Last week, I paid $1.78 per gallon for gasoline. Just a few weeks ago, I sweated finding a place to buy any gas, anywhere, at twice the price. Did I miss the news on television the night somebody explained what happened? The default in economics is always supply and demand. Somehow, I can’t really put that together. The most interesting report I have read is that the current collapse of credit has taken the oxygen out of the fire-storm of speculation, therefore forcing the price of oil to actually reflect supply and demand. Maybe. Who knows? Certainly not anybody I know. It is still a pretty safe bet that any society able to wean itself from oil dependency may stand half a chance of survival in the future.
According to the Sierra Club’s The Green Life, “oil prices will rebound to more than $100 per barrel as soon as the economy recovers.” Will somebody please wake me when we get there? It is already hard enough to know what to wish for. By 2030, the price of oil will naturally exceed $200 per barrel, as standards of living rise in China and India. Americans will recall with nostalgia the good-old-days of $4 a gallon gasoline. However, by 2030, alternative fuel vehicles, like plug-in hybrid, electric, natural gas, and fuel cell cars may rule the road, according to The Green Life, making “oil price mumbo-jumbo moot.” Projections that plug-in vehicles alone will eventually account for 50 percent of U.S. transportation argue that household budgets will not be chained to the price of oil. Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so? Where are the corporate clowns at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler? Out lobbying the U.S. government for some sort of taxpayer dole.
One my enduring memories of the early 1950’s is of guys older than I was, teenagers, in their front yards taking cars apart and putting them back together again. Just for the fun of it, as best anybody could tell. They dressed in blue jeans and white t-shirts and looked like young Marlon Brandos and James Deans even before the images of young Marlon Brando and James Dean had been invented by Hollywood cameras. Where did those guys go? Did they get swallowed whole and end up in the belly of the whale in Detroit? I’d like to think that they, or maybe their children and grandchildren are still tinkering in garages and tin-roof buildings on secondary highways along the railroad tracks all across America. Moe and Molly the mechanics refuse to accept the lazy corporate response and are building and/or converting their own cars that run on something other than gasoline. Electric, natural gas, cooking oil recycled from do-you- want-fries-with-that. A guy in Douglasville, Ga., has converted his own S-10 pickup to all electric. Cost $12,000, including the used truck. A company in Canada will sell you your own natural gas fueling device to hook up to the natural gas utility line service in your house. This is on sale now, available by mail order at about $3,000. I want to talk to some of these folks, learn more about how they did it and what they have to say. If I do, Paw Paw Bill will let you know. Now that the election is over, this is the most important thing I can think of.
Copyright 2008 by William C. Cotter
Showing posts with label The Gas Pump. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Gas Pump. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Welcome Find
I saw the gas station lines on Friday and Saturday as I went about my business. I drove from my house in Pine Lake to visit my sister, who lives in Roswell, one of Atlanta’s always thrilling routes including both I-285 and Ga-400, then on Saturday to pick up my grandson in Marietta, another journey via I-285. So I left home Sunday before dawn to fill up. Traffic was unusually heavy for so early on a Sunday. It quickly became clear that I was not the only one cruising for gas. I visited several stations all the way to Emory, then Briarcliff Rd, North Druid Hills Rd., Lawrenceville Hwy. Plastic bags and yellow tape covered the handles at the pumps.
On my way home, I stopped at the Kroger where we often shop. By then, the time was after 7 a.m.. Four lanes of vehicles lined up for the 10 Kroger pumps at North Decatur Rd. and DeKalb Industrial Way. I got in line behind a dozen others. Red-shirted Kroger employees tirelessly directed traffic to the next available pump. I waited about half a hour for my turn. The lines extended out of the shopping center onto the main roads by this time. I usually make great effort to try to avoid lines. This was the second extraordinary one I had joined this week, the other being at the DeKalb County Registrar’s Office for early voting. Both lines were handled efficiently and helpfully, and I left both feeling victorious. I believe the high turn-out of voters in DeKalb County will overwhelmingly support Barack Obama. As a Kroger-Plus Card Customer, I paid less than $4 per gallon for my gas, $3.969, to be exact.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the current gas shortages are due to the back-to-back hurricanes in the petroleum rich Gulf Coast states of Louisiana and Texas. You would think hurricane season did not come every year, regular as Columbus Day and Halloween. Power outages have shut down the refineries. Maybe they should spring for some emergency generators, like telephone companies do. I understand the hurricanes missed New Jersey. The last time I was on the Interstates between Atlanta and the Jersey Turnpike, the tanker trucks seemed to know the way just fine. No estimate is available at this time for the end of the current situation, but production should resume faster than after Katrina and Rita because the refineries weren’t damaged as badly, according to the AJC. Only four of 56 refineries were still closed on Friday.
One petroleum executive suggested cancelling the football game between the University of Georgia and University of Alabama for fear that footbal fans would leave all the gas pumps in the Athens area on empty. "That gas needs to be used for people to go to work, and for people to take care of their families," Tex Pitfield, president and CEO of Saraguay Petroleum in Atlanta, told WGAU radio in Athens. Listen, Mr. Oil-Tycoon, just because you can’t run your own business doesn’t mean we’re going to let you mess with SEC Football. Some things are more important than the economy. Even the office of Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue said cancelling the football game was "a ridiculous idea.” The Georgia Bulldogs closed an Alabama Crimson Tide first-half lead of 31 points, but it was too little, too late, and the final score was 41-30 in this gridiron rivalry that often determines the SEC as well as National Championship. Gas stations between Athens and Tuscaloosa did a booming business in beer, soda pop, chips, peanuts, and moon pies. Those that had gas to sell were welcome finds also.
Copyright 2008 by William C. Cotter
On my way home, I stopped at the Kroger where we often shop. By then, the time was after 7 a.m.. Four lanes of vehicles lined up for the 10 Kroger pumps at North Decatur Rd. and DeKalb Industrial Way. I got in line behind a dozen others. Red-shirted Kroger employees tirelessly directed traffic to the next available pump. I waited about half a hour for my turn. The lines extended out of the shopping center onto the main roads by this time. I usually make great effort to try to avoid lines. This was the second extraordinary one I had joined this week, the other being at the DeKalb County Registrar’s Office for early voting. Both lines were handled efficiently and helpfully, and I left both feeling victorious. I believe the high turn-out of voters in DeKalb County will overwhelmingly support Barack Obama. As a Kroger-Plus Card Customer, I paid less than $4 per gallon for my gas, $3.969, to be exact.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the current gas shortages are due to the back-to-back hurricanes in the petroleum rich Gulf Coast states of Louisiana and Texas. You would think hurricane season did not come every year, regular as Columbus Day and Halloween. Power outages have shut down the refineries. Maybe they should spring for some emergency generators, like telephone companies do. I understand the hurricanes missed New Jersey. The last time I was on the Interstates between Atlanta and the Jersey Turnpike, the tanker trucks seemed to know the way just fine. No estimate is available at this time for the end of the current situation, but production should resume faster than after Katrina and Rita because the refineries weren’t damaged as badly, according to the AJC. Only four of 56 refineries were still closed on Friday.
One petroleum executive suggested cancelling the football game between the University of Georgia and University of Alabama for fear that footbal fans would leave all the gas pumps in the Athens area on empty. "That gas needs to be used for people to go to work, and for people to take care of their families," Tex Pitfield, president and CEO of Saraguay Petroleum in Atlanta, told WGAU radio in Athens. Listen, Mr. Oil-Tycoon, just because you can’t run your own business doesn’t mean we’re going to let you mess with SEC Football. Some things are more important than the economy. Even the office of Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue said cancelling the football game was "a ridiculous idea.” The Georgia Bulldogs closed an Alabama Crimson Tide first-half lead of 31 points, but it was too little, too late, and the final score was 41-30 in this gridiron rivalry that often determines the SEC as well as National Championship. Gas stations between Athens and Tuscaloosa did a booming business in beer, soda pop, chips, peanuts, and moon pies. Those that had gas to sell were welcome finds also.
Copyright 2008 by William C. Cotter
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Not-So-Easy Pickens
I’m already driving a Honda Civic, but when I fill my gas tank lately, I pay with Ulysses S. Grant and get back change in George Washingtons. According to T. Boone Pickens, “this is one crisis we can’t drill our way out of,” and he has been an oil-man his whole life. Except when he was a natural gas man, a corporate raider and hostile-takeover pirate, and hedge-fund douser. Now he is a prairie wind man and a solar energy man. He wants to build a nationwide network of filling stations pumping All-American natural gas, generate electricity with wind, solar, and other technologies, like nuclear power plants. Pickens has long been active in Texas Republican politics and was a major money source for the candidacies of George Bush, both for Governor and President. T. Boone Pickens staked the Swift Boat squads against John Kerry.
Pickens is 80. His first entrepreneurial enterprise was as an eleven-year-old newspaper delivery boy, taking a route of 28 subscribers and building it to 156, an early introduction to "expanding quickly by acquisition," he explains. My buddy Luther did the same thing when we were kids. My first job was helping Luther deliver his Atlanta Journal paper route on our bicycles. He paid me 25-cents per day. In two years Luther doubled the size of his paper route and my pay. Every job I’ve ever had since was one working for somebody who had more money and was better at making it than I was. T. Boone Pickens has described his business philosophy as, “Anybody made money today … Anybody got an idea for how we can make any money … Am I the only one trying to make money around here?” I have to confess, I have more faith that the current energy crisis is more likely to be addressed by the itch to make a buck than to make a law. This faith is not worship of unbridled laissez-faire capitalism; it is just reality.
T. Boone Pickens promotes alternatives to oil. He wants to use windmills to generate the 22 percent of U.S. electricity currently provided by natural gas, then burn that natural gas in our cars and trucks instead of 38 percent of imported foreign oil. Pickens is spending many millions on television advertising, probably more money than all the Presidential candidates will have at their disposal for campaign advertising. Pickens personal wealth is estimated in the billions. Maybe T. Boone Pickens will give us a better shake than the sheiks of Araby. I can just hear some wisecracker standing in the Oklahoma-Texas border country dust, “If we could figure a way to make money out of the whirling wind and blistering sun, we’d be rich.” And T. Boone Pickens’ eyes light up.
Copyright 2008 by William C. Cotter
Pickens is 80. His first entrepreneurial enterprise was as an eleven-year-old newspaper delivery boy, taking a route of 28 subscribers and building it to 156, an early introduction to "expanding quickly by acquisition," he explains. My buddy Luther did the same thing when we were kids. My first job was helping Luther deliver his Atlanta Journal paper route on our bicycles. He paid me 25-cents per day. In two years Luther doubled the size of his paper route and my pay. Every job I’ve ever had since was one working for somebody who had more money and was better at making it than I was. T. Boone Pickens has described his business philosophy as, “Anybody made money today … Anybody got an idea for how we can make any money … Am I the only one trying to make money around here?” I have to confess, I have more faith that the current energy crisis is more likely to be addressed by the itch to make a buck than to make a law. This faith is not worship of unbridled laissez-faire capitalism; it is just reality.
T. Boone Pickens promotes alternatives to oil. He wants to use windmills to generate the 22 percent of U.S. electricity currently provided by natural gas, then burn that natural gas in our cars and trucks instead of 38 percent of imported foreign oil. Pickens is spending many millions on television advertising, probably more money than all the Presidential candidates will have at their disposal for campaign advertising. Pickens personal wealth is estimated in the billions. Maybe T. Boone Pickens will give us a better shake than the sheiks of Araby. I can just hear some wisecracker standing in the Oklahoma-Texas border country dust, “If we could figure a way to make money out of the whirling wind and blistering sun, we’d be rich.” And T. Boone Pickens’ eyes light up.
Copyright 2008 by William C. Cotter
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