Fuelishness! Feed
- Oil has fallen more than $23 a barrel, or 16 percent, since peaking on July 3. Gasoline has slipped below $4 a gallon and is dropping fast as Americans drive less. Natural gas prices, which had risen the fastest this year as traders anticipated a hot summer, have fallen 33 percent since the beginning of the month.
- Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are in a stalemate over how to rein in energy prices. Using the country’s frustration as leverage, the president is trying to build pressure on lawmakers to take action before they leave town for their August recess.
- Police in Manila are looking to convert their patrol cars to run on a mixture of diesel and used cooking oil from McDonald’s, officials and the company said Tuesday.
- Why does it seem like gas prices go up faster than they come down?
- When retail gasoline prices are rising, consumers search harder for the best price; when prices are falling, consumers ease up on search.
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Americans rationing consumption
Source: Bloomberg.com
July 28 (Bloomberg) — U.S. motorists, paying record prices for gasoline, drove less for a seventh consecutive month in May, pointing toward the first annual drop in road travel since 1980.
“$4 per gallon may have been the trigger point we’ve been looking for,” said Kenneth McGill, managing director for travel and tourism at consulting firm Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts. “It’s interesting to see Americans finally reacting to the price of gasoline by rationing consumption.”
Vehicle-miles traveled on all U.S. roads fell 3.7 percent in May from a year earlier, the Federal Highway Administration said in a report today. The seven-month slide is the longest streak since 1979, agency spokesman Doug Hecox said.
Americans cut back as the average U.S. retail gasoline price reached a then-record of $3.98 a gallon on May 31. Rising fuel prices and a weak economy also marked the drop in driving in 1980, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and U.S. Embassy personnel in Iran were taken hostage.
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The Option to Drill
Is the Option to Drill enough to stop sky-rocketing gas prices?
(For the record, politics stink. Oil is now a hugely political issue, and I try very hard to avoid ”politics” on this blog and website. It’s truely meant to be a resource for everyone, without a personal political axe to grind. Sometimes politics are unavoidable. When the facts speak one way or another, and it coincides with a certain political bent, I’ll do my very best to indicate why you should at least consider the points being made by “the other team”.)
Some say we “can’t drill our way out of high oil prices” and that “it will take 10 years to see a result” of renewed off-shore drilling here in the United States. Apparently, however, our government can do a little paperwork and revoke drilling moratorium restrictions - creating an “Option of Drilling” - and immediately see a “correction” to the price of oil - without any actual drilling.
- Since George Bush rescinded the federal moratorium on off-shore drilling and since demand for higher domestic production has increased in the face of $5 per gallon gasoline, the price of crude has dropped over $20 a barrel in less than two weeks.
- The correction for oil prices has lasted two weeks with Brent down 16.3 per cent since hitting a record $147.50 on July 11 while WTI has sunk 16.8 per cent since reaching an all-time high of $147.27 on the same day.
- Technically, the $128/bbl support on WTI did not hold very long, and crude is pushed down further to test how strong the $122/bbl support can be. If $122/bbl does not hold, then we would face another accelerating wave to the next significant support level at $110/bbl.
There is another ban on off-shore drilling - a Congressional ban. Lifting this ban would indicate a strong intention and commitment to the “Option to Drill” - and help continue the “correction” of oil prices. To lift the ban requires a vote. But, Congress being the mess that it is, there are people who’d just rather not vote one way or another on this right now…
- WHY NOT have a vote on offshore drilling? There’s a serious debate to be had over whether Congress should lift the ban on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf that has been in place since 1981.
The “correction” has certainly had some help form the current high prices. “Pain at the pump” has changed the habits of many drivers. Demand has reduced 2.4% from this time last year. Many people are driving less. It’s not hard to imagine why, when the cost of a fuel stop can easily approach $100 for a full sized pickup or SUV.
- “People have changed their driving habits, and they’re not going to change back anytime soon,” said James Cordier, president of Tampa, Fla.-based trading firms Liberty Trading Group.
- Gasoline price changes typically lag behind oil prices. The price of oil has risen more than 72% over the last 12 months. But as the high cost of fuel cut into demand, crude prices have shed more than $23 a barrel since hitting a record high on July 11.
Without options, America’s economy can be held hostage by the greed of others. FuelClinic is obviously a stong proponet of consumer education, fuel conservation, new fuel technologies, electric cars, and other alternatives to help wean human civilization from the giant oil tit. At the same time, we do not need to needlessly (or stubbornly) slow the world economy by refusing to recognize the power of markets to correct themselves when artificial constraints are removed.
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Arctic Oil - Another Untapped Source
Source: Bloomberg.com
July 23 (Bloomberg) — The Arctic may hold 90 billion barrels of oil, more than all the known reserves of Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Mexico combined, and enough to supply U.S. demand for 12 years, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
One-third of the undiscovered oil is in Alaskan territory, the agency found in a study released today. By contrast, a geologic formation beneath the North Pole claimed by Russian scientists last year probably holds just 1.2 percent of the Arctic’s crude, the U.S. report showed…
…“Most of the Arctic, especially offshore, is essentially unexplored with respect to petroleum,” Donald Gautier, the project chief for the assessment, said in the report. “The extensive Arctic continental shelves may constitute the geographically largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on Earth.”
Source: Yahoo News
But the Arctic’s oil is not intended to replace all the supplies in the rest of world. It would last much longer by boosting available supplies and possibly reducing U.S. reliance on imported crude in the future, if America developed the resources.
The Arctic accounts for about 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas and 20 percent of the undiscovered natural gas liquids, the agency said in the first publicly available petroleum resource estimate of the entire area north of the Arctic Circle.
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Oil Futures drop below $125/bbl
Source: Bloomberg.com
Crude oil futures fell below $125 a barrel for the first time in seven weeks after a U.S. government report showed that fuel stockpiles increased as consumption tumbled to the lowest in more than a year.
Gasoline supplies rose 2.85 million barrels last week, the Energy Department reported. Stockpiles of distillate fuel, a category that includes heating oil and diesel, climbed 2.42 million barrels. U.S. fuel demand averaged 19.9 million barrels a day, the lowest since January 2007.
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Fuelishness! Feed
- The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management today published proposed regulations to establish a commercial oil shale program that could result in the addition of up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil from lands in the western United States.
- Oil prices tumbled by more than $3 a barrel yesterday, resuming their retreat as Monday’s rebound proved only a temporary reprieve after last week’s sharp correction.
- Demand for gasoline over the four weeks ended July 18 was 2.4 percent lower than a year earlier, averaging more than 9.3 million barrels a day.
- According to the government’s Mineral Management Service, we lost a combined total of 113 platforms to Katrina and Rita which were listed as being “destroyed” with quite a few more “damaged.” This was in addition to 457 pipelines damaged, with 101 of them being “large” pipelines. (Defined as ones which are 10″ in diameter or greater.)
- “Too often, Washington politicians treat energy policy as a false choice between finding new sources of fossil fuels or building our renewable capacity,” Noriega said. “I reject the either-or approach.”
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Partial Fills and Empty Charts
There are a few users wondering “Where’d my charts go?” - and all of them are having the same condition - not enough “Full” fills in their records…
Basically, using “partial” fills to calculate MPG can be wildly inaccurate. Until last week, when I made an overhaul-type update to the FuelClinic code, “partial” fills were mixed in with “full” fills and the results were not as accurate as they could be - but there were results.
Now, post-overhaul, the results are much more accurate since the machine adds-up the “partial” fill data and combines them with the very next “full” fill - but there are fewer results - and for some people who only make partial fills, there are no results at all.
I’m working on a compromise solution, to give SOME indication of MPG for people who never fill their tank all the way to full.
I’m also soliciting any ideas of how to make partial fill calculations more accurate - if you have a solution you think might work, post it here as a comment, or send me a quick email at feedback@fuelclinic.com - I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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FuelClinic Formulas (Update)
I’ve just updated the website. Here are brief descriptions of the major changes.
- Partial Fills: If you have been using the “partial” fill option on the fuel receipt form, that is now taken into account during your mpg calculations. You may notice a change in your MPG average. Also - please note that the system requires a “Full Fill” to begin the MPG calculations, and another “Full Fill” to complete the calculations - sort of like bookends to your receipts. If ALL of your fills are “partial”, the system will never calculate a MPG for you. I’ll explain more in the next few days in an additional post here.
- Total Sale vs. Price Per Unit: Some users prefer to enter the Total Sale amount instead of Price Per Gallon or Liter into the receipt form. Those older records have been updated to reflect that they are total sale, so you should see your monetary calculations come back to reality. As of now, all receipt forms allow you to indicate if you are entering Total Sale, or Price Per Unit. You can use whichever method you prefer - whichever is most accurate and easiest for you.
- Total Odometer vs. Trip Odometer: Some users prefer to enter the Trip Odometer reading instead of the Total Odometer reading. The old records were updated automatically (please check that yours are correct if you prefer “trip” readings). As of now, all receipt forms allow you to indicate if you are using the “total odometer reading” on your vehicle, or the “trip odometer”. You can use whichever method you prefer - whichever is most accurate and easiest for you.
- Currency Conversions: The system now does currency conversions during calculations, and uses the “best” noon-time conversion rate as published by the Federal Reserve Bank in New York for the date of your purchase. There are several reasons for this, I’ll explain later. Currently there are a limited number of currencies supported in the form.
- The system now detects and deletes duplicate receipts (not in real-time). In the near future, there will be additional error checking on the Fuel Receipt form that will tell you when you’ve entered a duplicate receipt.
Next on the list of things to do:
- Have the system accurately detect missing receipts, out-of-order receipts, multiple receipts covering the same “fuel stop”, and some other interesting problems I’ve found.
- More interestingly, there’s a face-lift for the website in the works. :)
Once again, thanks for your patience and continued support as I make FuelClinic the most useful mileage tracking website on the planet.
- Doc
Fuelishness! Feed
- “Americans are smart enough to figure out if they want to drive less or not.”
- Oil prices have settled sharply lower for the second straight day, capping a dizzying drop that has left crude more than $10 cheaper in just two days of frenzied trading.
- What can you, the motoring public, do to both continue to get to work and shopping destinations, but not feel like a complete sucker when it comes to purchasing that all-important oil-derived commodity (still priced, in most cases, less than bottled water)?
- One large graph, placed where a tachometer would usually go, shows fuel consumption in real time.
- The poll of 920 adults taken last week shows that 73% think “fuel prices at the pump” are a bigger problem for the country than climate change, the new term for global warming.
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Energy IQ
FuelClinic Formulas
I’ve been working for the past 3 days to overcome some shortcomings with the way FuelClinic is calculating various aspects of the data - I’ve found a few bugs, but worse, I found that I had made some mistakes that make the calculations overly complex when dealing with the variety of ways people log their receipts. (Consider that I’m trying to accommodate all users, using various standards of measure, currencies, and - eventually - languages…)
So I’m re-writing a good part of the “core” of FuelClinic, adding some intermediary calculations to “prepare” the data users provide so that it runs through the rest of the steps more easily. This is all very important (but boring) stuff to get right, right now, before fleshing out the rest of the neat-o wiz-bang features I can’t wait to work on.
Your data is safe - no need to re-enter anything. Thank you for understanding - sorry for the confusion I’m sure this has caused some of you. I expect to have this done in a few more days.
- Doc
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Fuel Thieves
A report on fuel theft trends and techniques.
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