Gas prices
- Thread starter JimDandy
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Not sure if joking...water literally falls from the sky and the 70% of Earth is covered with it.
Oil comes from the ground and it never gets replenished, just like the toothpaste from a tube. Once it's gone, it's gone (see: Azerbaijan, North Sea, Cantarell). All of the easy sources have been found and there's no cheap-to-extract oil left. Assuming demand stays on track, count on price of oil to keep on going up in the long run.
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1. BC gas is expensive because we have a carbon tax (roughly ten cents.), a federal excise tax (25 cents), and 5 percent GST. In Vancouver, we also have a transit tax. In total, we pay 51 cents per litre in fuel taxes
2. We only have one refinery servicing GV.
3. Retail sellers take higher sales prices in BC than other provinces.
4. BC retail sellers actively engage in price-fixing - looking at each other's prices and maintaining the same across the board rather than trying to outsell each other with a lower price.
2. We only have one refinery servicing GV.
3. Retail sellers take higher sales prices in BC than other provinces.
4. BC retail sellers actively engage in price-fixing - looking at each other's prices and maintaining the same across the board rather than trying to outsell each other with a lower price.
The cheapest to extract oil is in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia alone has 250+ billion barrels of known reserves. They produce about 10-11 million barrels a day - rough math, that's some 60+ years of known production capacity at current production rates. Now that's just Saudia Arabia. The doom and gloom of "we're going to run out of oil" has been theorized for decades. Those theories never account for potential discoveries of new reserves (which still does occur) and technological advancement with respect to extraction methods.
UM.....Venezuela is a Socialist Dictatorship that is on the ropes and punch drunk from the drop in oil prices as well as the chronic mismanagement of the oil sector not to mention cronyism....the average citizen has lost 20 pounds due to lack of food....not Maduro though.....he looks like he has gotten second helpings his entire life.....ask the people of Venezuela how much they like their current "glorious" leader and I imagine sentiment is pretty fucking low.
SR
Calm down mate. All he said was that Venezuela had the largest oil reserves in the world, which is true at nearly 300 billion barrels of known reserves. It would appear you saw the word Venezuela and went full on diatribe about the Venezuelan government - which had nothing to do with the discussion on known oil reserves.
OK yes Venezuela does have the LARGEST proven oil reserves....dont mean jack shit when you have an asshat running the show....and that is the case.
Dont compare ETHICAL oil to UNETHICAL oil.
SR
The world doesn't consume 11 million barrels a day, it consumes close to 99 million. Next year? Probably 100 million - it rises by approx 1% every year:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Can-Oil-Demand-Rise-Much-Further.html
So Saudi Arabia will be fine but the rest of the world? Not so good. I agree that sources are found every year, but they really don't move the needle that much. There hasn't been any major new sources found for the last 40 years:
https://sweetcrudereports.com/2017/12/global-conventional-discoveries-hit-record-low/
If the big boys haven't found anything major in the last 40 years, I doubt they'll find anything in the next 40. We can't really talk about "potential" new discoveries when the last 40 years have been failures. Why do you think the tar sands only became prominent in the last 15 years? There's no where else to look.
So the outlook is increasing demand with no new major cheap supply. Where do you think price will go?
Ethical oil? Does such a thing really exist? In Alberta, the taxpayers have a $70 billion liability from abandoned oil wells.
https://globalnews.ca/news/5143478/alberta-abandoned-oil-wells-election/
So the oil companies made money, the shareholders made money and now the public get stuck with the tab. Ain't capitalism great.
I never said world consumption is 10-11 million barrels a day. I said Saudi produces 10-11 million barrels a day.
And Saudi sells it's oil globally. So no, it's not a "Saudi will be fine and the rest of the world is screwed" as you claim. Oil is a global commodity with a standard price. And clearly you don't understand the oil business. Just because we have more expensive to extract/refine oil, it doesn't mean we charge more for our oil, we charge less for our oil because there are easier to refine oil (i.e. US sweet crude, Saudi crude, etc.) available. So you need not worry about our more expensive to extract oil; as long as we compete with the less expensive to extract oil, the less expensive will be the benchmark and we adjust our oil price lower, not higher. Ergo the often talked about Alberta discount or spread.
There is plenty of oil in the world for the foreseeable future. Even if there are no new major reserve discoveries recently, there is also technological advancements i.e. enhanced recovery methods leading to old well workovers, etc.
And no, the oil sands only became viable relatively recently because of technological advancement to recover the deeper bitumen; and higher oil prices help too. Speaking of which, Alberta's estimated oil sands reserves are based on existing extraction technology, it's quite possible with further technological advancement those reserves can be larger.
Demand is increasing sure; but no where near the pace that existing reserves would be in jeopardy of full depletion in the near to medium term. Frankly, you'll be dead before the world runs out of oil.
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I would suggest you re-read the article; nowhere does it state the taxpayers liability is 70 billion dollars. Well reclamation is a cost paid by the oil companies, it's law. I do however agree that we'll reclamation is a problem in that the current laws do not stipulate a timeline for when well reclamations need to be completed. Thus you do get situations where non-producing wells are simply left inplace. Certainly oil companies share some of the blame for the situation as do the politicians that allow the current laws to persist (i.e. Not stipulating a timeline). The reason we don't hear a lot of property owners complain is that the oil companies are required to pay rent to the property owners as long as a well is in place (whether it's producing or not). So most companies just continue to pay the rent rather than complete a full reclamation. But make no mistake about it, it is the oil companies that are required by law to pay for the well reclamation. Interestingly enough, there was a recent Supreme Court case that ruled even in the event of bankruptcy the reclamation costs must be paid before creditors are paid. So basically; it's not a simple situation of big bad oil companies passing the cost onto taxpayers as you seem to imply. The system (i.e. the laws regarding reclamation) contain many loopholes that allow oil companies to kick the can down the road so to speak.
Last I heard, the only legal way to both run a dairy farm and sell milk to the public in the USA was to first sell the milk your farm produced to the government at a fixed rate, and then buy it back from the same government at a still-fixed rate, only to then turn and sell it to the public. Who knows whether that can be profitable in today's world. I do know that countless dairy farms passed on the opportunity to operate that way.
MOST LIQUID OIL untapped reserve in the world, bar none. Wasn’t commenting on dictators. That is actually ironic as virtually every middle east oil suppliers have ruthless dictators as well. Que te la vaya bien. BM
Yes, because their ethics are so much worse than the Saudis who export jihad to the whole world, or the Americans who launch coups and invasions of any country that stands between them and a quick buck.
Yet Canada's oilsands get villified by all of the "save the earth" crowd as DIRTY OIL by the same fucking hypocrites that drive cars and take money from foreign based special interest groups.Those same "activists" wont say chain themselves to an oil rig or a fence in Saudi Arabia because they would ACTUALLY face punishment.Yes, because their ethics are so much worse than the Saudis who export jihad to the whole world, or the Americans who launch coups and invasions of any country that stands between them and a quick buck.
Canada and most specifically Alberta has the most stringent environmental laws on the books with regards to the resource sector.....at the same time we are an easy target for enviro nut job hypocrites.
In the last decade Alberta has sent 200 BILLION to Ottawa and has been short changed.....go back to the Leduc Strike way back in the day and Alberta has sent 600 BILLION to Ottawa.
Alberta has been on the ropes for 5+ years and at the same time the money keeps going to Ottawa and then funneled to Quebec and WE are getting pissed off about how pipelines are being obstructed.
Why are the NDP lead by Horgan against the TMX expansion?......because the are not getting any slice of the pie.....same goes for the First Nations against it.....a shitload of First Nations are for it as they have a say and get the benefit.....the ones that dont are against it because they are not getting a slice of the pie.
All of the pipelines should have been proposed 20 years ago just as Alberta started to "simmer" again after the dark times of Pierre Trudeau and his NEP.The price of oil was $20 a barrel and it was going to get better.All of the pipelines would have gone through.Northern Gateway/Keystone XL/Energy East as well as the TMX expansion because it was in the National Interest.Instead they were no proposed at the time and not done as CAPACITY did not warrant it.Alberta and most specifically the oilsands is over CAPACITY with regards to getting it to market.
Canada in the grand scheme of things gets it's "bread and butter" from Alberta and at the same time WE get fucked over when getting down to brass tacks.
I see this getting very involved in the next Federal Hustings.Given that 5 other Provinces have also elected Conservative Governments and it is shaping up to be an alliance among them,I see this as a very game changing situation to the next Federal Election.
Stop with the "Quebec gets Alberta money" talk. Yes Quebec gets equalization payments from the Federal Government. And yes they get more equalization than any other "have-not" province by quite a bit: more than 50% of total Fed equalization payments go to Quebec. But, equalization payments are a zero sum game - a province either gets it or it doesn't. It's not a situation where if Quebec gets less equalization the other "have" provinces get the difference. And yes, Albertans send money to Ottawa, as to British Columbians as do Ontarians etc. It may be shocking to learn but Federal income tax, GST, passport renewal fees, etc. all go to the Federal Government. It's from those revenues that fund the equalization program. People who continually gripe about Quebec getting $11 billion in equalization make it sound like Ottawa sends the "have" provinces a bill every year for their share into the equalization program. The program is funded by the Federal Government from Federal Government Revenues. Getting rid of the equalization program will save the Federal Government money, those savings will not necessarily be given back to Alberta, BC, SK or NFLD (the 4 "have" provinces currently).
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