Our petrol stations are closed

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/7370158.stm

Strikes are affecting the nation. A lot of places are closed due to no petrol because of panic buying

Its not until you cannot get something that you realise how precious it is

G

 

Oh yea whats this i been hearing about a day in May that noone in the US is going to buy gas?

I can't stand it i read that the gas companies reports big profit yet gas is still going up. Now thats just not right.

 

It's a complete rip off. one example is home heating oil.

in reacent years the cost of a fill up of heating oil has went up from £200 to as of this morning £557.

And shell oil recently announced a UK profit for the year of $27.56 billion.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7219148.stm

 

Obviously you must live within the intelligentia. I'm in the southwest and they were queueing up on the road this week to get to the forecourt even though this area will not be affected...Bloody idiots!

 

Halo, from what I remember from my Fuel Farm Supervisor days, to convert litres to UK gallons, divide by 4.454609. Makes 100 litres = around 23 UK (Imperial) gallons. 105.9 per litre = approx $USD 4.72 per Imperial gallon (not $8.73). As the USA gallon is less than the UK (Imperial gallon), around 4 liters to a USA gallon (I think), it makes the USA equivalent to around USD$4.24.

Here in OZ it is about to hit AUD$1.50 per litre (or AUD$6.68 per Imperial gallon). :cry Double taxed as well, the b*stards. Bazza

===

 

If only someone could invent something else to power our vehicles and heating, without the goverments taxing us all.
Shell,BP etc are all making billions of £$ profit; why can't they 'pump' some of it back into the economy.

ps i got some petrol (gas) today but queued for 90 minutes

G

nb @ Laura. In the UK, we call gas 'petrol'

 

right now here its $3.64 a gallon and it stinks of BS.

 

$3.79 in NW Indiana, Just filled up the car from empty for $75. I fill up once a week. :guns

 

I feel sorry for my mother really on this lol My little 1986 P'UP 2.3L has a 12gallon gas tank and my mothers 01 Dodge Durango 5.9L has a 22gallon tank and we both get around 300miles to the tank so she gets about 13MPG unless on the highway while i get 28.8 with a clean carb while if my carb was clogged i would get around 33-40MPG. So if i spent as much on gas as she does i would get twice as far. hell Sunday i went almost 200miles on about $20 worth of gas at $3.54 a US gallon. So the way gas is going i don't see what alot of people are gonna do that are stuck with a big gas hog either because of being on a limited budget or because they would get low balled by a dealership because noone is looking for big gas hogs right now. My mother got stuck with that 5.9L small block V8 because she bought it because it was such a steel of a price and was gonna resell it but then gas did what it did so now shes stuck with it. I keep telling her to let me buy it at the price she paid and let me turn it into a weekend worrier and she start driving her old 91 4.0L Explorer again but she wants the Kelly Blue Book value for it when i know she won't get it because of the price of gas.

 

And as usual, Detroit is caught with their pants down. They want to make their money on the big vehicles (people will pay more, lots more) and forgot to support their mid and low end lines. Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it.

I wonder how much an electric vehicle would cost to operate, and how long it takes to charge? The only problem I see with them long term is air conditioning in this part of the country is a must, not a luxury.

 

What do you guys n gals think of this ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9iWaCMbw60
I wonder how much they could tax this fuel ?

 

I've done a bit of research on this, don't believe everything you see on the internet or TV. It has come up on MG before, under the name of Aqualine I believe. A variation of Brown's gas scheme. If you can't diagram a molecule it doesn't exist, which is what convinced me.

I came across this while looking at your video, sounds convincing doesn't it? Amazing how convincing these guys can be. Perpetual motion machines and new energy sources are their staple.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDeXTXYFKAY&NR=1

 

Can you explain further?

Why can't it be diagrammed?

 

They used to add sales taxes to the sale after adding on state and federal fuel taxes in Indiana but someone finally sued and they had to stop it.

I recently saw a video of Jack nicholson touting a hydrogen powered Chevy back in 1978.
Just change the carbureter and tank and off you go.
And they describe it as years before it will be ready for use. :confused
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2245729493419202077

I think the problem is there are 1 trillion barrels of oil left and they want to sell us all of them.

 

I got some petrol today :hyper !
Cost £1.35 a litre and they have a limit of 10 litres per car
I had to go out at 3am to get some, just after logging off from here

G

 

Thanks Halo, my maths were off too. It was over 30 years ago, and the memory ain't so good. Bazza

PS: something fishy in the UK. Your price (as per Grumbles), £1.35 per litre, in Australia just recently at AUD $1.35 per litre. Makes the UK price over twice as dear as the OZ price, and we are complaing like hell.

Allowing for conversion rate at around GBP£0.47 to AUD$1, makes it an equivalent of AUD$2.87 per litre, so we are well off, versus UK motorists.

There'd be riots here if our price was AUD$2.87 per litre, I reckon. Bazza

 

That was my question. They are claiming a new molecule, HHO, and yet no one can show how it goes together. This is a lot more significant that it might appear, water is a polar molecule, with a 120 degree alignment on the hydrogen atoms to oxygen atom. This creates a lot of the properties we associate with water. The "inventor" of Aqualine keeps expounding how this is not water in a fundamental sense, but can't do basic chemistry modeling (nor can he find anyone else that can). This spells scam in big letters to me.

The one thing all these guys and their scams have in common is big claims, but when you try to pin them down on details they are too busy, or whatever, it all fuzzes out. This isn't organic chemistry, 3 friggin atoms and they can't make a ball model out of it. You're taking chemistry, can you think of any molecule that would be stable with H2 and an oxygen hanging off the side on one hydrogen atom?

Brown's Gas was something similar, and a lot more dangerous. Like Aqualine, he claimed a special molecule, turned out to be a mix of 2 parts hydrogen to 1 part oxygen with a specialized delivery system. Even worked, except for an unfortunate tendency to explode when a certain pressure range was reached, on the low side believe it or not. It even has some industrial uses today, but is manufactured on site to order with electrolysis.

 

Pretty sure this "HHO" is nothing more than a hydrogen atom being split from a water molecule. The problem is, besides it being very dangerous, the amount of electrcity needed is considerable.

When it combusts in the air, its by-product is what is put in, water.

This is nothing new, and the real problem posed is the fact that the electrcity put in makes it less than ideal.

No, of course not. Thats why I think its a matter of molecule splitting, even if the inventor doesn't "understand" it and explains otherwise. I mean, there are cases where you can theoretically get things to bond that wouldn't under normal circumstances, but the energy needed is considerable. That and the lack of stability...

 

I know hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a pretty potent oxidizer and can explode by itself, I don't think the HO exists by itself, it always has to be part of another molecule. Funny how physics and chemistry hangs together. If you can't dazzle em with brilliance, baffle em with :crap. Doesn't always work when people insist on reading the small print.

 

I dunno, I'm still pretty novice on this stuff, so...

I was under the impression that you could split the molecule, but yeah...I'd think it would split differently.

One thing I do agree on, what they say is happening, isn't.

 

The reason that the prices are so high is that all regular unleaded is empty, so they only sell the super special unleaded at £1.35 litre. Not so daft are they!

The scottish government has limited powers as London still pull the strings

G

 

Maybe better as a separate thread, but one scary implication of increasing fuel prices is the impact it has on our FOOD supply!

In the short term, it impacts the cost of delivery, driving food costs up.

In the long term, if Bush gets his way, and Biofuels become the way of the future, that's going to have HUGE impacts on the availability of food materials for human consumption. Apparently, he thinks its a good idea to feed our cars instead of our faces?!?!? (Wish I could remember his quote. Something about America being farmers, and they should grow their own energy)

From what I've read, the UN is in a huge panic about it.

Some links:
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=213343
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/419817
http://www.google.ca/search?q=food+...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

 

yes kes, but do you not live in cloud cuckoo land! LOL

 

Thats where all the politicians in the world should go

 

Yup totally mada,biofuels are a gimmick I've seen many scientific journals state they arn't the carbon neutral fuel they claim,also we only have the the size of food crops as current due to petrochemical fertilizers and mined phosphorous which will run out in the next few decades.

Yup we're all gonna starve to death,I could lose a stone anyway...

 

LOL

Don't get me started on Government-approved environmental initiatives.

Not saying it's a BAD thing, but I don't understand how conserving electricity directly equates to reducing emissions. Aren't the powerplants just going to sell the excess capacity elsewhere? Especially considering that electric cars don't seem to have the same mainstream appeal as hydrogen and biofuels?

I say, the governments should try to equip the individual for green self-sustenance (without infringing on freedoms, of course). That seems to me to be the most scalable solution to food and energy problems. Then, a Government could focus on providing the necessities that CAN'T be distributed, such as health care, or education (even that could be distributed with the proper telecommunication tech).

But then, how would they TAX you? Darn. So much for that idea. rolleyes

</idealistic rant>

 

This is why the free market is a better alternative the government intervention. If the price of gas rises beyond the level of affordability, then the market will produce alternatives. Begging the government to subsidize yet another industry will just have them controlling the market like they do now, providing monopolies to their cronies and tax revenue to themselves.

The government created this mess! Thinking they can fix it will only create a bigger mess.

 

Actually, I haven't done any research on the film, but if you're to believe "Who Killed The Electric Car?", then it's already been tried by California, who promptly got slapped down.

 

Great documentary,the cars we're made as a little experiment for the car companies to prove to themselves and the public that they we're impractical and wouldn't prove popular, yet they proved so popular it scared the car companies and they then took back the cars which were only under lease and destroyed them to the horror of the owners who begged and pleaded for them not to be destroyed even offering huge sums of money for them not to be but to no avail.

The obvious problem for the car companies is the huge car spares industry as these cars need little maintenance,they are the future but not our future until we have a way to produce limitless electricity as from Fusion reactors,they had a range of a little over a hundred miles back with the old batteries,newer batteries and flywheel technology could easily triple that range to three hundred miles between charges making them even more practical.

 

I tend to agree with indyattic. Keep the dang government out of it! If the government gets involved, it totally screws up the market. If more efficient cars are government mandated, cars will get much more expensive.

Being a lazy American, I don't know much about the European fuel situation, but we have several problems from my view point. Our gas refineries are old, we have not built one in years, the ones we have are inefficent. The tree hugging evironmental folks have 'boutique' fuels for different parts of the country. Gas that is used in.. say New Orleans cannot be sent to New York. New York needs a different mix to help with smog and such.

Biofuels are less efficient than regular gas... We have untapped oil reserves in the US, we should get the oil. A free market will resolve the issue much better than the government.

Hope they get your fuel flowing soon Grumbles!

E

 

Thanks Fred, got some more today at £1.15 litre

The supermarket gas/petrol stations seem to be getting back to normal supplies, it is the independent stations who are charging the highest.

http://bestsmileys.com/cars/18.gif

 

Sure there is! Expensive gasoline. If gas prices are allowed to rise they'll be climbing all over themselves to either increase fuel economy or develop the alternatives which will become naturally more cost competitive as their consumption increases.

Having the government "force" business to do anything is what creates the boondoggles like this.

If it weren't for all the nonsensical government regulations, big businesses wouldn't be so big. Government mandates take away market choices, which drives prices up.

I don't know about Europe, but here I think they made a big mistake in shoving digital transmissions down our throats. I find it highly probable that a better, and more internet compatible, technology would have emerged if the government had not decided what we needed.

But watching how fast we're moving away from TV to internet programming makes me suspect they just forced a huge amount of tax money into the hands of their cronies, frittered away on a technology that will be obsolete in 25 years.

 

Some of those countries can pull up to the rig and fill up.

 

Stash away about 5 gallons for Aug. just in case it happens again. Or are you birthing at home? I remember now you mentioning a midwife.

 

That is very considerate of you Darlene to think of the birth. We plan to have a home birth, but you just never know. I shall buy a few gallons and store them away just in case
Hey I could even sell some to the midwife LOL

G

 

The way it's going might be better than gold.

Personally I like government funding R&D, it is rarely a waste. Maybe not used immediately, but it lays the groundwork, and if nothing else allows companies to look at even odder proposals. You never know where the next breakthrough is going to be.