Barrels of Monkeys

Well, let’s talk about barrels of oil. Or maybe it’s barrels of cash, or should it be gold or even diamonds? Today, the price per barrel of gold almost hit $120 per 42 gallon barrel of oil. That equates to about $2.85 in base price per gallon of crude oil. Now, only about 50% of that barrel of oil is refined to create gas. The rest is used to create other products. These other products include many things, heating oil, jet fuel, etc. I’m pretty sure oil is a major ingredient in plastic. That’s a bit sarcastic by the way. Oil IS a major product in creating plastic and many other everyday items we all use.

Going along those lines, have you seen the price of a toothbrush skyrocket in the last 3-5 years? Have you noticed how many fake plastic credit cards enter your house through junk mail in your mailbox? Have you noticed how much plastic is being thrown away via our water bottles and other use-once products? Why aren’t the prices of all of these products forcing the market to change and charge more for them? Are they not affected by the outrageous increases in oil? I mean, the oil is in the same barrel that the gas is coming from so it’s not like they are getting some phantom discount oil. People might say well, demand for these things isn’t as high so the price is and should be lower. Let’s take that another step. If there is lower demand, then there should be lower supply to meet demand and thus less need to refine oil into plastic making ingredients. This newly available crude oil that is being utilized to generate all of these use once products could instead be turned into gasoline to help alleviate the “shortage” we have inside our borders.

Everyone knows we can’t stop driving. We also can’t all convert to hybrid vehicles or smart cars. People have jobs to drive to, people have bad weather to worry about, and people have safety concerns. Hybrid cars are few and far between and are in very limited supply. Smaller vehicles scare people away because they do not perform well in accidents on interstates. Bad weather basically disables any small vehicle in any type of inclement weather. Where does that leave us? Do we just have to succumb to the prices of oil and wither away? No, we need to start changing things we can change. We can stop buying all of the plastic one-use products and force the manufacturers to design a new product that makes more sense. We can pressure our government to initiate plans to force refineries to use more than 50% of a barrel of oil for gas and create more supply to help alleviate the demand pressures which would in turn lower the price per gallon. I’m not saying disrupt the other industries and create a fiasco in their world. What I am saying is that if you can generate some small savings, 5-10% of the barrel (about 4 gallons per barrel), you can greatly affect what is going on within our country.

I read somewhere that the US uses about 21 million barrels of oil per day, about a quarter of the entire world’s usage. That is completely insane to wrap your mind around. Are we that dependent on this product and why are we in need of it (whole other story)? So let’s work out my 5-10% savings per barrel. At 21 million barrels, that would give us roughly 84 million more gallons of gas per day of oil. At 5% it would be 42 million. Do you think 40+ million gallons of gas added to our supply, per day, would have an effect on the price at the pump? I would surely think so! So, other than taking some oil away from plastic producing, where else could we save? Jet fuel accounts for about 12% of the barrel of oil. How many flights per day do we need to go back and forth to Chicago? Seriously, do we need 20 flights a day from St. Louis to Chicago? Why can’t we make that 10? How much jet fuel would that save? Why do we have a few major airlines and 100’s of small commuter companies, all supposedly losing money? Why can’t we consolidate some of the jet fuel expenditures and save even more oil to create gasoline?

It all comes down to us. Are we willing to endure whatever gas costs because we don’t feel that we have a say in the deal? Are we willing to sit and allow companies like Exxon make record profits year after year after year (The last 3 years combined, Exxon has made in PROFIT, over $115 BILLION!!). Sure it’s an expensive venture, but seriously, after taxes and all charges, clearing $115 Billion in 3 years is flat out robbery of the public. Credit crunch this, foreclosures that, rebate checks, we keep hearing about all of the issues we are facing and yet we seem to forget where a major component of our paycheck is going. It’s going to companies like Exxon. No other company has EVER in the history of our country come even close to those profits. It’s inexcusable that we as a country have allowed a major component of our infrastructure to drive us so close to a breaking point. We are on the verge of sliding into a very long recession no matter what the Fed does with interest rates. If people don’t have money, you just can’t invent ways to make people spend something they don’t have no matter what the rates for borrowing are.

I say we need to focus on things we can change at hand. Make less trips to the store, do a lot of multitasking. Ride with family, do things together as a group. Buy less plastic or polyester items. Focus on things you can change, spread the word, and start voicing your opinion about things that could be changed to your local government officials. Everything has to start somewhere no matter how small the voice is. We cannot just sit idly by and let the oil barons rake in our hard earned dollars while we sit in nearly foreclosed houses with no health insurance and a car that barely runs. All the while, they are sitting in their penthouse with a gold mine that 20 generations of their family could live on. There is competition and then there is fair competition, somewhere along the lines, fair has left the building.

Citation: http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/whats_in_barrel_oil.html

Citation: http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/01/news/companies/exxon/index.htm