This is an interesting read on the theory of peak oil.

Whether you agree with it or not, it provides some interesting food for thought about how we as a civilisation can survive after we have finished extracting all the wonderful oil from our earth, and the viability of alternative fuel sources.

I was paying $1.25 for Optimax the other day, less the 4cents a litre off for the Coles vouchers ect.. Good thing is my Honda Accord Euro is so fuel efficient I only have to fill it up once a month. And it loves the Optimax, acccelleration is so smooth and responsive I never use anything less.

^ how many litres per 100k's for your euro?

I heard a an Echo gets around 6 litres per 100k's on the the highway.

Unlike you and your circle of friends, most guys don't have a husband chakas.

While neither I nor my friends have husbands, it is sad to find out that you carry your balls around in a jar tucked away deep inside your handbag. Do they remind you of better times?

Darius: LPG is Liquid Petrolium Gas, same thing as natural gas. However when you get it at the servo I'm pretty sure it's in liquid form where as gas supplied to homes is piped in gas state. That would explain why you need to leave your car plugged into the home supply over night so it can presurise and liquify gas.

6 litres per 100k's on the the highway.

That's right.
Around town with some serious flogging(from me), Nana's Echo will do 6.8L/100km. Air-con off, overdrive off. And as maxe says, they would have to be the most powerful car in their class. So damn zippy.

^^ Keep telling yourself that and you'll believe it eventually.

Also, fuel prices will come down in the long run. In the short term, nobody can do too much about it but if they continue to go up, people can sell their cars and catch buses / car pool /switch to alternate fuels etc, thus lowering demand and thus the price comes down. Something like that if I remember correctly from Economics 101.

if the normal pulp price goes over 1.40 im turning my car into a dedicated circut racer.

Crunch is right, sooner or later the price comes crashing back.

Dutch tulips in the 1600s.......

Nasdaq crash in the 90s.......

I highly doubt it will come back down. Remember a year ago when it hit 90-95c and then we thought "it will come back down". And 3ish years ago it hit 80c and we thought "s***, oh it should come back down".

What makes this price hike any different?

last edited by Astroboy at 17:49:22 25/Aug/05

would be pretty stupid if it came down in price, i mean whoever is making all the money off it is not likely to say : oh maybe i should sell it for less now cause i feel like not making as much profit as I am now

if they continue to go up, people can sell their cars and catch buses / car pool /switch to alternate fuels etc, thus lowering demand and thus the price comes down

What about all the other non-vehical things that need oil to run, and oil to create, demand would still be up for those sorts of things, that and oil is limited so even as fuel demand lower a little bit supply will lower too, that has got to make the calculations a little harder. :/

I remember back in the day when people thought, 70c/L for fuel! If it goes above $1/L I'm selling my car... Bet they are still driving today.

I rekon people wont really do anything about it as long as the prices rise slowly so people can easily adjust. So in order to keep people driving and the economy happy the government just needs to make sure it dosnt rise too fast. That's my guess anyway.

would be pretty stupid if it came down in price, i mean whoever is making all the money off it is not likely to say : oh maybe i should sell it for less now cause i feel like not making as much profit as I am now

what if they think: hey, the cost of this fuel is less, so if i reduce my price, i'll be able to sell more fuel and make more profit in the end

There are lots of other petrochemical uses for crude oil other than powering cars so it's not just a matter of getting rid or cars to reduce our dependency on oil.

what if they think: hey, the cost of this fuel is less, so if i reduce my price, i'll be able to sell more fuel and make more profit in the end

But they won't sell more fuel. Supply is finite and so selling cheap will only mean a short term gain as you literally burn through your supply. There is much more money to be made by selling at a higher price over a longer period of time.

there are always plenty more tulips to grow, but oil is a limited resource that cannot be replenished once it is exhausted.

what is next nobody knows. i think that in 20 years time we will be looking back at gimmicks like woolworths dockets and laugh.

particularly with china coming online remaining fuel stocks will be spent far more quickly (we are presently consuming 1 million barrels a day - breathtaking amounts really), and we will see oil powered cars only in museums fairly soon i guess.

lol @ the QGL economics forum.

what you are describing Astroboy is commonly referred to as 'the ratchet effect' ie downward price inflexibility. ie what goes up doesnt necessarily have to come down but it sometimes does! *waves finger at Astroboy*

Darius and Persay - basic supply/demand theory. As prices increase suppliers flood the market with product to maximise profits, which causes prices to crash back down quite spectacularly as a result of reduced demand (because of the high prices) coupled with oversupply. *waves finger at Darius*

Oil price could crash easily back to $35, no problem. Could easily go to $100+ as well. Your guess is as good as mine what will transpire.

Personally I don't think this commodities boom is over. People have to park their money somewhere and atm it looks to be in hard assets.

If you reckon crude prices are wacky, myself, like many others have a long-term projection for gold @ $700usd an ounce.

Dosnt matter anyway, nature will kill us before we run out of oil anyway :D

so what do you say about the OPEC cartel limiting supply to sustain this higher standard price? i think that has been completely forgotten.

OPEC owns world oil. Just thier group of countries would have 50% or more of total supply.

did anyone catch that ACA/Today Tonight thing showing you where you could get 50c/L off. Some chicks testomonial was "yeah its real, NO BULL!" I missed it can someone fill me in?

o what do you say about the OPEC cartel limiting supply to sustain this higher standard price?

Invade a country in or near an OPEC oil supply and steal it from under 'em Yyyyyaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr.

Like Iraq?

Damm that was fortunate. Massive oil reserves, and an evil dictator. What a great cover excuse. :)

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

dont read that if you dont like lying awake at night knowing that oil is tipped to be on its way to $200 US a barrel within the next couple of years.

= approx $4 a litre i guess. Reconsider if wanting to buy a new car. Theya re saying that even if everyone switched to hybrid cars right now, the load on the industry making these cars, and the oil used to make the cars, would still tip us all over the edge.

A_W lets also not foget who put that evil dictator there in the first place ;) also the knowledge that certain families have profited from previous wars. hahah

*shakes fist at the world*

You tell em Booyah.

infi I would say Opec, schmopec. OPEC would be crazy to reduce supply. They have bad memories of the late ninties when crude was 15 bux a barrel. They dont want that. They dont actually want these prices either. If the global economy slumps as a result of crude prices, they will suffer. I reckon OPECs target is $35.

Prices dont (and rarely do) reflect underlying fundamentals. From recollection Saudia Arabia (pretty much the king of OPEC) recently has stepped up production. After the press conference oil price rallied big time. The market is more than adequately supplied. Inventories are at reasonable levels. It is speculation driving up the price.

Basically higher oil prices are the theme at the moment. Once the market finds something else to obsess over everything will change.

For example in the last 6 or 7 yrs there has been maybe 5 IPOs' for energy related stocks (miners, drilling etc) in Australia. In the last 12-18 months there has probably been 30-60. Good for quick money, but not in the long run.

The cash registers are ringing and its only a matter of time before somebody gets their fingers slammed in the drawer. Wasnt that long ago there was a tech company born every second day. We all know what happened next.

P.S. dont quote me on the IPO numbers, I am just going off memory. But you get the picture. Can somebody look it up?


http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/8092/opecwtf6xu.gif

why are you waving a finger at me 0_0 what does it mean, anyway I was just breaking it down so it sounds simple for others, and as for oil coming down to $35 I really doubt that ever happening, the only time we saw a massive drop like that was after the 70's fuel crisis and that was 20+ years ago and the available supplies havent changed since then

catch the bus :) that will fix all your petrol price worries.

I was paying $1.25 for Optimax the other day, less the 4cents a litre off for the Coles vouchers ect.. Good thing is my Honda Accord Euro is so fuel efficient I only have to fill it up once a month. And it loves the Optimax, acccelleration is so smooth and responsive I never use anything less.

i dont like optimax at all and will never use it

car runs better and returns better fuel economy on bp ultimate
i even prefer vortex (ron 95) over optimax

also finding replacements for energy is all nice an dandy but what about all the petrochemical products like condoms etc :| what will happen !!!!!

Darius if you look at that chart you will see the spike in 90-91 when Iraq invaded Kuwait etc.

The price more than doubled in 12 months then slid lower just as quick. at $65 a barrel if the same thing happened price would be within cooee of $30 a barrel.

yeah well these spikes that happen due to war arent that important really, theyre quite obvious why the happen

ahahahahahaah ok thanks for that insight.

Well if that spike dropped as you say, are you saying this other spike that is almost double will drop just as much? Or that it will drop but probably back to 40?
Will it keep rising as long as 'the war' continues? Or will it drop reguardless of what games the US play?

Tollaz0r I could go on for hours about what I think the market could possibly do, but I believe it could drop easily just as much. Without sounding cliche I think that since 9/11 anything goes.

Realistically there are about a dozen factors that will affect prices (in no particular order) apart from the war in Iraq.

Market expectations
US economic performance.
Iran, Nth Korea, Taiwan/China + general terrorist bulls***.
US interest rates.
EU instability.
Japanese economic recovery.
Asian demand for US debt.
China revaluation of the Renminbi(yuan)
Exchange rate fluctuations.
Hurricanes in the gulf.
Climate

the list is endless.

It is impossible to speculate on the future price. For now I say its UP UP UP.

Yeah Scoggex is right on the money... pun unintended...

The EU is a fascinating thing... It has the ability to completely close itself off, and already does in some ways. Such things led to the great depression. However, the EU needs petrolium to shift resources, so it will be interesting to see what happens with the EU.

The factor Scoggex didn't list is the fact that the public are sheep, but others already touched on that. Even if petrol went up to $3 a litre, many of us would just have to pay it and bitch about it on our forum(s) of choice. They really have our balls in a juicer. The world is so petrolium-dependant, and most of the world's media iscontrolled by a few men. There are is so many lies and smoke screens it's hard to predict anything.