the investemenst are wasted. To some extent this happened after 1974 and again in the early 80's when people were looking to convert shale oil and tar sands into fuel.

[RedRacer99]

so what is your overall suggestive solution? or at least, what can we as citizens do?

[TheGhostInTheMachine]

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IMAGES/CARTOONS/toon043008.gif

[aprophetofone]

1: convert car to run on pure alcohol
2: make still
3: grow corn
4: get everyone hammered behind you

and if you wanted to you could route the exhuast into the cab and get drunk.