Better Fill up today

[srkruzich]

Only doing the math no comment since I understand Steve's points.

Per Google Maps. Howard, KS to Atlanta, Ga is 903 miles. Using The
13.33  hours time that is an avg speed of just under 68mph. At 55mph the trip would take 16.42 hours..

David

You know what i am looking at right now to cut my fuel usage in half is building a HHO generator to hook up to my
truck.  I should be able to double my mileage per gallon of gas.  Right now my 1986 S10 pickup gets 24 -28 mpg, and if i can
double it that would be around 50mpg.  I have a 1968 ford pickup i would love to see if i could double the mileage on it from
18mpg to 36 mpg. I have a 1998 blazer in atlanta that gets 18 -20 mpg which would make me estatic if i could double the
mileage on it.

[Wilma]

A-A-R-G-H, I still don't understand it.  Just put me down as a girlie old woman with no head for mathematics.  You've worn me out just reading through it.  Good night.

[srkruzich]

My calculations are correct. And I gave my source for the distance. At 45mph avg it would then take 20 hours. So maybe that explains your numbers.

Thats right 45mph average is 22.22 hours. Thats all thats possible with a 55mph speed limit. 
You can't average any more than that without exceeding teh 55 mph cap.

[frawin]

Crude Oil is trading at $101.75, down $0.83, the $100.00 mark is a big technical barrier, if we break through that we could it come down more, depends on OPEC's cuts. Natural Gas is trading at $7.525, up $0.132.

[srkruzich]

Crude Oil is trading at $101.75, down $0.83, the $100.00 mark is a big technical barrier, if we break through that we could it come down more, depends on OPEC's cuts. Natural Gas is trading at $7.525, up $0.132.

Oh i could use some wonderful news like we dropped below 100 a barrel.   

[frawin]

Steve, I understand, unfortunately I don't think OPEC is going to allow Crude to stay below $100.00/barrel. The main reason OPEC is letting it go down where it is now, is because they hope with a little lower price the Democrat Congress will not approve the US drilling in major reserve areas. In any case if we start now it will take years to develop the reserves and build the infrastructure to transport it to markets. The clock is ticking and the Democrats in Congress are playing games with our Nations future.

[frawin]

Some more of the many things that affect the crude Oil Market:
Crude Oil Falls as Stronger Dollar Dims Commodities' Appeal

By Alexander Kwiatkowski

Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil fell for a third day as the dollar gained against the euro, reducing the appeal of commodities as a hedge.

Oil dropped after the dollar rose to a one-year high against the euro on speculation that growth in Europe will slow more than in the U.S. Investors looking to hedge against the dollar's decline helped lead crude oil and other commodities to records earlier this year. Hurricane Ike was set to miss platforms off the Louisiana coast as it passes through the U.S. Gulf.

``The sentiment in the market is very negative at the moment since demand for oil and commodities has declined sharply,'' said Thina Saltvedt, an analyst at Nordea Bank AB in Oslo. ``Quite a lot of investors are pulling out of commodities.''

Crude oil for October fell as much as $1.15, or 1.1 percent, to $101.43 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract traded at $101.75 at 1:02 p.m. London time.

Crude has fallen about 30 percent from a record $147.27 a barrel on July 11 as high prices and slowing global economic growth reduce demand for fuels.

The International Energy Agency lowered its 2008 oil demand forecasts yesterday, citing an expectation of weakening fuel consumption in the U.S., the world's biggest gasoline consumer.

The dollar climbed to $1.3893 per euro, the strongest since Sept. 18, 2007, before trading at $1.3936 as of 1:03 p.m. in London from $1.3998 late yesterday in New York.

Hurricane's Eye

Hurricane Ike's eye was 620 miles (995 kilometers) east of Brownsville, Texas, and moving west-northwest at 9 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said in an advisory at 4 a.m. Houston time today.

Ike strengthened to a Category 2 hurricane with sustained winds of 100 mph, up from 80 mph yesterday. The storm is forecast to sweep through the center of the Gulf, missing the offshore Louisiana oil and natural gas fields.

Some rigs, refineries and platforms shut down by Hurricane Gustav last week are staying closed as Ike tracks across the region. Gulf operators have evacuated personnel from 63 percent of the production platforms, the Minerals Management Service said on its Web site yesterday.

The agency estimates that as much as 96 percent of Gulf of Mexico oil production, and 73.1 percent of natural gas output, is shut. That is about 1.25 million barrels a day of oil and 5.4 billion cubic feet a day of gas.

`Skirting Away'

``Ike appears to be skirting away from the oil and gas production fields and should make land around the Corpus Christi area,'' said Robert Laughlin, senior broker at MF Global Ltd. in London. ``The oil market may have escaped again.''

Brent crude oil for October settlement fell as much as $1.12, or 1.1 percent, to $97.85 a barrel on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange. It was at $98.25 at 1:03 p.m. London time.

Oil's decline led the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to say this week it will try to limit production.

OPEC members, who supply about 40 percent of the world's oil, agreed at a meeting in Vienna to a total production limit for 11 members of 28.8 million barrels a day, unchanged from previous targets. OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla El-Badri said this means it will trim ``oversupply'' by about 500,000 barrels a day.

The decision is a signal that OPEC is ``entering price defense mode,'' Barclays Capital analysts led by Paul Horsnell said in a research note.

``Saudi Arabia would be perfectly happy with prices in the $90 to $100 range,'' the Barclays analysts said. ``It appears that other OPEC members wished to give a stronger signal.''

Barclays slashed its fourth-quarter oil price forecast by 21 percent on weakening demand. The bank expects West Texas Intermediate to average $97.50 a barrel in the fourth quarter, $26.40 less than a forecast of $123.90 in its previous weekly report. The bank's Brent crude forecast was reduced to $95.90, from $122.20, for the fourth quarter.

Natural gas for October delivery rose 0.8 percent to $7.454 per million British thermal units on Nymex, while gasoline futures rose 1.5 percent to $2.7005 a gallon.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexander Kwiatkowski in London at akwiatkowsk2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 11, 2008 08:32 EDT

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[frawin]

Norway has been a longtime supplier to Western Europe and the US. Phillips Petroleum in a joint venture with Norway developed the Ekofisk Field in the North Sea.

Norway's energy industry to hike capital spending

Bloomberg News

Sept. 11, 2008, 5:28AM

Norway's oil and gas industry will raise investments to $22.9 billion, or 132.8 billion kroner , in 2009 as companies increase exploration, the statistics office said.

The spending forecast is 15.9 billion kroner higher than a June projection, Statistics Norway said today on its Web site. Investment in 2008 is estimated at 128.2 billion kroner, 4.4 billion kroner lower than in June, the agency said.

Companies such as StatoilHydro ASA and Det Norske Oljeselskap ASA are spending more on exploration and production as oil prices have climbed to a record. That's raised demand and costs for drilling rigs and engineers.

Norway lags behind Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran in oil exports and is the world's third-largest gas exporter. The statistics bureau surveys about 220 companies on their investment plans each quarter

[frawin]

The Saudi's have always been pro US and Pro Western, probably because we have supplied them with so much weaponry, planes ets, and trained their pilots as well. Plus the Saudi's have a lot of investment in Western Europe and the US and they know what to high of energy prices will do to their investment portfolio.

Saudis Vow to Ignore OPEC Decision to Cut Production

By JAD MOUAWAD

VIENNA — Hours after suffering a rare setback in a negotiating session at OPEC's headquarters, Saudi Arabian officials assured world markets on Wednesday that they would ignore the wishes of other cartel members and continue to pump plenty of oil.

The late-night bargaining session ended early Wednesday morning with a surprise declaration that OPEC would cut production to shore up sagging prices. Saudi negotiators publicly endorsed that position, but then spent much of Wednesday privately spreading the word that they did not feel bound by it.

The back-and-forth illustrated new pressures and power politics at play in the group that controls 40 percent of the world's oil production. The meeting could be a harbinger of things to come for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries as the cartel faces its most difficult challenge in years: how to respond to falling oil prices in a weakening global economic climate.

The confusion surrounding this week's meeting slowed the decline in prices as oil markets struggled to understand the cartel's byzantine politics. Oil closed Wednesday at $102.58 a barrel in New York trading, a decline of 68 cents.

After a 30 percent drop in prices since July, and with oil seemingly headed below the psychological milestone of $100 a barrel, OPEC producers are getting anxious. The cartel's president, Chakib Khelil, said the group was particularly concerned that slowing demand for oil was creating a glut in the market that might provoke a collapse in prices.

Still, going into the meeting, Saudi Arabia was expected to prevail in its stated goal of keeping enough oil on the market to drive prices below $100 a barrel. The Saudi view is that lowering prices moderately now will shore up the world economy and prevent a recession that would cause oil prices to collapse. The Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, described the markets as being "well balanced" when he arrived in Vienna.

But after a six-hour private meeting, OPEC ministers decided to pare their production by complying strictly with targets that had been set up last year but were largely ignored. According to Mr. Khelil, who is also AlgeriaR17;s oil minister, OPECR17;s actual production would have to be lowered by about 500,000 barrels a day within the next 40 days.

R20;We are oversupplying the market, and we are cutting that oversupply,R21; said Abdalla Salem el-Badri, the groupR17;s secretary general. R20;We donR17;t want to see these prices decline dramatically."

It remained unclear Wednesday exactly how the Saudis lost the argument behind closed doors. And despite the OPEC communiqué, it is far from clear that OPEC members will actually reduce their output. After a short night, Saudi officials were quick to reassure markets.

R20;Saudi Arabia will meet the marketR17;s demand,R21; a senior OPEC delegate said. "We will see what the market requires and we will not leave a customer without oil. The policy has not changed."

The Saudi message is to wait and see where demand is headed before eventually paring supplies. The Saudis made their strategy clear Wednesday in informal talks and briefings with some oil industry analysts and reporters, but as is their custom, they would not speak for attribution because they did not want to appear to undermine a collective OPEC decision.

In June, King Abdullah pledged that his country would pump at full tilt to bring prices down. In August, the kingdom increased its production to 9.7 million barrels a day, the highest in three decades. Saudi Arabia is now producing around 9.5 million barrels a day, 600,000 barrels a day more than its quota.

R20;This seems to set Saudi Arabia up as the unilateral decision-maker on output for the fall," said Greg Priddy, an energy analyst at Eurasia Group, in a research note. "Clearly, other OPEC members are not going to trim their own production without Saudi Arabia returning to its quota. Saudi Arabia also seems to be eager to avoid headlines about it cutting production in advance of the U.S. elections."

Adding to the confusion, OPEC said that two new members, Angola and Ecuador, were given new production quotas while Indonesia, a member since 1962 that has become a net importer of oil in recent years, was suspending its membership in the organization by the end of the year. OPEC officials had trouble explaining precisely how much production would need to be cut. Mr. Badri also declined to provide new targets for each member state.

OPECR17;s discordant message is a reflection of the competing policies at play within the group, which includes countries like Kuwait, Nigeria, and its newest and smallest member, Ecuador. Some countries are carefully managing their oil windfall, while others are spending freely with the expectation that prices will remain high.

Moderate and pro-Western states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are aware that high energy costs are hurting demand and might push consumers to seek alternatives to oil. These countries want to see prices fall below $100 a barrel to ease political enmity against the cartel.

Another group, composed of OPEC's traditional price hawks, increasingly needs high prices to finance a wide range of social and military policies. Analysts say they believe that Iran and Venezuela, for example, cannot afford prices below $100 a barrel as they seek to project power in their respective regions.

As OPEC worked to push up prices from lows reached in the late 1990s, members of the cartel all shared the same interests and were willing to leave their differences aside. But now that demand is weakening and prices are falling, some analysts say they believe that tensions within the group are resurfacing. In past years, OPEC has been notoriously bad at maintaining discipline in its ranks when prices fall.

The perception that OPEC was unwilling to do its part to bring down prices brought sharp criticism Wednesday from Western officials. "We'd like to see more oil on the market, not less," the White House press secretary, Dana M. Perino, said at a briefing.

The decision represents a rare case of the cartel going against the position of its biggest member. As he walked from his hotel to the OPEC headquarters on Tuesday evening, Mr. Naimi, the Saudi minister, seemed particularly proud of his country's efforts to pump as much oil as needed to push down prices.

R20;It was hard work,R21; Mr. Naimi said, strolling along the cityR17;s cobbled streets. R20;The market is in a very healthy position.R21;

Six hours later, Mr. Naimi left the meeting without a word of public comment.

[Diane Amberg]

 It looks like it wouldn't take much for the whole thing to implode.  Wind and all will be great, but what do we do in the meantime...Natural gas? With a conversion I could fill my car right here at home and have plenty for runaround.