DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Gas Prices

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Is gas that much harder to get to Ohio?

In Oklahoma we're .30 cheaper a gallon than you guys.

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What do you want congress to do, or the president, for that matter? You want socialized gas prices?

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Is gas that much harder to get to Ohio?

In Oklahoma we're .30 cheaper a gallon than you guys.

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I think that we have to use different blends than you do.

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I filled up at $3.04 a few days ago.

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State taxes make a big difference, too. Gas is cheaper in New Jersey than NY, and they pump your gas.

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LESS than two years ago, at the G8 summit in L’Aquila in Italy, prime ministers and presidents sat down to talk about world trade and food security with Muammar Qaddafi. Today Libya’s tyrant is paying mercenaries to shoot his people in the streets like “rats” and “cockroaches”.

Gangs of soldiers have roamed Tripoli, the capital, in open-backed trucks searching for people to machinegun. Snipers have fired indiscriminately from the rooftops and, it is said, helicopter gunships have spread terror from the sky (see article). The hope is that by the time you read this Mr Qaddafi has fallen, and Tripoli is sharing the joy of Benghazi to the east, where Libya’s uprising began. Yet his people are paying a terrible price for freedom. And the fear is that even now Mr Qaddafi will somehow clamber over the bodies littering the streets to seize back the power that has slipped away from him.

As the Arab awakening has spread, each leader has sought to save his skin by being crueller than the last. In Tunisia Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali met peaceful crowds with concessions. In Egypt Hosni Mubarak tried to ride out the protests by mixing concessions with force. In Bahrain King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa resorted to violence, but did not have the stomach for the fight. In Libya Mr Qaddafi seems to crave blood. Screaming ghastly defiance in an hour-long tirade on February 22nd, he vowed to “cleanse Libya house by house”. If he prevails, dictators the world over will know which course to follow.

Mr Qaddafi is no stranger to brutality and persecution—that is how he has kept power for 41 years. He has oppressed his own people, sponsored terrorism and spread conflict in Africa. Why then did world leaders embrace him in L’Aquila? Why indeed have they dealt with autocrats and kings across the Middle East only to see the people rise up?

Just now, when the air in Libya is thick with gunfire, it is tempting to think that indignation alone could furnish a strategy for dealing with dictators. Rather than appease them and make grubby deals for the sake of oil and geopolitics, the argument goes, the only ethical foreign policy is to reject them and walk away. Sometimes that is true—it was what the West tried with Mr Qaddafi a quarter of a century ago, after his diplomats shot a British policewoman, his agents bombed a nightclub in Berlin, and his secret service started to bring down airliners.

Yet it seldom makes sense to isolate large parts of the world permanently, no matter how unpleasant the tyrants who govern them. America and the Soviet Union negotiated and traded with each other even at the height of the cold war. The outside world has talked to the murderous regime in North Korea about its nuclear weapons. Economies need oil and it is idle to suppose otherwise. The question raised by the wave of protests spreading across the Middle East is not whether to deal with autocrats, but how to deal with them.

When strongmen are vulnerable, as now, the priority is to push them towards reform and away from violence. Barack Obama, America’s president, was right to stand behind the protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and now Libya. America’s army chiefs were right to use their influence to restrain Egypt’s armed forces from shooting into the crowds (see article). And if Mr Qaddafi uses his air force to kill large numbers of his own people, the world would be right to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya.

But most of the time strongmen are not vulnerable, and then the judgment becomes more complicated. Libya, with all its cruelty and its tragic violence this week, shows why.

The ostracism of the 1990s failed to shift Mr Qaddafi from power, despite its moral clarity. But it did help persuade him that he stood to gain from engaging with the world. That opened the door to some shabby deals. The release of one of Mr Qaddafi’s terrorists from a British jail, the sale of weapons to Libya and the elevation of a dictator into a statesman at the G8 all looked unwise at the time. Today they look despicable.
Explore our interactive map and guide to the Arab League countries

And yet Mr Qaddafi also made concessions that were worth something to the West, to the region and to Libyans themselves. The greatest of these was to give up his nuclear programme and help to blow the lid on the nuclear black market centred on Pakistan. Libya also stopped sponsoring terrorism in the West, though it continued to sow mayhem in Africa. And, hard as it is to remember just now, Libya’s people were less oppressed after their country rejoined the world.

Business should not be expected to live up to higher standards than government. But it too has to balance the practical with the moral—and be aware that the balance changes. Any deal based on an outright lie will come back to haunt you. The greed which this week caught up with those who accepted the Qaddafis as patrons of human rights will one day shame the lawyers, bankers and PR men vouching for the character of Russia’s bloodstained oligarchs. In contrast, the oil firms who did business in Libya could justifiably claim they helped Western consumers and Libya’s people—and they never pretended Mr Qaddafi was a fine upstanding fellow (see article).

…but sometimes cynicism can be deeply naive

This is not an argument for callousness. The lesson from the Arab awakening is an uplifting one. Hard-headed students of realpolitik like to think that only they see the world as it truly is, and that those who pursue human rights and democracy have their heads in the clouds. In their world, the Middle East was not ready for democracy, Arabs not interested in human rights, and the strongmen the only bulwark between the region and Islamic revolution. Yet after the wave of secular uprisings, it is the cynics who seem out of touch, and the idealists have turned out to be the realists.

Just occasionally, the power of ordinary people can overturn the certainties of the experts. That is why countries dealing with dictators should never confuse engagement with endorsement and why the West should press for human rights and democracy—even when it is inconvenient, as it is with China and Russia. Just ask those who have summoned up the courage to risk death for a cause on the streets of Tripoli.

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What is interesting, next quarter or two from now, oil companies will report record profits...wait and see.

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I thought Bush was able to manipulate oil prices? I'm so confused...

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What is interesting, next quarter or two from now, oil companies will report record profits...wait and see.

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I find 2 things funny about this.. one being that what the oil companies make is pocket change compared to what the member nations of OPEC make, yet somehow you believe it when OPEC says this is George Bush's fault.. and second, more than 2 years into Obama's presidency and you are still blaming oil company profits on Bush.. get over it.

While you are looking for a chart of gas prices in the fall of even years, why don't you find a couple other things.. find out how much money the OPEC nations make.. then go find me an article, any article, where OPEC blames themselves for oil prices going up out of the comfort zone...

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it's the speculators that drive up the price per barrel.

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Yep.

And we're more than happy to drive it down as well, just gotta ride the wave.

But no one ever says - thank goodness those traders drove the price back down!

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I find 2 things funny about this.

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it's the speculators that drive up the price per barrel.

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Yep.

And we're more than happy to drive it down as well, just gotta ride the wave.

But no one ever says - thank goodness those traders drove the price back down!

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I wasn't saying that it's a bad thing, just that it's not like the oil companies are not sitting around a big conference table saying "oops trouble in the middle east, lets jack up gas prices"

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Of course the profits will be up. It costs the same for them to pump it from the ground

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My gas is still free to anybody who wants it.

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Of course the profits will be up. It costs the same for them to pump it from the ground

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True but remember that more and more oil coming from more uncoventional sources (offshore, shale, oil sands) that makes for higher extraction cost. These are being developed now because the price of oil supports it. The price of oil is there because conventional, easy to get to oil deposits are becoming harder and harder to come by.

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Of course the profits will be up. It costs the same for them to pump it from the ground

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True but remember that more and more oil coming from more uncoventional sources (offshore, shale, oil sands) that makes for higher extraction cost. These are being developed now because the price of oil supports it. The price of oil is there because conventional, easy to get to oil deposits are becoming harder and harder to come by.

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Agreed, but on a day to day basis nothing fluctuates the costs and profits like the market price of the goods they produce. The research costs and more expensive drilling costs are spread out over longer periods. Nothing like a double in the market price of your product in a couple weeks time.

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I thought all the rich Teaparty Republicans supported free market economics such as those practiced by the oil industry.

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Surely RWers can afford higher gas prices...

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BTW, this is the same oil market that was working so well when Bush was in office and all RWers defended that market.

...what changed?...

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Those evil traders sent oil down over 1% in trading today. Those ^&*%#$#

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Those evil traders sent oil down over 1% in trading today. Those ^&*%#$#

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Is that supposed to make me like traders more?

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It's the other side of the coin. You want to blame them for raising prices, now thank us for dropping them as well.



I know, easier to complain than to say thanks. It's ok, I'm used to people thinking oil speculators are the root of all evil since WEWS said so on the local Cleveland news station.

So today was 'Thank Your Oil Trader Day'. That's all - recognize we can easily run prices up as we can send them right back down. In the end, it's all a giant game of supply and demand. Traders such as myself simply jump on the train and hopefully ride it in the right direction.

You have a choice - either educate yourself on the oil markets and learn to make $ at it or be subject to the price fluctuations at the pump. Again, much easier to just say oil traders are bad and go on with your day - I understand. Very quick and easy to point a finger or two.

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Those evil traders sent oil down over 1% in trading today. Those ^&*%#$#

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Is that supposed to make me like traders more?

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It's the other side of the coin. You want to blame them for raising prices, now thank us for dropping them as well.



I know, easier to complain than to say thanks. It's ok, I'm used to people thinking oil speculators are the root of all evil since WEWS said so on the local Cleveland news station.

So today was 'Thank Your Oil Trader Day'. That's all - recognize we can easily run prices up as we can send them right back down. In the end, it's all a giant game of supply and demand. Traders such as myself simply jump on the train and hopefully ride it in the right direction.

You have a choice - either educate yourself on the oil markets and learn to make $ at it or be subject to the price fluctuations at the pump. Again, much easier to just say oil traders are bad and go on with your day - I understand. Very quick and easy to point a finger or two.

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We need more fuel efficient clean diesels in our cars in this country.

Europe's diesels get 50-60 MPG. It's BS we don't have them here.

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