General Aviation Dying ???
I don't hardly see any small airplanes flying around lately, I live in the Memphis,Tn area. Seems to me that fuel prices on the order of $5 per gallons is killing off much of anyone's desire to fuel up and fly somewhere ! I can't hardly stand to see the bill when I fill up my truck now with ethanol laced fuel (thanks to the EPA for that one).
I believe our standard of living and enjoying our Liberties is quickly becoming a thing of the past. No one understands the pricing structure of Oil well enough to explain the recent gouging debacles, let alone try to explain why this country of ours has been tested like this. No one is standing up for the little guys anymore, where is the outrage ??? Does anyone know what a Boycott is ? Does anyone know how to protest ? Does anyone care ? I believe it is time for such action, the time has come for us to talk about it, do something about it ..............................................
I believe our standard of living and enjoying our Liberties is quickly becoming a thing of the past. No one understands the pricing structure of Oil well enough to explain the recent gouging debacles, let alone try to explain why this country of ours has been tested like this. No one is standing up for the little guys anymore, where is the outrage ??? Does anyone know what a Boycott is ? Does anyone know how to protest ? Does anyone care ? I believe it is time for such action, the time has come for us to talk about it, do something about it ..............................................
Comments
Edit: and this, too.
Did you know that the United States has within our continental borders more recoverable oil than the entire Middle East? It's quite true. The greatest reserves are in the Northwestern United States around the Dakotas. However, the EPA refuses to allow the oil companies to drill there because of environmental concerns which have been proven unfounded time and again. It's the same with ANWAR in Alaska. There are also huge reserves in California but they won't allow drilling nor even the building of any new refining fascilities.
The end result is that the United States, with the largest oil reserves in the world, is only able to produce 35% of the oil we need. The rest has to be imported from OPEC and we have to pay the price they demand for it. We also have to match their price with our own oil because they hold a knife to our throats. Our oil companies know they are being blamed for the high prices by politicians who use the oil companies as bogie men to hammer votes out of the people and excessive taxes out of the oil companies (which raises the prices even more). In 1984 our oil companies tried to keep the prices low by not going up with OPEC increases. OPEC answered by opening the flood gates on oil and dropping the price of oil to as low as $9.00 a barrel. That cost us tens of thousands of jobs in every area of our business economy, not just the oilfield, and almost put our own oil companies out of business. We got the message and realized that we could not undercut OPEC and survive. So if they sell theirs for $100.00 a barrel, we have to as well.
Also, when gas prices were running around $2.80 cents a gallon do you know how much the oil companies were making per gallon? Around 11 cents. The government? Around 86 cents. And the government had done nothing to produce the oil, they just took the money by force of arms. They then blamed the oil companies for the high prices for political purposes, never mentioning their contribution to the higher prices.
Don't blame the American oil companies. If the government, national and state, would allow us to drill for the reserves we have, and the oil companies have been begging them to allow that for years, we would be import free and could set our own prices as the market would bear. OPEC would be forced to compete and gasoline prices would drop world wide. Put the blame where it belongs. On the politicans who keep us energy dependant on foreign oil for political purposes and the EPA.
Mike
Again, where is the outrage ??? BIG OIL, not only in this country but in the rest of the world, is making BIG $$$, at the expense of those that depend on the product and its by products. Again, no one can prove WHY the prices are so high at the gas pumps, only offering up what might be contributing to the prices.
As far as I am concerned, there is coming a day when no one will be able to afford petroleum and worse, petroleum by products ............................ if this kind of inflationary and out of control price gouging continues unchecked. We are being lied to everyday, about the situation with petroleum and I am sure we will never know the truth on the rest of it !!! Thank you for offering up your take on the situation, it is noted here. I hope more will "jump in" and say something here !!!
No amount of posting here or action by the American populace is going to effect one iota of change in how much oil China and India will be consuming in coming years, and nothing else will have as substantive an effect on the price of oil as that. If you don't agree, fine, but I have little interest in talking further about it. I'm here for Pipers, not for general politics, economics, conspiracy theories, or combinations thereof.
Part of the problem is the dumb president that announced to the world (Middle East) after the gulf spill we would not allow any new offshore drilling, that message alone started the price increases we are seeing today. If you will recall when Bush was in office and prices went over 4.00 a gallon they announced a new discovery of oil of the coast of the USA and Mexico and were going to start drilling it, that statement alone started the prices to decline. To bad we don't start drilling for our large areas in the USA that have oil as just starting to build drilling rigs in those locations would help drive the prices down I think.