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Old 04-24-2008, 08:04   #10
The Reaper
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Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Free Pineland
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Anyone under 50 will not get this.

I do not care that much what gas costs, as long as I can get it.

Anyone else here who sat in line in 1973 and 74 waiting 45 minutes to buy 5 or 10 gallons at the time, and driving around with less than 1/4 of a tank and seeing station after station with "No Gas" signs out front knows what I mean.

When the government started tinkering with price controls over domestic production to prevent the massive oil company profits, they quit pumping it, and there was a serious lack of oil and gas.

Before you ask our idiotic elected representatives to solve this problem (who seem to think that what a spoiled, overpaid bunch of athletes put into their bodies is more important than the global threats that we are facing) let me tell you that they will make it much worse before it gets better.

The refineries were shut down or cutting back because the price spread between oil prices and refined products (mainly gasoline) was too low, or in some cases, inverted, so they cut back to run the price up to a point where they could make a profit.

BLUF: If the oil companies can't make a profit drilling and pumping oil, they will stop. If they cannot make a profit refining oil or selling gasoline, they will stop. You can't really make them start again, only the market can. Tight supply, increased demand, and speculators have driven prices up, and the companies are currently making a good profit. Sometimes, they lose money. It hurts a little to pay more, but at least we have a good supply. If we do not make some changes, that may not always be the case.

TR
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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

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