Fuel Prices are a pain in the gas!!!

Doing his best imitation of Queen Marie Antoinette, King Obama told us to eat algae as a way out of our fuel cost woes. In what sounds like a sad joke he told us algae could be out way out of our fuel problems.

Is there a remote possibility that algae will be a serious fuel source? Yes it could, but remote is the operative word. Maybe in a few years, if at all, algae could become a fuel source for us. The problem with what the president said is ‘algae is a possible solution to our current fuel problems’. That is as remote as your chances of hitting a billion dollar lottery sometime soon.

Good God, can this man ever speak nonsense! 

Message to the great pretender in chief – our fuel problem is immediate. It is here, now!

Barack, I hope you don’t believe the oomgalagala you spin. If you do you are the biggest dunce ever to hold the Oval Office: Even bigger than James Earl Carter.

Confucius once was believed to say when you’re in water up to your neck you don’t need an engineer to drain the swamp, you need a boat. Heck even a canoe would do. Building an aircraft carrier when we’re trying to keep our collective heads above water is absurd at best.

The solution is manifold and quite easy to implement.

Let’s use a sports metaphor to illustrate a point. The great Yogi Berra was fond of suggesting, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” How right he was. And yes it mirrors our current pump pain.

We can apply some immutable solutions to our problems. The first problem in the short and long term is there is not enough crude being pumped and refined in North America. We simply need to produce more. Doing so would serve two masters at once. We will have more gasoline and heating oil available thus beginning a reduction in prices. Add to that we will have the necessary elements for more petroleum based products (plastic comes to mind) besides lubricants and fuel.

Prices and demand are intrinsically connected. Lower prices and you get an almost immediate increase in demand. Our problem with fuel; gasoline, heating oil and related areas is Mother Nature is mostly dictated by supply and demand. Speculation accounts for most of the rest.

I recall as a high schooler I worked in a gas station. One of my many chores was to hourly put on a regular jacket to hide my uniform and walk a couple of blocks to “spy” on the competition to see what their price was set at. A penny fluctuation back then was a big thing. In fact gas floated from roughly the 25.9 to 28.9 cents a gallon (no, that’s not a typo). We had a number of “regulars” who patronized our station but we had an equal number who cruised the three block area checking out the prices of the four different stations there.

Price still drives most gasoline purchasers, especially now that most stations are self-serve. While most are self-serve today (we have a full service station we patronize) and few stations can expect any loyalty from the buying public. Price is king and any improvement in supply can begin to knock down price at the pump.

When Obama took office in 2009 the price had come down from about $4 a gallon to $1.89. The price this morning is pushing $3.70. Prices at the pump will plummet in a short time, months, not years, if there is reason for optimism in where our supply is heading.

Much of the pain we feel at the pump is a result of suppliers trying to get a position on future gasoline supplies. No one wants to be left outin the cold. 

Everyone talks a good game about our energy supplies but the answer is simple – open more areas for exploration and exploitation. We are potentially awash with petroleum so as to become an exporter once again. There’s no magic bullet other than applying ourselves to the task at hand.

Drill baby drill!

Have a nice weekend.

Ciao…….Moe Lauzier