Oil prices crossed 120 dollars a barrel here Monday following fresh unrest in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer.
New York’s main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for June delivery, briefly hit 120.20 dollars, before slipping back at 1520 GMT to 120 dollars, a gain of 3.68 dollars from the closing price on Friday.
The price surge came on supply jitters from Nigeria and geopolitical tension in Iran, analysts said.
Volumes were light, however, as the British and Japanese markets observed a public holiday.
“Nigeria is the lingering hotspot the markets will be focusing on,” said MF Global analyst Ed Meir.
Prices at the pump are going to keep rising……there’s no denying that, and I predict that since they will, consumers will demand some changes in the cars and trucks coming on the market in the next few months and years.
More fuel-efficient vehicles are becoming the norm, and I see the time when all manufacturers will stop producing vehicles run solely by gasoline. Smaller size is not the answer, because many of us need larger vehicles for various reasons.
I believe that the time is coming soon when gasoline will be phased out in the North American market altogether, and hybrid fuel cell/electric vehicles will be required. The technology has been developed and it only remains for an impetus to force the manufacturers to design and build the vehicles.
I think the impetus is already here.
I don’t see why the effort to get commuter train systems is not gaining momentum in the US. In Europe, according to friends who travelled there, the system runs fairly well.
But here Amtrack, when it is available, is consistently hours behind schedule, as well as expensive. Stations are few and far between.
Just for an example, train service has been discontinued between New Orleans and Jacksonville Fl due to disruptions by Katrina. Amtrack recently revealed they have no intention of starting up this line again. Here in Florida, even if we had a weekend (Fri-Sun) service between the major tourist cities and University towns, I bet we could have full trains the majority of the time.
Now, granted, this would not help ME since I ‘reverse commute’ to my job, but it sure would make it easier in having my college daughter travel between Pensacola and Tallahassee.
Jim Elliott
It has long amazed me, Jim, that to travel between Atlanta (where I live and went to college) and Jacksonville (where my family lives) by rail, you have to go through DC (or, once upon a time, NOLA). Outside the northeastern megapolis and sightseeing trains out west, Amtrak seems at best useless.
Reminds me of a few years ago in a statewide election in Florida we voted both to build a high-speed monorail in Central Florida, and to prohibit the state doing any such thing. 🙂
I think that a large part of the problem with commuter trains here in this country is the fact that distances between cities……particularly on the West Coast…….average around 300-400 miles; MUCH greater than in Europe or Japan. It’s therefore a matter of cost.
Remember, too, that the Interstate Highway System……originally designed and and built for national defense during the Eisenhower Administration…….is so widespread that it covers virtually all of the country, and we would be very reluctant to go the Amtrak route in place of it.
Building the infrastructure for a nationwide high-speed rail system is going to prove enormously expensive……tens of billions of dollars, as a matter of fact. Are we ready to pay the price?
I doubt it.
# 1. wrote:
[blockquote]”…the impetus is already here.”[/blockquote]
With rising gasoline prices does come the impetus for reducing consumption. If consumption falls, prices will fall and alternative energy vehicles, mass transit, etc will fall out of favor. Until supply dries up, or the prices of alternative fuel or transportation drops, we will be on this rollercoaster. So perhaps we should keep on burning all that foreign oil, leave them with sand and worthless greenbacks, and invest in a bicycle factories in China.
In the mid-1990s Bill Clinton vetoed a bill passed by the GOP Congress that would have opened up ANWR to oil and gas drilling, and justified the veto in part by noting that oil would not come into production for another ten years. Well . . . here we are over ten years later and that extra oil would come in pretty handy right now.
We, as a nation, and our self-serving politicians were ‘put on notice’ regarding this situation in 1973.
What’s happened since 1973?
Not much except a nasty family fight between politicians who strive to manipulate the American voters in order to win elections.
The political party least likely to come up with workable solutions to this problem is also the political party that is most likely to block solutions to the problem on the basis of some sort vaguely defined of idealistic imperative.
Care to guess the name of the political party?
AnglicanFirst: This is not a political problem, and therefore the ultimate answer will not come from either (any?) political party. This is a market problem, and the best thing the government can do is get out of the way, and let the market solve it. Neither the transition from wood to coal, nor coal to petroleum were engineered by the government, and neither will the next fuels transition–if we are lucky.
Given a choice between VHS and Beta, the public sector picks Beta nine times out of ten.
The first thing we need is a lowered national speed limit; it saves an enormous amount of fuel (and lives) to drive at 55 or 65 than the 75-85 common today.
But none of our presidential candidates will dare suggest it — too bad!
#4 noted that it would cost billions for a high speed rail network. How much did the Interstate Highway System cost? Certainly the
median space separating the lanes could be utilized. When I was
in Israel, their highway medians were used for a rail right of way.
What we need is a true proactive transportation policy, not a
reactive one. Alas, our political leadership and media seem more
interested in what a candidate’s pastor says than addressing
transportation issues, as well as other items
The real problem here, as in so many areas, is the lack of honest and comprehensive costing data. The whole transportation system is so fraught with hidden subsidies and preferences that it is virtually impossible for the market to generate a solution because the market has been so corrupted. E.g. what is the true cost of autos? We don’t know, because we don’t know the true costs of cleaning the air and hidden costs like protecting oilfields, pipelines, and ocean transportation lanes.
We do know that trains are at least 4X as efficient as trucks at hauling freight. But the secret to taking advantage of that greater efficiency is breaking through America’s addiction to instant gratification, as saving a few hours seems to be trucks’ only advantage.
Intuitively, it would seem to make sense that public transit out to about 3-500 miles should be rail, preferably high-speed, as the distances increase. But the airlines will argue that their “roads” are free and save a lot of new construction and environmental impact.
What seems to make a lot of sense now is that we should develop systems that can switch between multiple power sources to adjust to market conditions. E.g. gas-electric vehicles that could be used more in the electric mode when oil prices are high, provided that the electric can be generated from hydro, nuclear, solar, etc. sources. Building flexibility into transportation propulsion systems (and power generating systems) would go a long way toward avoiding the sort of single-source bottlenecks we see in the market today.
Reply to #8. Kevin,
I am sorry but it IS a political problem. More correctly a ‘political-military affairs’ problem.
You can talk about market forces and supply and demand all you want, but our dependence on petroleum from people who don’t have our best interests in mind and in many cases DON’T LIKE US, possibly HATE US, is drawing us into world situations that we can and should avoid.
We can avoid much of this entanglement by sharply decreasing our dependence on petroleum as an energy source and thus relegating the oil producing countries to the ‘back burner’ in our foreign policy and in our miltitary preparedness requirements.
I am totally in favor of free market solutions to supply and demand problems, but not when choosing a realistic and feasible energy alternative will vastly improve our national security posture.
We can also defuse it by drilling at home (ANWR, Gulf Coast) for oil supplies we KNOW beyond any doubt is there and waiting. The more we produce, the better for our own position. We can also then take the option of countering OPEC on the international market with our own sales of crude, driving the price down world-wide.