Get ready for the big spike

Oh ya,and it is going to be a beauty!
Start filling up those 5 gallon cans out in the shed!

How much of BC's gasoline is refined in BC from BC oil? Anyone know?

British Columbia
Burnaby, (Chevron Corporation), 52,000 bpd
Prince George, (Husky Energy), 12,000 bpd

according to Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_refineries#British_Columbia

Dose not say where the oil comes from. Probably does not matter since it should be sold at the world rate in any case.

Oops...here it comes people!
Oil up $1.95 a barrel when I last looked today!
Damn close to $98.00 a barrel, and that is good for my stocks, but not so good for the consumer!

Update...barrel increase now @ 2.20 for $98.05 a barrel today @ 8:30 am.
Gold up over $23.00 an ounce on the world market.
Scary!

Pakistan + Kenya ......

+++++ Palopu ...

;-)

Exactly owl!

Not very many have dropped the price of gas at the pumps...
They are very quick to raise it but seem to drag their heels in lowering it....

During my drive about town,I found only two stations that have lowered the price. So not such a bargain.
Will not say no though.....

I hope it goes to $2 bucks a liter. Maybe people would treat it as the valuable resource that it is.

Wow what a dumb thing to say.

ahole

Sure raise it to $2.00 a litre and see your cost of food and pretty much everything else you see on your local merchants shelves... yeah bright idea.... That stuff has to get here somehow and every way requires fuel.

"A forecast made by Denmark-based Saxo Bank, chaos will take a grip on the world in 2008.

Oil prices will skyrocket to 175 dollars per barrel, the Chinese market will collapse by 40 percent, whereas the U.S. will suffer a 25-percent setback.

All this will happen because of the mortgage crisis in the USA which already slows down the U.S. economy."

Like the Chinese proverb says: May the New Year be very interesting!

wileycoyote/ruez/dozer North America is pretty much spoiled compared to most countries in the world when it comes to gas prices. Try going to England, France... pretty much anywhere in Europe. They all pay WAY more than us here in North America. High gas prices would be more like a user pay system. The low prices we pay mean people don't respect the resource and drive dumb vehicles like Durango's pickup trucks etc. In Europe a Jetta is a large vehicle. On top of that more than 50% are diesel's over there.

Wow reality! In Europe, a 2 hour drive can get you into another country. Here a 2 hour drive get us nowhere. We also produce the stuff that we pay dearly for. Don't tell me I don't value the stuff. I pay for it. I make decisions based on gas prices. I cannot drive a small econo car because of the size of my family. I'm not saying that we cannot be more careful but reality is we aren't in Europe and the shear vastness of our country makes our needs way different. I know what $2/L would do to our family economy. It would hurt! I guarantee we wouldn't get a wage increase to help compensate.

uyterlindekel, there is all sorts of excuses on why we can't drive more efficient cars (note I didn't say econo cars, as those are practical for me either due to family size)However, for the life of me I can't understand why anyone would need to drive an SUV the size of say a Durango that gets 15 MPG. The fact of the matter is in Europe gas taxes are way higher. In essence it becomes user pay because each liter contributes greater directly to the overal cost of maintaing roads etc. In N. America the taxes are less DIRECTLY on fuel, but taxes from other streams (IE my income taxes) are directed towards road improvments etc. So those that don't use them, or use them considerably less still pay based on their income, which is flawed.

Therefore there is little incentive to drive less, because the fuel is cheap.

On top of that, if will undoubtedly spur innovation, which is what we really need. Notice General Motors today announced an electric car design studio?

"However, for the life of me I can't understand why anyone would need to drive an SUV the size of say a Durango that gets 15 MPG"

Let's be honest though, there are many people out there who require trucks and similar vehicles. You can't pull a boat with a Honda Civic, you aren't going to head off to logging camp in a Jetta and you won't load up the family to go camping in a PT Cruiser.

Now that being said, despite our "Northern Needs" there are also LOADS of people who drive full size trucks and SUV's, who quite frankly, don't need to. Personally, I could care less what people choose to drive, it's up to them. However, I also get a kick out of people who complain about high gas prices when they CHOOSE to drive a vehicle that gets 12-14 MPG in the City and 16-18 on the Highway. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that high gas prices are here to stay and that the mileage on a full size truck or SUV will suck.

Increased prices will really hurt the folks that require their vehicles to make a living. It's those people that perhaps we should try and soften the blow for, not the soccer mom taking the Tahoe to the mall.

hmm well thats cheap,,Europe pays $3.00
it is what it is

If WE are supposed to OWN BC's prodigous oil and natural gas reserves, why don't WE get our oil, gasoline, and natural gas at a price that reflects OUR ownership?

And I mean WE, each of us, as individuals. Not our 'Government'. We should get either a price at the pump for OUR resource based on its actual cost of production and distribution plus a reasonable profit for all that had a hand in getting it there.

Or, if we want to sell OUR own resource to ourselves at the same Global price we'd export it to foreigners for,then we should receive a 'dividend' on it sufficent to lower the domestic price to a level based on actual COST.

The current PRICE of gasoline to us at the pump in no way reflects the actual COST of gasoline to get it to that pump.

Instead that price is based on speculation in the Global Market as to how high world oil prices can be driven. The actual production COST varies very little whether oil is at $ 100 a barrel or a fraction of that.

There is no real benefit to us, to each of us as individuals, in having to pay that artifical price to access what is already ours.

Good post socredible.
And what I also don't understand is why we should consider "our" oil resources a bargin just because Europe pays 3 bucks a litre or whatever it is.
We are not getting a bargin at all.
In fact,we are actually getting hosed considering our government likes to tell us the those resources are "ours".
Like hell they are....they belong to the Oil companies, and we know it!

You play with the expensive toys, you should expect to pay, just like the soccer moms. Now back to reality, the year is 1973, 3 students at a school in California retrofit a Datsun with junkyard parts to pull off 73 MPG on the Dyno. 35 years later, our auto manufacturers can't replicate half of that mileage. Wonder how much these scholars received for a buy-out? Remember when Ballard introduced hydrogen fuel cells to the world and the stocks climbed the STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN. Still there is no personal vehicle application of this technology, and I would guess that to drive a vehicle of this manner across Canada is still several decades away. Even though the technology is now decades old. Hmm, while we still have fossil fuel (500+ years of it), we can happily be raped by the oil companies, our politicians can rape us with the Green tax, the Carbon tax and so on. High gas prices do not spur innovaton as dodo claims. Innovation that cuts into profits can be curtailed for the right price. Have you not payed attention to the oil business and how it works? The electric car, excellent idea, drive to next town charge the car, drive, charge the car. I want in on this, I'll pop up Timmy's every 200 KM and rake in the cash. No, better yet Battery Sales, yup thats the way to go, batteries that last 6 months, 16 batteries @ $800/per. Ching Ching $$$ Hmm, maybe Solar cells, nah too wet here, to easy to rip off. Well I can't foresee 500 years from now, but I still hope my Harley still burns cowsh*t!!

Who ever said it was our oil? Better follow up on the ownership of the tar sands outfits. Nonetheless, for revenue purposes, heres a simple math dilemma. Which is greater? $1.05/litre of fuel minus the governments % or $0.55/ litre of fuel minus the governments %??

OOPS, I forgot the enviromental surcharge levy on automotive batteries, AKA the dreaded Eco-Fee.

Why did they put an N in Environmental? That's my New Years resolution, spell it right at least 3 times this year. HNY everyone!!

"Let's be honest though, there are many people out there who require trucks and similar vehicles. You can't pull a boat with a Honda Civic, you aren't going to head off to logging camp in a Jetta and you won't load up the family to go camping in a PT Cruiser."

REQUIRE ????? ... those activities do not spell REQUIRE to me. They spell WANT, to me.

REQUIRE is a travelling salesperson who is carrying inventory in the back of the canopied pickup, or the van, or the extended SUV and is doing so on northern roads with a territory that spans from Whitehorse to Williams Lake and from Valemount to Masset.

As far as family "camping" goes, give everyone a backpack with their own provisions and pup tent, drive in your 25MPG 4 cylinder sedan, park it at the base of the mountain (Robson for example) and hike in to the camp spots. Anything othere than that is not "camping" in my books.

That other stuff is called travelling with your studio apartment.

;-)

"while we still have fossil fuel (500+ years of it),"

And you get this information from where? I think you have one zero too many .....

enviro-MENTAL

We can complain about the global economy taking our resources, we can complain about high gas prices we can complain complain complain. But in the end it is a choice. A choice between being a victim or not.

I predict there will be at least 5 more stories this year on opinion 250 on high gas prices and OH the outrage! Not fair! We need our pickup trucks and SUVs!

Adapt or lose.

As early as the 1920's there were stories going around of various inventions that would improve gas mileage whose patents had been bought up and suppressed by 'Big Oil'.

There was a very definitely a carburettor developed after World War Two by some American inventor that could double gas mileage that suffered the same fate.

We are NOT short of oil now, nor, even at the current rates of consumption, are we ever likely to be. We haven't even scratched the surface of planet Earth in looking for more.

The technology to extend world oil supplies even further, prodigous that they are already, is out there. And doubtless further technologies will be developed in the years ahead. How many of them will ever be utilized is another thing.

The big problem for us at present is there is an oligopoly that controls the supply, or the distribution of that supply, and has the ability to make a price for its product far in excess of its costs, simply through keeping it artificially in short supply.

Anything which is wasteful of that resource aids in the process. As does any taxation imposed, as it's currently imposed. Which only makes 'Government' an accessory to the crime of removing more of your income from you than it should ever be entitled to for services rendered.


All product PRICES should be based on actual COST, with the provision of profit at final retail not dependent on a financial perversion of actual supply and demand as it's currently reflected through a flawed money system. Supply and demand can only be a proper indication of economic reality if total 'price values' expressed in money actually equal total 'money' in existence in the hands of the public at one and the same time.