What gets me with the gas prices is that the oil companies are still able to post huge quarterly earnings....why they cant help stabilize pricing and make a little less of a profit (i mean when ur talking in hundreds of millions and billions) to me would go a lot further with people.....

Research the amount of oil off the coast of Florida and California that the US has not even tapped into yet. Because those states do not want to see oil rigs off their coast.

Also, research the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The SPR is an underground salt dome storage area in Louisiana that�s filled with about 726million barrels of crude. The salt dome reserve was established after the import embargo of 73-74. We can tap into the reserve in the event of a national disaster or issues with the importation of oil.

Just because the US can't get oil imported don't think we can't get oil for our refineries.

Gasoline prices need to be closely regulated by a governing body to keep our fragile economy from going out of control. Think about these numbers...

Think of this example� Distribution company delivers products all over the US. That company uses thousands of gallons of fuel in the trucks. When gasoline or diesel goes up just 1 cent, that increase equals to huge dollars in costs of distributing that product. What do you think happens to the price of their products? They go up to make up for the increase in cost of getting the products to the consumer. That will apply to everything we buy.

Just thinking price of gasoline will affect your cost of fueling your boat is being naive. Everything will go up! Baits, line, rods, reels, etc.

You can't complain without knowledge of the issues at hand. I still believe the US is crying wolf over all the issues of the world and they are using this as a way to increase the price of crude oil. Profit margins are the way of life in the US.

Does anybody know how much tax we pay for a gallon of fuel?

Wall Street, they have to make Wall Street happy.

18.4 cents per gallon to the Feds, Texas gets 20 cents per gallon

Of course it means you make choices and Chili's was just an example. We all make choices and have expenses from baseball camp or cheer for the kids to our own choices and hobbies to basic living expenses. The point is that gas is simply one part of the pie and people like to complain about it when in reality even with the increase a couple of simple decisions can replace those added dollars.

All of us waste money on something and have to make some choices as we cut it up. Same thing happened in 08 and we all made it just fine.

So Correct 151 - We are doing nothing to tap our own reserves and to let these speculators and OPEC countries know the US has a supply as well. The to expensive to drill argument doesn't fly with me, I will admit I am not an expert but from what I have read and researched we have enough oil off the coast of Cali, Florida, and in ANWR Alsaska, that would supply our economy for at least 75-100 years. Also, I challenge you to look up what Saudi Arabia is doing to supply its country with electricity - Do you think they are building oil burning power plants - anwser would be nope Nuclear all the way over there - and they have enough oil to supply electrical plants for an eternity. Ask yourself why would the largest oil exporter in the world be building new more expensive Nuclear Power Plants instead of Cheaper oil burning plants - easy quesiton to anwser if you just think about it.

Flip that around in the US - no way will the tree huggers allow us to build Nuclear plant - can't understand that for the life of me. Can anyone tell me the last time we had a nuclear plant explosion in the US. We could end our dependance on foriegn oil, but we are unrealistic about it and expect to have some great all natural free resource that is going to save the world - spare me.

Gas is going to kill the fishing industry and all other industries - I am in the distribution business and guess what the 2nd highest cost in any distribution business is besides labor - Fuel. In some companies fuel is more expensive than labor. Jobs will be lost and cost will rise, Most distribution companies run on tight margins anyway and when fuel starts soaring the fist step to keep margins right is price increases then layoff or job cuts.

Fisherman need to stand up and speak our voice - all of us love fishing and fishing tourneys, but fuel costs will kill these trails if big brother does not get out of the way and let us develop cheap, well know economical solutions. People get involved and research whats going on - the fishing community could effect change in this if everyone gets involved - there is enough of us. Heck over a 1,000 people in the bass fishing section of just this forum - think there is a multiplier to that.

just my .02 I will shut up now.

Were you offering to give them money in the 80's when the price of oil crashed and people in the oil industry went bust? or just a couple years ago when all those people in the oil industry lost their jobs? its a risky business and with that high risk can come high reward. don't hate them for making a profit.

The oil companies have nothing to do with the price of oil. They don't set the price for their product, the speculators and OPEC do. The oil we pump out of the ground today @ $100/bbl is the same oil we pumped @ $25/bbl in the late eighties.

We made it just fine? We went from spending $400 per month on fuel to around $1,000. I don't know about you but $600 per month is a lot of money to me. A little over two years ago gas was selling at around $1.40 per gallon. My family's fuel cost dropped to around $300 per month. Now at $3.29 it's back up to around $700. That is money that is gone forever that could have been used for other purposes...paying off debt, home improvements, new vehicles...you know, the kind of stuff that might improve our lifestyle and inject money into the economy instead of evaporating out of a tailpipe and into some speculator's pocket.

If it goes to $4.50, as many are predicting, we will spend close to $1,000 per month for fuel if we maintain our current usage level. Again, that's a $700 per month decrease in discretionary income. But maybe you're in a different tax bracket than most of us and $600 to $700 per month TAKE HOME is a drop in the bucket.

You're right, we all make choices. And the choice that our government has made is that they believe American working families should have to give up significant parts of their lifestyles in order for the politicians to further their anti-oil and environmentalist agendas. It's why almost all of them are quiet as church mice about something that is significantly affecting our economy and their constituents' personal finances.

I'm just glad that instead of buying the boat I wanted, I settled for a smaller, cheaper boat. If I had bought the one I wanted I would still have 3 1/2 more years of $300.00 payments. Instead, I have 4 more months of $150.00 payments. I guess if gas does go up that high, I can figure in the less payments into my budget.

+1 I dont think we made it just fine. The economy is still suffering from what began in '08

The people that drive work vehicles or live close to work don't feel it as much. My wifes Corolla takes a tank a week for work and back home and was costing about $48.00 a week at 2.50 a gallon it will cost $76.00 at $4.00 thats $112 more a month just for the wife and mine is $228.00 more a month and thats just to work and back,the ride to the lake and boat fuel will be another $228.00 a month and the boat fuel will be another $135.00 a month if we fish the same as we usually do.
Thats $591.00 MORE in just gas every month and not including the additional cost of the price of food because of fuel prices, and you also have to think about the price of baits and everything else you have to pay for to fish like staybil and ring free, they will also go up in price.

That's what they do in China.



Three comments-

#1- The fishing industry does very well in a down economy when people stay closer to home instead of taking Disney World vacations. The boating industry- not so much when fuel goes through the roof, and I do feel for those folks that will probably be suffering through this next downturn.

#2- We all love fishing, but the vast majority of the fishermen I know don't feel so strongly about tourneys. It wouldn't hurt my feelings at all if they limited tournament boats to 25 HP motors and 20 gallons of fuel for the day. Yes, they'd have a harder time selling $75K rigs but maybe that's not a bad thing.

#3- You can't have "big brother" carefully controlling the price of gasoline (as you commended skeeter151 for posting) while "staying out of the way" (as you suggest).

We just got a load of ethanol free gas...skyrocketed. $3.589 a gallon on the water.