NEWS: The Positive Side of Higher Oil Prices.

I was just having this discussion with a colleague today... people are riding bikes to work, carpooling, getting to know one another better, all due to high gas prices. It's an amazing side-effect.

I suspect the big oil companies never anticipated this and the price of gas is going to drop back to a level where we all feel happy purchasing gas at our old rates. However, I think some of us are simply going to continue using mass transit and biking and carpolling, so suck it big oil! You thought you were screwing America, but you're the one who's going to get it in the end.

I'm getting one of these.



Just the rolling chassis though, for $100 + shipping from a guy in NC. New ones go for $1700 retail. There are some guys up in Seattle that do electric conversions, and have already done this one.



I've had this idea for over a year but lacked both a suitable bike and the logistics to do the conversion. Now I have both. I'm waiting to hear back on a quote. I'm so psyched!

Hybrid vehicles are very popular in Key West.

No, they will just fly up in their sky palaces and live above us in the clouds, using the power of Lavos to rule us like Gods.

Wow, we actually agree on some thing Thistle "big oil" is not price gouging. Their total profit from oil sold is around 33cents a gallon (depends state to state based of state tax on oil). Then most of that still gets eating up in other costs. The only reason there has been such large increase in profits is the amount of oil is sold (their profit margins have stayed around the same %). Oil demand might be down in America but we have to buy in the global market where there is a Supply and Demand issue.

Also I don't know about else where but where I live the government is going after the people that use the food oil waste to run their cars for tax evasion. Since they don't buy gas at a station they don't pay the roads tax (the tax on gasoline sold) for both the state and federal government. So be careful

They won't "go after you" for tax evasion, any more than they will for not filing tips and Internet purchases, which is also required. In all cases they'll require you to pay what you owe (18 cents/gal). However, you can also file for a tax credit available to biodiesel producers and blenders.

At $4/gallon, everyone gets rational.

This guy is a hardcore conservative. I disagree with everything he stands for and I don't like some of the things he says in this article. However, we both seem to have come to the same conclusion.

Production is not rising and hasn't been. You are exactly wrong. There is also no shortage of oil - gas stations are not running out of fuel. You are grossly oversimplifying and drawing the wrong conclusions. Please back up statements like this with actual facts and data.

There seems to be some confusion about biodiesel VS waste vegetable oil (WVO) and the vehicles and systems that run them.

Biodiesel is processed vegetable oil that has been filtered, treated and had the glycerin stripped out chemically. It is usually blended with petrodiesel (B5 is 5% bio/95% petro, up to B100 which is 100% bio, and so on) and ready for use in most diesel vehicles, without fuel system modification. Different vehicles will tolerate different blends of biodiesel.

WVO or SVO is straight unmodified vegetable oil and cannot be used as-is in almost all diesels without major modifications to the fuel system, and this is why: the veg oil and the engine must both be hot before the engine is switched to veg oil. If not, the oil will carbonize inside the engine and ruin it over time. To demonstrate: take a cold frying pan, put some oil in it and heat it up - the oil will smoke and burn while leaving a nasty black residue that's very hard to get off. Then take a hot frying pan and put some heated oil in it - the oil will dance around the pan and burn off cleanly without leaving any residue. This is why a separate fuel tank, pump and heating system is required to run WVO/SVO without damaging the engine.

Generally, older low powered diesels with simpler factory fuel systems are less expensive to convert to WVO and newer vehicles are more expensive to convert effectively, particularly those with electronic fuel injection.

For a moment I was a bit worried about the idea of a closer community as a "side effect", but I shouldn't be; I've been saying that (UK) village school and post office closures are caused by cars for years.

As side effects go, I like this one.

Here we have no public transportation system of which to make use, so carpooling is a growing trend.

Me, I live 3 miles from work and walk or ride a bicycle a lot. Sadly, there tend to be electrical storms as I'm leaving work, so I do sometimes catch rides from coworkers and if I have to, call someone to pick me up - usually I try to call someone I know will be coming by soon and sit and read or go across the highway to have drink at Chili's or shop a thrift shop or used book store.

I feel a lot better since I started that, and I'm slightly less poor, and feel like at least I'm not wasting tons of gas. For longer trips, I try to go Harley - MUCH less gas consumption there! And used motorcycle sales here are way up - people who had never considered buying a scoot are doing just that.

Somewhat scary - many are in their 70s and up.

since the gas prices are so high, I've been walking more......and lost 15lbs...so there is an upside.

This story may be apocryphal, but a lady in my neighborhood whose daughter lives in North Carolina passed it on from the daughter (who I went to school with).
Apparently, a furniture factory in High Point, NC was shut down some time ago, and its operations moved to China. However, the factory recently was reopened - the high price of fuel has made it so much more expensive to ship the furniture here that there is no longer any cost advantage to keeping the factory in China. If the Chinese facility is still open, it's probably making stuff for the market over there.
If this is real, and is a trend and not an isolated incident, the higher fuel prices may be putting the brakes on globalization.

From what I've read, the cost of getting one 40-ft shipping container from China to the port of L.A. has tripled in the last three years, and that's not counting the increasing cost of chinese labor and chinese sourced materials since the yuan is still fairly tightly pegged to the dollar.