RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (Full Version)

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MrRodgers -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/19/2008 3:26:49 PM)

Oops



hizgeorgiapeach -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/19/2008 3:49:58 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: thornhappy

quote:

ORIGINAL: hizgeorgiapeach
I've never seen you mention anything along the lines of being involved in the Aviation industry in any capacity - not even as a privately rated pilot, like I am. 

He's frequently mentioned it, just search his prior posts.

thornhappy



I must have missed seeing it.  It does happen.  (Otherwise I wouldn't have said I've never seen him mention it lol.)
 
I'm still surprised, though.  I fly from an airport a few hours north of where DA is.  One of the few refineries that still Regularly and Routinely produces AvGas and JetA is pretty much in my back yard, being here in the same state with me, less than 2 hours drive away.  Prices are up at all of the FBOs around here for fueling services - and Oklahoma has always had fuel amongst the Cheapest in the states, both for auto and av.  For automotive, I'm still only paying $3.69 a gal - as opposed to the $3.89 I saw all through AR, TN, MS, and TX and the $4.04 I saw in LA while on vacation over the weekend.  If he's getting his AvGas and JetA that Cheap - he's getting a helluva deal.



MrRodgers -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/19/2008 4:32:13 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomAviator

Just an observation... All day every day I hear people bitching about the price of gas at the pump... Profiteering by the oil companies, Bush cronies raping the public etc... Did anyone ever stop to think how truly fucking CHEAP gasoline is?

You are talking about a product that is found on a hit or miss basis by companies that spend small fortunes on geophysical data. They employ an army of geologists, geophysicists, and engineers to possibly find the product. If they do find it, and the formation is actually produceable, then they lose 1/8 right off the top to lease royalties. Then they get a product that is essentially a witches brew of hydrocarbons, sand, mud, salt water, etc.... They have to pull the hydrocarbons out of it, and then truck / tanker / pipeline it to a refinery. As if drilling rigs (particularly offshore) and pipelines arent enough, take a look at a refinery someday! Drive through Pasadena Texas and you will see MILES AND MILES of refineries with I cant even begin to fathom how many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of feet of welded alloy steel piping that must be maintained, replaced, inspected etc by an army of well paid workers. After all, essentially a refinery is a giant still, where they BOIL and condense volatile hydrocarbons. Want to boil gasoline? Naptha? Benzene? Propane? Octane? Does that sound "smart or safe"? Once they finally ring some gasoline out of a 42 gallon barrel of produced shit (the unusable brine etc which they had to pay to dispose of, and 1/8 of the hydrocarbons which came out of their pockets right at the wellhead) Then they get to store this volatile explosive prone to evaporation product and to ultimately ship it to every little mom and pop station in america with a fleet of trucks, barges, pipelines, tank farms etc all of which cost megabucks to build and maintain. After their product gets marked up a couple of times by various middle men, taxed to shit, and marked up for retail sale - it brings as of yesterdays fill up $3.77 a gallon at the pump...

Unbelieveable people will gladly fork over $3.50 for a cup of starbucks coffee but they bitch about a gallon of explosive liquid ripped from the bowels of the earth using billions of dollars of infrastructure and then processed and transported with billions more...



I really couldn't care less about ANYTHING oil companies have to do to find, drill and excavate oil out of the ground and refined. Fossil fule for energy is not about gas or oil or...it is about money and as much as can possibly be made.

I don't NEED to buy any coffee at starbucks and have never done so, but I NEED my car and the gas it takes to run it. Some say we are married to our cars...they are correct.

However, it was a shotgun wedding when the auto companies et al, bought up all of our major city's trolly car and bus systems under the guise of maintaining and running them only to destroy them. This was after for example the oil, auto and tire companies were found in collusion of buying people in state govt. to prevent a mass transit mult-access rail system the entire lenth of California in circa 1910...and were obviously successful.

Then when we built the federal interstate highway system for 'national security' (instead of a federal interstate rail system) it was basically a done deal.



Puppy4goodHome -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/19/2008 6:09:09 PM)

its not just the oil but its the taxes also
so its both the company and the taxes the gas stations only make like .5 to .10 cents a gallon  profit the only thing that keeps most gas stations running is there food and other stuff they sell inside the station
but the oil companys the profists for the oil compansy are up like 30% more then they wherre this time last year they are making more profile and selling the same that they sold last so they are making more profile and charging more for no reasosn other then so the ones who own the comapnys can have 10 more 500k cars in there driveways LOL



petdave -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/19/2008 7:02:13 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomAviator
After all, essentially a refinery is a giant still, where they BOIL and condense volatile hydrocarbons. Want to boil gasoline? Naptha? Benzene? Propane? Octane? Does that sound "smart or safe"? Once they finally ring some gasoline out of a 42 gallon barrel of produced shit (the unusable brine etc which they had to pay to dispose of, and 1/8 of the hydrocarbons which came out of their pockets right at the wellhead) Then they get to store this volatile explosive prone to evaporation product and to ultimately ship it to every little mom and pop station in america with a fleet of trucks, barges, pipelines, tank farms etc all of which cost megabucks to build and maintain. After their product gets marked up a couple of times by various middle men, taxed to shit, and marked up for retail sale - it brings as of yesterdays fill up $3.77 a gallon at the pump...



And in 1999, when i was buying regular at $0.79 a gallon in Georgia, i assume that was just falling out of people's asses, so all they had to do was run a strainer at the sewage treatment plant and pump it into the trucks for delivery?

It's called economy of scale. A pretty simple concept. One of the most popular examples of which is a standard #2 pencil- bringing together precision-cut wood, graphite, aluminum, rubber... all for pennies, and taken for granted. Computer processors are tremendously complicated, consume billions in R&D, require some of the most exacting standards of precision for their production... and in the past ten years, their price/performance ratio has improved at a mind-boggling rate. Meanwhile, the performance of gasoline is unchanged (actually, significantly worse since the 60's... just ask my Chrysler), and it has seen an unparalleled increase in cost. The telecom industry has nationwide infrastructure, immense maintenance, licensing, and leasing fees, unfunded federal mandates that have increased operating costs, ongoing R&D, some of the most complicated tax and cost structures known to man, and yet... domestic and international costs per minute have declined steadily since the 1980s with no bottom in sight.

And frankly, i don't think i could possibly give less of a shit about how much it costs to fly a fucking Learjet... good god. i mean, i'm sitting here trying to think of something- the price of tea in China, the cost of a solid titanium bra in size 58-B, the number of Chips Ahoy cookies it would take to reach from Venus to Io at this precise moment of time... nope, it's still at the bottom of my list.



DomAviator -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/19/2008 7:40:30 PM)

Rhi,

I appreciate your jumping in to my defense when Reality said "Everyone knows a Lear will only smoke $650 in the first hour, $700, tops.  Who d'you think you're talking to, a bunch of amateurs? ". However, I wasnt even going to bother arguing it with him... First of all he apparently doesnt grasp that there is no such thing as "a Lear", and that quoting his "everyone knows" number is like saying "everyone knows a car gets X mpg" paying no attention to whether that car is a 4 cylinder Yugo being operated with one person in city traffic or a V-12 Jaguar being run on the highway. 

LearJet products span decades of production, in numerous series, through several manufacturers - LearJet, Gates LearJet, Bombadier LearJet, with a variety of engine choices of varying efficiency... Apparently he doesnt recognize there will be performance differences between say a LearJet 24, a 25, a 31, a 35, a 36, a 45, and a 60? Or that due to the way the customers have each finished and equipped, every individual aircraft will have different empty weights and hence different perfomance? Also, with turbine aircraft performance for a given flight can not be pulled from a single published chart but has to be worked up on the basis of an individual flight plan factoring in taxi and hold times, load, field elevation, temperature, relative humidity, required reserves depending on the flight conditions, availability of alternates, section of the regulations that the flight is being operated under (more restrictive regs, require more conservative reserves, and hence a higher weight with correspondingly higher fuel burn), intended cruise altitude, routing, destinantion, etc... Literally dozens of factors, unique to each aircraft, on each flight, on each day.... Thats why there is a dispatcher certificate, and such flights aren't arranged simply by telling the receptionist "make sure they fill er up good"...

He was just being contrary... But thanks for chiming in - most people dont get that there is actually a process to calculating the fuel load other than looking at what wikipedia says. LOL  

As for the rates I pay, Im really not sure what retail is nowadays as I dont buy Jet A retail. I purchase on a wholesale contract rate, and on managed aircraft bill fuel on a cost plus basis. Obviously, the more you buy the less you pay so I pay less than an individual operator but much more than larger operators like NetJets or Continental.

Nonetheless though, its kind of ironic that people howl bloody murder about putting in 15 gallons in their car but aircraft operators are fine with fueling up at substantially higher costs. Its as if the average retail consumer has some expectation that cheap gas is a right, without taking into account that the oil business is just that - a business and a risky one at that with substantial investments required to play.



Termyn8or -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/19/2008 7:55:35 PM)

DA, have you ever read up on how they crack petroleum ? It is a fascinating process.

In those vessels which have been referred to as stills there is alot going on. Alot more than many people realize. First of all refineries generally get oil that is at least filtered, sand is heavy and we have plenty. I am not saying it is pure, but it doesn't have dogshit and newspapers floating around in it.

First and foremost to be cognizant of is that there are different grades of oil. But to understnad why the refineries prefer a certain type, known as light sweet, it helps to understand the process just a bit.

In those vessels and pipes you admire so much, because you are worse of a Tim the toolman Taylor than I, they are doing alot more than just what a still does. They vary temperature and pressure to produce different products.

I believe one of the first things to boil off is acetylene, at a certain pressure, then come other petroleum derived gases. In the meantime they are picking up some really nice low viscosity solvents. Then comes the gasline, and all along they have been picking up different chemicals from the process to use to blend the gasoline. Then comes deisel fuel and kerosene. After that motor oil and then even thicker motor oil with which to make grease.

All along the way they are picking up and seperating chemicals for processing plastic, and some components of the resin itself. The case of almost everything you own is plastic, and it is made chiefly from oil. Then after that, literally at the bottom of the barrel is the tile on your floor, literally. Anything like linoleum, that is the gunk in the bottom of the vessel. It is hot, it is pumped out, and then rolled into sheets. Then it is painted and becomes floor tile or linoleum. Note the "eum" on the end :-).

So basic business boils down this way, if you ran a refinery and gasoline is up, you don't wan't heavy crude, you want light sweet crude. This is what Iraq has, and Kuwait does not. Kuwait has heavy crude and that's why they started slant drilling and that's why Iraq invaded them. They were stealing their better oil.

When they quote prices for oil they are quoting light sweet crude. They don't want the heavy crude, you could probably get it right now for $50 a barrell, but it does not yield as much fuel, and you get more linoleum. Might have to start giving it away.

So they are making other money off that petroleum, but right now gasoline seems to pay the best. So not only do we need oil, we need the right kind of oil.

Personally I don't think Saddam was so smart going into Kuwait. I would have first of all started drilling my own pipelines in the border region, and found things. Look for the pipes. When you find them get a drill and some sulfuric acid or something. Also tap exactly the same reserve they are, and shift all production to those wells. Bring every Man, Woman and child and pump as fast as possible, If noting else pump it into a well somewhere far away from the Kuwaiti border. He should've seen the trap. He could almost still be there today if he was smart.

I guess this wasn't meant just for you DA, everybody has to realize that there is more to it than meets the eye. Lighter crude yields alot more than more gasoline. And that is where the demand is now. What would you do ?

In fact if you are the CEO of a publicly traded company that refines oil, you must operate to maximize profits.

With all this taken in, and the effect of speculators in the futures market, that is why it costs what it costs today.

And yes there is some price gouging and price fixing going on, but so far they have stayed under the RADAR of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Somehow. Another administration might pick up on this.

I wonder what Dubai's extradition laws are like.

T



Archer -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/19/2008 10:49:18 PM)

Heavy and sour oils are not quite that deeply discounted Terminator they typicly get discounted 7-13 dollars per barrel.

Light /Heavy refers to viscosity thickness light meaning more light end products easier to refine (one reason many wells have been capped is the light oils have been removed and heavy oils remain. the set up for refining light is different than it is for heavy) light and heavy yield different percentages of the various products about as one would expect

Sweet/ sour refers to sulfer content. Sweet low sulfer sour high sulfer Sulfer is difficult and expensive to remove and requires a different system set up.

You can have light sweet or light sour and you can have heavy sweet or heavy sour each of the four require a different set up of the refinery.



Termyn8or -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/20/2008 4:43:21 AM)

I didn't feel the need to mention sulfur, but since you did, all fine and good. I guess the discount isn't as deep as I thought, most likely due to the demand for plastics in this consumer happy world. Live and learn I guess.

At any rate, I thought it worth mentioning because some people would like to think in terms of them getting X gallons of gasoline from a barrell of oil but that does not tell the whole story.

Funny though, of all the technology DA mentioned they use to find oil, which is true, the first test is not quite so phisitocated. Literally a guy takes a stick and stirs it around in a bucket and then smells the stick. Of course then it goes to the lab, but some people can tell.

And even though it looks like we are headed for times like in Road Warrior (one of the Mad Max movies), this highly coveted gasoline used to be considered a waste product. These days of high prices have people looking for alternatives, and using waste somehow as fuel seems to be among the best options if we can do it, but few people realize that this is exactly what happened in the early twentieth century.

So if we are to learn from history, if we figured out how to run cars off of dog shit, in a hundred years instead of black gold - Texas tea, we'll have brown gold - backyard nuggets.

T



Irishknight -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/20/2008 4:49:07 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

So if we are to learn from history, if we figured out how to run cars off of dog shit, in a hundred years instead of black gold - Texas tea, we'll have brown gold - backyard nuggets.

T

THAT'S what DA's dogshit guy is doing!!!  He's cornering the market!!!!  Fucking brilliant!



DomAviator -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/20/2008 5:39:20 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Irishknight

quote:

ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

So if we are to learn from history, if we figured out how to run cars off of dog shit, in a hundred years instead of black gold - Texas tea, we'll have brown gold - backyard nuggets.

T

THAT'S what DA's dogshit guy is doing!!!  He's cornering the market!!!!  Fucking brilliant!



It would pain me deeply to know that was what my dogshit guy did with his harvest. Deep down I always hoped he used it to grow overpriced "organic" food to sell to the hippies in the health food shop LOL

However, with all kidding aside - you actually can generate energy from shit of any type using a methane digester - essentially you make your own natural gas. http://www.epa.gov/agstar/resources/iowa1.html Of course its not exactly a good solution for cars because if you had an accident you would be in deep shit... literally! [:D]



GreedyTop -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/20/2008 6:11:11 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Irishknight

quote:

ORIGINAL: Termyn8or

So if we are to learn from history, if we figured out how to run cars off of dog shit, in a hundred years instead of black gold - Texas tea, we'll have brown gold - backyard nuggets.

T

THAT'S what DA's dogshit guy is doing!!!  He's cornering the market!!!!  Fucking brilliant!



omg, IK... you owe me a new keyboard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Irishknight -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/20/2008 6:27:28 AM)

Sorry, GT.  It wasa moral imperative that I say that.



GreedyTop -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/20/2008 6:27:58 AM)

LOL



RealityLicks -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/20/2008 6:44:50 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomAviator

First of all he apparently doesnt grasp that there is no such thing as a Lear 


Come again?

quote:


LearJet products span decades of production, in numerous series, through several manufacturers - LearJet, Gates LearJet, Bombadier LearJet,


fascinating... not.

quote:

 with a variety of engine choices of varying efficiency... Apparently he doesnt recognize there will be performance differences between say a LearJet 24, a 25, a 31, a 35, a 36, a 45, and a 60? Or that due to the way the customers have each finished and equipped, every individual aircraft will have different empty weights and hence different perfomance?


[sm=tired.gif]

quote:


Also, with turbine aircraft performance for a given flight can not be pulled from a single published chart but has to be worked up on the basis of an individual flight plan factoring in taxi and hold times, load, field elevation, temperature, relative humidity, required reserves depending on the flight conditions, availability of alternates,


[sm=sleepy.gif]

quote:


section of the regulations that the flight is being operated under (more restrictive regs, require more conservative reserves, and hence a higher weight with correspondingly higher fuel burn), intended cruise altitude, routing, destinantion, etc... Literally dozens of factors, unique to each aircraft, on each flight, on each day.... Thats why there is a dispatcher certificate, and such flights aren't arranged simply by telling the receptionist "make sure they fill er up good"...


and on ...and on ... and on ... and on ... and fucking relentlessly on.

Walter Mitty on bennies.



hizgeorgiapeach -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/20/2008 9:38:18 AM)

Despite thorn's assurance that you've mentioned it in other threads Reality, I still haven't been able to locate any specific reference to you being involved in the aviation community either as a private pilot or as a commercial pilot of some level.  I'm still digging through old posts though, as I have time, so I may eventually dig it up.
 
In the meantime, since I'm having difficulty locating it - I would still like to know, as a Fellow Pilot, what sort of rates you hold and what sort of involvement you have in Aviation - publically, here and now, without having to wade through a ton of unrelated drek to eventually find the information.  (For that matter, even Specifc Links to the relevant posts where I can find the reference would sufice.) I want specifics from DA publically as well, since each of you contends that the other is full of shit and has no clue what they're talking about.  I've mentioned the Specifics of what My rates are publically - as a basis upon which to question why EITHER of you is to be considered an "expert witness" rather than blowing hot air in a virtual pissing contest.   Yawning smileys and refutation without backup simply don't cut it from anyone in my book.  It's juvenile and personally it shows me a lack of substance to back up the person's claims.  DA gave specifics, where are YOUR specifics?  Personally, I could give a flyin rat fart about Either of you - because frankly, I consider you Both full of piss and vinegar on a whole slew of things much of the time, and I've never met either of you face to face. 
 
Saying "everybody knows" that a Lear only burns $700/hr max says nothing - no more than saying "everybody knows" a car gets 19MPG city and 26MPG highway.  
 
(Sorry if this seems to be hijacking - but when Specifics are called into question, then Specifics need to be addressed!)



kittinSol -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/20/2008 9:49:54 AM)

[sm=threadhijack.gif]



MusicalBoredom -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/20/2008 9:59:54 AM)

Then please start a new thread on who knows the most about fuel consumption of some plane or who has the bigest dick or whatever so the rest of can ignore it please.

Edited to add "please" since I'm only a partial ass and not a complete ass.



DomAviator -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/20/2008 10:05:38 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: hizgeorgiapeach

I want specifics from DA publically as well, since each of you contends that the other is full of shit and has no clue what they're talking about.  I've mentioned the Specifics of what My rates are publically - as a basis upon which to question why EITHER of you is to be considered an "expert witness" rather than blowing hot air in a virtual pissing contest.    


Rhi,

Ill gladly answer your question. Aside from my Navy experience in the civilian world I hold the following ratings:

ATP - ASMEL
Comm - Rotorcraft - Helicopter , Airplane Single Engine Sea, Glider
Private - LTA - Balloon (with airborne heater no gas balloons!)
Endorsements - complex, tailwheel, high performance, and high altitude.
CFI - ASEL and Helicopter
CFI-I Airplane and Helicopter
CFI Multi
AGI and IGI
Part 142 "Authorized Instructor" (sims)
Part 135 Chief Pilot and Check Airman
Types : CE500, Lear 20 series initial type with transition to 31, and 35/36, Emb 145, B727, 737, 747, 777 as well as LOA's for various warbirds.
Flight Engineer - Turbojet
Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic (soon I shall add my IA)
Aircraft Dispatcher

I also have numerous log book entries that arent "formal type ratings" or "mandatory endorsements" such as glider aerotow, helicopter external load / vertical reference, helicopter confined space and pinnacle operations, water ditching, physiological training, unusual attitude recovery, and all those other little goodies that you can use for credit through the WINGS program to dodge BFR's [:D]

Edited to add: or to make your insurance company happy [:D]




pinksugarsub -> RE: People Bitching About Gas Prices.... (6/20/2008 10:17:00 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomAviator

Just an observation... All day every day I hear people bitching about the price of gas at the pump... Profiteering by the oil companies, Bush cronies raping the public etc... Did anyone ever stop to think how truly fucking CHEAP gasoline is?

You are talking about a product that is found on a hit or miss basis by companies that spend small fortunes on geophysical data. They employ an army of geologists, geophysicists, and engineers to possibly find the product. If they do find it, and the formation is actually produceable, then they lose 1/8 right off the top to lease royalties. Then they get a product that is essentially a witches brew of hydrocarbons, sand, mud, salt water, etc.... They have to pull the hydrocarbons out of it, and then truck / tanker / pipeline it to a refinery. As if drilling rigs (particularly offshore) and pipelines arent enough, take a look at a refinery someday! Drive through Pasadena Texas and you will see MILES AND MILES of refineries with I cant even begin to fathom how many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of feet of welded alloy steel piping that must be maintained, replaced, inspected etc by an army of well paid workers. After all, essentially a refinery is a giant still, where they BOIL and condense volatile hydrocarbons. Want to boil gasoline? Naptha? Benzene? Propane? Octane? Does that sound "smart or safe"? Once they finally ring some gasoline out of a 42 gallon barrel of produced shit (the unusable brine etc which they had to pay to dispose of, and 1/8 of the hydrocarbons which came out of their pockets right at the wellhead) Then they get to store this volatile explosive prone to evaporation product and to ultimately ship it to every little mom and pop station in america with a fleet of trucks, barges, pipelines, tank farms etc all of which cost megabucks to build and maintain. After their product gets marked up a couple of times by various middle men, taxed to shit, and marked up for retail sale - it brings as of yesterdays fill up $3.77 a gallon at the pump...

Unbelieveable people will gladly fork over $3.50 for a cup of starbucks coffee but they bitch about a gallon of explosive liquid ripped from the bowels of the earth using billions of dollars of infrastructure and then processed and transported with billions more...

You know - If you think gasoline is bad, try buying AvGas or Jet A sometime... Yesterday I dispatched a flight in a Lear, $980.83 fuel burn in the first hour... (1100 pounds per hour at that take off weight / 6 ppg / $5.35 gal for Jet-A) Even a little Cessna 172 burns 9.5 gph at $4.99 a gallon. Yet Im not bitching, the oil companies do an amazing job producing their product for the price they do.

I pay $1.49 for 2 liters of Mountain Dew and thats sugar water! It doesnt take an offshore rig, a fleet of helicopters and crew boats, a 200 mile pipeline maintined by teams of divers and ROV's and a multibillion dollar refinery to produce that...

Its a sense of entitlement. Why shouldnt the oil industry make money. I charge for my services, why shouldnt they?


Laffs.
 
DomAviator, do W/we ever agree on anything, LMAO?
 
Thank You for a very informative post; i admit i know diddly-sh*t about drilling for oil (go figure).
 
But Yanno Sir, i know when i'm being f**ked over by a company or industry...i can tell by that certain type of pain in my ass, LOL.
 
Have a good day.
 
pinksugarsub



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