Topic: Fuel prices hitting an eight year high - page 16. (Read 3974 times)

I beg your pardon - wrong opinion. Let me explain: if this resource, in the future, would have a stable or growing consumption, I would categorically agree. But in the next 10-20 years, the consumption of these resources will noticeably decrease. The fact that market monopolists will resist this, and make "demonstration performances", as, for example, Russia did with gas on the European market, in response to Russia's failure to comply with its requirements.

Does nobody remember this from 18 months ago:

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/21/839522390/u-s-oil-prices-fall-below-zero-for-the-first-time-in-history

And now it's the flip side of it, production / extraction was slowed to prevent that from happening again. But, now that demand has increased to ABOVE pre-pandemic levels it took a bit of time for the producers to get full capacity back up they would rather sell less crude for more money then stare at a supply that they can't find storage for. So, the price has gone up. AND with the transportation issues that exist moving the oil, and then moving the refined product (gas /diesel) takes longer and costs more.

-Dave

My position is as follows.
- oil and gas, in a world where its consumption will drop noticeably in the future, is now becoming a weapon, or a means of terrorism in some hands. This means that it is necessary to look for an alternative and diversify the supply of this resource, in order to reduce the effect of economic terror to zero. As you can see, on the market only 1 semi-monopolist begins to "show" what he can do if his conditions are not met, and has already exponentially inflated the gas price over $ 2,000. Such suppliers should simply be removed from the market.
- NPP is a rather controversial decision. On the one hand, it is a highly efficient source of electricity. On the other hand, over the past decades there has been a huge number of very serious accidents. Each nuclear power plant is a potential global collapse. And given that cheap and affordable electricity for some entities is an inconvenient competitor, and they have no moral principles, NPPs can become the next means of terror. It is enough to stop the nuclear power plant - and entire regions will be without electricity, the collapse of production, logistics and other things. But this may not seem enough, and people who swarmed the idea of ​​world terrorism, and who easily use chemical warfare agents against citizens of other countries, will commit a full-fledged terrorist attack at nuclear power plants without unnecessary torment of conscience. And this is already tens of thousands of lives, millions of kilometers of territories polluted for centuries ... No, this is not paranoia. This is a simple statement of what will happen if no alternative paths are found.
- Solar, tidal, wind, and other technologies - may well become the alternative that will provide the required amount of energy, without significant risks. For this, a good step would be a legislative norm - taxes on the production and sale of oil and gas for the development of more efficient green technologies. Just imagine what will happen if today's efficiency of mass-produced solar panels becomes 2-3 times more efficient and the price falls? Who will need oil and gas in such volumes?

Well, fuel are a limited resources so it's expected to get more expensive in the near future since there are less more of the resources needed to create the fuel.

If I remember correctly, during the previous pandemic, oil prices had plummeted, costing as little as $20 per barrel of crude oil. I recently read that oil drillers are trying to recoup their losses during the pandemic/quarantine.

The EU wants a free market is the electricity and gas sectors.The EU also wants more expensive "green energy" and more taxes over the coal burning power plants and other "dirty industries"(which makes their production more expensive as well).If you combine all these factors,you get way higher electricity and gas prices.The "green lobby" in the EU is pretty strong.Nobody can get on their way.
There's no reason to blame Russia.Gazprom has long term contracts with the EU gas companies at a pretty average price of around 300USD per 1000 cubic meters of natural gas.The Russians aren't causing problems in the EU gas markets.

We are now experiencing the aftershocks of Corona. During Corona, oil companies massively cut production capacity. We remember that in the meantime buyers even got money for taking oil because there was no storage capacity. Now that the economy is back at full speed, there is a lack of production capacity that cannot be ramped up as quickly. In addition, there has been little new exploration in the last two years. All of this is a dangerous mix for very high energy prices. Especially if the winter in the U.S. and Europe will be harsh.

The world is working in a close door to make this happen to everyone. The rate of carbon dioxide emission is high and government are doing there best to make sure that we all adoption the green living standard which will reduce the emission that is being produced by motor, companies and other source of carbon emission. I know very soon the hype if the crude oil will come to an end

Compared to nuclear safety, that's not true:

It's good to note that basically anything causes less deaths than fossil fuel.

Nuclear has it's own set of problems.  It produces no carbon emissions, but it does create radioactive waste that takes thousands of years to degrade and has to be safely and securely stored.  On top of that, the natural disaster at Fukushima showed that outside disasters can also impact the safety of the plants.  You don't really have safety concerns with green energy alternatives; their biggest problem is scale and reliability.

Trump had kept the oil prices in check, by removing obstacles for fracking and oil/natural gas exports from the United States. He also streamlined the approval process for the new pipelines. But after the regime change, Biden has reversed most of these policies, and as a result the crude prices have gone up by 100% and the natural gas prices have gone up by 1200%. In the end, the citizens in non-oil producing countries are going to suffer, as they will witness steep inflation rates and a weakening of their national currency.

In India, the fuel prices hiked for 5th day in a row!! Crossing the 100 inr mark. In Ukraine it's 1.33$ per liter, which is not that high in comparison. But the fact is, it's during the COVID-19. Plus it's not just fuel prices, it's also the prices in public transportation.
In Ukraine, It's *5 times now, since 2018-19. Plus shouldn't COVID would have helped the government to control it, to help people??? The working?? The middle class??? One might think but unfortunately due to the failing economy I think they are just trying to make up for that. At the same time due to border regulations right now it's hard for the countries who are not producing it, rather importing it..
For countries like Venezuela, the price is 0.2$, a country with the biggest oil reserves in the world. It's all about geography and international relations right now..
That's why the need of the hour is *to use renewable sources of energy* that's a whole new topic.

Energy sources in the world will keep on becoming more and more expensive, and that is why EV and every possible renewable energy source will be able to get ahead of the old ones. Not because they are more efficient or they are more green, because they are more cheap.

Realize this fact; energy company do not care about the world, this has been proven true for many years now, it has been 20 years of steady decline in the world and we have places burning like crazy, Australia literally burned for months, California is so dry that every year we have wildfires there and these are "famous" places, places that many people do not even hear about in the news burns as well and yet energy companies do not care. However the moment it makes more profit to have solar panels and wind turbines then having oil wells, those energy companies will try to look like the greenest mofos in the world and pump that.

This is gonna be epic one. I mean peeps have started to opt out for the electric vehicles, go green moto everywhere and what however, sooner or later everything is interconnected. Get this: A popular example and dream of richest person Elon is to run everything on green sources. So many automobile industries followed the same and now we see electric cars everywhere.

However, we are not capable of harnessing the natural sources at that speed and soon the whole electrical grid will collapse because we will be consuming more electrical power than ever before.

There is now way to get rid of "Power Greed". Somehow cycles will be connected. You need electricity then you will need electricity plants, raw materials to run them whether hydro power or fossils. You are using the natural sources and many of them are expensive to find in natural habitat.

Today the Oil is getting costly, tomorrow same problem will follow with the electricity too! You have to have a source to produce energy. One form from another and everything is limited unless and until we get a tech developed to harness 100% sun's energy.  

I'm not an expert on this field by any means, I'm not exactly sure on how exactly solar panels work and how efficient they are. However, as you've also mentioned, Germany and other nearby countries can't take advantage of the sunlight, due to their climate. I live in Crete, which is sunny for most of the day (And for most of the year), the same thing doesn't occur in north Greece though (Thessaloniki for instance).

It does not matter how many days of sun you get but how much of that energy you can harvest, and Greece despite being all sunny and so for tourism it lags well behind a lot of countries by actual potential.
Excluding the islands, you only get 4 hours on average spread through that day, so you would need to either program all your activities during peak hours or a ton of batteries.


Nope, it's math.
Combining with what I've said above, you can't really put all those panels everywhere and that's it.
Europe sucks bigtime at solar potential, Germany has the same numbers as Alaska (no joke), and most of the industrial zone of Europe is on the same page. So you need to install a ton, invest a ton in batteries only to be hit by a Dunkelflaute and then...what do you do? Not a problem if you live in California but when it's -25C outside like last year, it's a different thing.

And this is what's happening in Europe now, no wind and no sun, winter is near,  and all the renewables are dead in the water. Here is the number for energy production for Germany last month. You can see that solar is near nuclear, but nuclear has a 10GW capacity while germans have installed 50GW of solar panels, and the bill for that is just 30 billion last year and more than 200 since 2010.

Let's add the fact that they have the highest price per kWh in the world at 30 cents/kWh?
No, solar is not cheaper, it's made cheaper by taxing you and subsidizing it.


Taxes:
https://www.fuelseurope.eu/knowledge/refining-in-europe/economics-of-refining/fuel-price-breakdown/
0.37 in Romania and 0.73 in Italy. (gasoline, diesel is different)
France actually gets cheaper gas before tax compared to Romania but it ends up costing 0.5 euros more.

These days, the prices of fuel (but also gas) have become a hot topic, but all the price increases that are happening are quite logical for me personally - because all those measures that have been implemented over the past 2 years cost a lot, and now it's probably time for billing. The best way to provoke a chain reaction of price increases is to increase the price of the base energy source, which is of course fuel. After that, everything becomes more expensive, and the state treasury collects more taxes from VAT.

Leaving aside all that @stompix mentioned (and it definitely makes sense), and comparing fuel prices in Europe, it’s hard not to notice the differences. For example, in most EU countries the price for 95 is on average around EUR 1.50, but some countries still have a lower price.

- Bulgaria € 1.14
- Czech Republic € 1.36
- Hungary € 1.31
- Malta € 1.34
- Poland € 1.28
- Romania € 1.23
- Slovenia € 1.28

It seems to me that countries outside the Eurozone still have more control over fuel prices (with some exceptions), while countries within the Eurozone generally have similar prices, although there are exceptions. So I wonder what the reasons are for the differences in prices for the same product - maybe the reason is that some countries have higher oil/fuel stocks in tanks so they are not immediately subject to rising oil prices or is it due to competition in the domestic market for oil products, maybe some other reason?

Here you can see fuel prices in Europe : https://www.tolls.eu/fuel-prices

I also believe that we don't lack the technology, but it's not being implemented. The transition to renewable energy sources will take decades to be implemented, which is quite troubling, due to some countries who could genuinely take advantage of solar and wind energy. For instance, here in Greece, we have more than 300 days of sunlight per year, it would be great even if solar panels were implemented by companies or individuals themselves.

If I had my own house, I'd definitely invest in buying solar panels, enough to power the whole house and a charging station for electric vehicles, it would be an investment which would quickly pay off.

Quick question: would you have said the same thing 15-20 years ago? I'm asking because ever since humans discovered fossil fuel, technological development has only lead to an increasing consumption of it:

Next week, these oil price hikes will come to take effect on our country. It's the highest it has been for this year, and I think I might have to drop the car for the mean time and just use my bike to work. Electric vehicles are also not a thing here in the country, and we still have very vague and crude registration rules and guidelines on electric vehicles.

I find it illogical that we have all this tech and advancements in the world yet we still are stuck with fossil fuels. There are tons of other energy sources to choose from yet we still insist drilling the earth and looking for some long dead plants/animals/whatever fossilized and extracting them for energy. Even if that's the case, I'm still happy that other parts of the world are already shifting away from traditional gas vehicles, and switching over to EVs. At the least, we are seeing some small changes, but in this day and age we should have shifted to EVs for a long time now.