Ask for short term gasoline conservation from the general public and/or raise the gasoline tax to pay for Katrina/Rita damage

Also maybe anticipate the next disaster - people freezing or going bankrupt in the Midwest and Northeast this winter paying for Natural Gas or Oil heat. Maybe we could start better insulating homes now?

Meanwhile, I don't understand why a lot of peak oilers are saying the peak will be several years away. Perhaps that's true for the maximum-ever production year. But a more important measure would seem to be the point at which supply cannot be increased to meet projected demand?

Finally, it's been asked several times here, and never really answered: Why does the price of oil go up when refineries are hit?

Thanks,
Chris

Concerning peakguy's comments, when you refer to a real leader, do you mean the leader of the US, or of an oil company, or some leader of people with their best interests in mind?

As far as the current administration, recall the tight family links to the oils.  I am certain that the interests of the oils are very much different than that of ordinary people.  Particularly when considering that today's values are based solely on the short term outlook, i.e. maximize short term profits.

Peakguy then goes on to address the possibilty of people being forced into bankruptcy later this year.  Please recall that the administration and credit card companies were able to push through a significant change to the bankruptcy laws, which unlike before may force people into "servitude" for many years to pay back their debts and significantly reducing their ability to continue to purchase "things" at the same level out of their remaining disposable income.

Note how after Katrina the oils and Citibank were successful in declaring a force majeur in order that they did not have to honor their delivery contracts due to the huricane.  But at the same time no individual was able to decalre a force majeur on their home payments due to the huricane's impact on their jobs/livelihood.  Nor did Congress pass the legistlation to delay the implementation of the bankruptcy changes for the people impacted by Katrina.

Concering ChrisPhoenix' comments about the disconnect between the price of oil and refined products, the issue is not one of classical economics and the relationship between supply/demand for an end product and the elements that go into production.

What drives the price today is the "market" that seemingly is manipulated just as, essentially all agree, that the gold markets are being manipulated.  The markets view and trade the "oil complex."  I doubt that the trading desk at Citibank takes delivery of much physical oil; so, to them the oil complex is just an accounting entry to trade.  Since they and the major oil complex traders are also "primary dealers" and they coordinate on a daily basis with the Federal Reserves' Bank of New York Trading Desk on each day's trading activites, the price of oil traded is also likely now approached as part of the economic policy by the administration.  (I am not making this up, see the Fed NY Bank web site.)

Along a similar vain, with the administration (MMS) giving figures that the loss of yearly production out of the GoM is about 5 percent, why is crude not higher based on a reduction in supply?  Has demand significantly fallen?  I doubt it based on all those cars burning up gas in the parking lots leaving the Houston area and the governor of Georgia (I believe) taking early snow days next week to delay consumption.  Also, all the planes, military and other, flying both in the US and in other theaters of operations burn up quite a bit of fuel.

[1] http://www.weatherimages.org/data/imag287.html

 - The LOOP, how much storm surge hit it?
 - The Refineries around the land fall.
 - The Pipeline; it is above ground there?
 - Rain induced flooding effects.
 - Howard's Hub?
 - Offshore platforms.
 - Offshore pipelines.
 - Status of the inland energy storage, for example gasoline in NJ and winter heating oil inventories.

What else?

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/53032.htm  [free registration required]

But Valero Energy reported Saturday that recovery teams found "significant damage" to its oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, following the hurricane. Shell reported wind damage to its Motiva facility in Port Arthur.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/24/rita/index.html

From:http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050924/D8CQRS280.html
Damage to the vital concentration of oil refineries along the coast appeared relatively light, although industry officials said it was too early to assess whether there would be an impact on oil prices. Valero Energy Corp. (VLO) said its 255,000-barrel-per-day Port Arthur refinery sustained significant damage to two cooling towers and a flare stack, would need at least two weeks for repairs.

[QUOTE]ABBEVILLE, La. (CNN) -- A distillate used in processing natural gas was leaking Saturday night from a rupture at Henry Hub in Louisiana, which connects numerous natural gas pipelines in the region, but state officials said the incident posed no danger to residents.

Henry Hub is at the Sabine Pipe Line Henry Gas Processing Plant in Erath, La., part of Vermilion Parish. Vermilion was one of the three parishes worst hit by Hurricane Rita.

The officials said the chemical was leaking from a tank into a levee meant to contain such spills. The cause of the leak was being investigated. (Posted 10:15 p.m.)[/QUOTE]

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/09/24/news.update.sat/

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2005/09/our_vast_oil_re_1.html

excerpt from TR Elliot comment:
 ... Of course, right now we've got a bunch of clueless people running the govt who think that intelligent design is science. So the libertarians and free markets types (of which I am largely a member) have a point: govt is pretty clueless. But if it ain't gonna happen in the private sector, then govt has to be fixed.

Consider this: if the world cannot create new sources of energy, like increasing oil production, demand will have to be reduced. The existing fields are depleting. Some of them fast. Technology is helping--helping to pull the oil out and deplete the fields even faster. At some point, if we can't find alternatives, the economy will recess. Imbalances with China and others (all that debt) will unwind. Demand for energy will go down. That means we'll have plenty of oil production capacity. That means there is little incentive for the private sector to develop alternatives. Prices don't support it. And they are too short-sighted--they're already losing a lot of money because the price of energy dropped--they're hurting. Then demand starts picking up, and boom, we run back into the production limits again.

http://online.wsj.com/documents/info-flash05a.html?project=gulfoil0509&h=450&w=780&hasAd =1','gulfoil0509','toolbar=no,location=no,scrollbars=no,width=780,height=627,left=40,top=10'

"Anxiety about running out of natural resources dates at least to the time of ancient Greece. The truth is that the price of virtually every commodity--agricultural, mineral, and energy--has fallen steadily throughout the 20th century relative to wages. A declining price is an indication of
greater abundance, not greater scarcity.
... The price of fuel has fallen so sharply since the last OPEC oil embargo that "oil is now cheaper than water," according to a 1999 Associated Press bulletin. Fifty years ago the world had about 20 years' worth of known reserves of oil. Thanks to technological innovation, which is outstripping the pace of depletion of reserves, the world now has at least 50 years of reserves."

from: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa364.pdf

Wow. We humans are so smart and so rational thinking. A fictional number ("price") fabricated by delusional humans as they "negotiate" fair and balanced deals between each other proves that there is an abundance of oil for the next 50 years (50 being a number randomly pulled out of someone's hat).

1) I attended Common Ground, a large agricultural fair in Maine yesterday, featuring a speaker on Peak Oil. He had an audience of hundreds, lounging on the grass in the sun, waiting to hear about this hot topic. This is not your normal midway-rides-and fried-dough fair: it's about organic agriculture (as well as horseshit like Reiki and crystal rubbing).

This speaker sucked. As he rambled and rambled, I kept saying, between my teeth, "why don't you frickin describe what peak oil is first?" At one point he mentioned "the tars sands in Alaska." At another, he said that Hubbert "predicted we would run out of oil in 1970." I was so disgusted I had to leave the event.

2) Discussion about peak oil has descended to barely intelligible arcana on these boards. I learned about this in 1982, when I was a geology major. My professor wrote an earlier paper about this subject. I rediscovered it at the end of 2003 and have read thousands of pages in my free time.

And yet, given the numbers and equations being pushed back and forth among the various parties, I no longer know what to believe. I consider myself a lay reader, but a very good one. What happens when the lay readers begin to tune out?

How do we resimplify the information, to know what is worth hanging onto?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4862885