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Valk wrote:I know I should be filling up both of my cars right now, but I am having problems wrapping my head around the $3.59 a gallon. Coming home after Rita it was outrageous at $3.25.

I drove home from work at 6:10 a.m. the morning in 1986 for Hurricane Bonnie. It was a CAT 1. Had to drive around fallen trees, swinging traffic lights, but didn’t want to stay at work. Got home only to find I had no power.

I just topped off my tank here in Lake Charles and the price is already up to $3.65 for 87 octane...

Currently touring the northern regions. Gas just shot up to $4.05/gal today from $3.95/gal. It seems like there is some "unfortunate refinery issues" outside of Chicago. Throw a hurricane into the mix and the gas companies will make another quarter of record profits even as total volume drops. Sometimes you gotta look hard to see the benefits of the free market.

rwg3 wrote:Currently touring the northern regions. Gas just shot up to $4.05/gal today from $3.95/gal. It seems like there is some "unfortunate refinery issues" outside of Chicago. Throw a hurricane into the mix and the gas companies will make another quarter of record profits even as total volume drops. Sometimes you gotta look hard to see the benefits of the free market.

It is not a free market.

Gasoline and other road fuel is governed by specualtors in the futures market.

It is not necessarily the refiners making a huge killing. Most refinery margins are very small.

We are the slaves of speculators with respect to fuel the same as most other commodities that we must buy - corn, wheat, pork bellies etc....

Anygunanywhere

Just saw pictures of military hummers on Burbon st.
I'd like to know under what/who's authority. Did Jindal activate this??

RSJ wrote:Just saw pictures of military hummers on Burbon st.
I'd like to know under what/who's authority. Did Jindal activate this??

George Bush sent them...

Do you think someone had to make sure the doors of the Superdome were locked?

Obama issued a limited disaster declaration last night. This allows for direct federal assistance (FEMA, I'm guessing). Jindal has requested a full disaster declaration to release funding to pay for all the prep. The National Guard is pre-staged at the convention center (Morial). The Superdome is locked down. After the mess of Katrina, it is no longer considered a shelter of last resort for storms.

anygunanywhere wrote:

rwg3 wrote:Currently touring the northern regions. Gas just shot up to $4.05/gal today from $3.95/gal. It seems like there is some "unfortunate refinery issues" outside of Chicago. Throw a hurricane into the mix and the gas companies will make another quarter of record profits even as total volume drops. Sometimes you gotta look hard to see the benefits of the free market.

It is not a free market.

Gasoline and other road fuel is governed by specualtors in the futures market.

It is not necessarily the refiners making a huge killing. Most refinery margins are very small.

We are the slaves of speculators with respect to fuel the same as most other commodities that we must buy - corn, wheat, pork bellies etc....

Anygunanywhere

Great response! Indeed speculators in the fuel market do affect the price of gasoline at the pumps in a longer term scenario, but short term price spikes happen on already refined and in some cases already delivered fuel. the price rises encomapss dealers estimates of the cost of the next load that they will need to purchase and when a disruption in an already thin supply chain is anticipated to happen, they act quickly. The refinery system we have is the weakest point in our whole fuel supply system. The issue is not currently the amount of crude available, though that is always subject to international demand, but rather our inability to refine the available supply of crude. It is enormously difficult to build new refineries. The pressure to do so in an ecologically sound fashion plus the NIMBY factor has resulted in almost no new refineries being built.(I did talk to an engineer, who was overseeing the transport of a new modular refinery system being built in Texas and then being barged up the Mississippi to St Louis for assemby in S Illinois). When refineries go down for maintenance, or a result of mechanical failures or fires, the result on that regions retail prices is almost instantaneous. That was the case up north where a refinery north of Chicago went down and prices went up $.30/gal in three days. The latest was in response to the hurricane.
Speculators are not necessarily bad for the market and they do not bother me as much as the manipulation of supply which plays a much bigger role in jacking prices.

Last report I heard was gusts of a whole 43 mph in New Orleans.

I know it'll still get worse, but so far its been a lot of media hype for not a lot of damage. We'll see what the flooding over the next few days does.

74novaman wrote:Last report I heard was gusts of a whole 43 mph in New Orleans.

I know it'll still get worse, but so far its been a lot of media hype for not a lot of damage. We'll see what the flooding over the next few days does.

And there will be media reports on how well Chairman Obama handled his "Katrina"...makes me want to puke.

74novaman wrote:I'm in central TX so my hurricane preps consist of making sure the cars are gassed up in case coast evacs make it hard to come by.

This thread seems like a good place to drop this link: http://www.theplacewithnoname.com/blogs/klessons/

Lots of good stuff there. To everyone on the coast, keep your eye on the weather. Most places seem to be having a lot of trouble making a good landfall prediction at this point.

75Novaman--Thanks for posting that bud. I spent quite a bit of my afternoon digesting it. I also absorbed most of the other thread you posted.

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_10_17/6369 ... R_org.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

very interesting:

10. Some may raise an eyebrow at what I am about to say, but it is true. I'd probably go the route of a gasoline engine over a diesel engine in a situation like Katrina. If we were in a end of the world, sure diesel is great–– make your own bio-diesel. However, in a shorter-term situation, you are going to want to be able to obtain fuel. It was hard enough to get gasoline, but diesel was impossible. Why? Because essentially everywhere that had diesel was required to hold it back and not sell it in order to have it available for emergency vehicles, which ran primarily on diesel.

I was considering switching to diesel the next time I have to replace my truck partly because of fuel flexibilty (bio-diesel) but also because you can store it longer than our 'ethanol-poisoned' gasoline. It hadn't occurred to me that it could be harder to get in that sort of disaster.

snatchel wrote:

74novaman wrote:I'm in central TX so my hurricane preps consist of making sure the cars are gassed up in case coast evacs make it hard to come by.

This thread seems like a good place to drop this link: http://www.theplacewithnoname.com/blogs/klessons/

Lots of good stuff there. To everyone on the coast, keep your eye on the weather. Most places seem to be having a lot of trouble making a good landfall prediction at this point.

75Novaman--Thanks for posting that bud. I spent quite a bit of my afternoon digesting it. I also absorbed most of the other thread you posted.

No problem! Got the year wrong on my car/name though. The 75s were ugly. The 74s still had ugly 5mph collision bumpers, but they were at least the more "muscle car" body style.


There were a lot of great things he brought up in that blog that I hadn't considered the first time I read it. Mainly, the bit about having financial info, identification, insurance etc in a way that's easy to grab and take with you. I've always been more concerned with the food and water, communication, lights/batteries, and gun part of being prepared.

I now keep a box with almost all my important info in it (ss cards, mortgage info, insurance, tax returns, voter id cards, you name it) in an easy to grab box so if I needed to, I could "grab and go" with it.

Why is it that all of the weather idjits think they have to stand out in the weather while reporting?

Anygunanywhere

anygunanywhere wrote:Why is it that all of the weather idjits think they have to stand out in the weather while reporting?

Because they don't look enough "Eyewitness News" if they're in the studio.