Read a good article yesterday in my local paper by Nicholas Kristof of the NY times. Basically he stated that Bush was right on his state of the union speech regarding our addiction to oil and the need to break from that addiction.

Also it mentioned that we have the ability to produce 100mpg hybrid cars that possibly could get 1000mpg if used only for short trips! Could you imagine filling up twice a year!?!

Now we all know that oil rules this country and these cars unfortunately wont be available to the mainstreem public anytime soon.

Lastly Kristof pleaded to Bush that if we are addicted to oil, then lets break the habit TODAY! Don't say you're gonna quit tomorrow as most drug addicts would say.

I

In the rest of the world cars get about 50mpg... But then again, nowhere but america drives around in luxury armoured trucks as family cars.

The revolution will NOT be motorised, buy a bike!

Personally, I can't get enough myself! ;)

But seriously, I'm all for reducing America's oil consumption, especially when it comes to vehicles. It would be nice to convert to other fuels and use hybrids and such, but its going to be a huge undertaking. I'd love to ride my bike more often, but until I get my own lane, I think I'll hold off for awhile.

And I think we need to think about the other products that are a product of oil and realize its not just an automotive problem, but I'm sure our vehicles take up the lion's share of crude.

^ why isn't that an Olympic event?

Back on track... Why does the American public insist on wasting resources? I bought a new car in 2000, and it consistently gets 40 mpg. A similar car from the same company today gets about 32 mpg. The difference? They jacked up the horsepower so they could sell more. People were more interested in horsepower than mileage. (Geez, it's a Saturn, how cool can you look driving a Saturn?)

I'm keeping my higher mileage version for a while. Meanwhile the minivans come with beefy V6 engines, the SUVs are V8s, and people are feeding these 18-24 mpg beasties gas at $2.40ish per gallon. Then they gripe that they have such high bills for gas.

I used to ride my bike everywhere. I didn't need a car often. Maybe time to get back to that. Work is only 8 miles...

@LGM I drive the '99 Saturn SL with 40mpg. With an 11 gallon tank I only have to fill up every 400 miles. Then I hop in my wifes smaller '03 kia (smaller engine, car etc) and get 32mpg on a 9 gallon tank. So I have to fill up about every 250 miles. It drives me nuts. I have yet to figure out why the smaller car with a smaller engine gets that much lower fuel efficiency.

And many of the SUV's actually get 11-16mpg. (some go as low as 9mpg).

My folks are thinking about getting rid of our old van and getting a diesel car and getting a Greasecar kit to convert it to run on vegitable oil.

I think it would be nice to drive down the road with a car that smells of fries. :)

For about 6 years now I've been a member of my local Car Share Co-op
http://www.victoriacarshare.ca

When I need a car I book online or call the 24h phone line. I then walk to the car I booked (2 blocks from where I live) and do my 'car stuff' (errands, moving things, shopping, visiting friends, going to the movie, for a hike, etc.). When I'm done I bring back the car and... Voila! Someone else can use it.

We're about 100 members using 6 cars... Some Car Share co-ops are HUGE! Vancouver, Montreal, SF. Started in Berlin - still the biggest car share.

Being that many members don't really prevent me from getting a car... I just need to call ahead. Sometimes a last minute booking won't be fruitful for the car is already booked, etc.

Living downtown I find myself only needing a car once or twice a month. This s not good for those commuting to work every day!

Basically you pay $10 monthly membership, and then you pay as you go: about 30¢ a kilometer (1 mile = 1.6km, so about 50¢ a mile) and $2 an hour. So say I borrow it for 5 hours + do like 30 miles, it will cost me about $25.00, This rate includes everything: FUEL, REPAIRS, MAINTENANCE, INSURANCE, CLEANING, etc.

It makes you very conscious of your car use - you don't want to use it for nothing, and thus you maximize your car stuff instead of conveniently using it for whatever reason. It works well, especially since you never pay for repairs or maintenance. $300 go fast when you fix a car!

The drawback of course is that one don't enjoy the convenient use of a car whenever one 'needs' one - it has to be planned a bit more.

Last edited: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 4:57:31 PM

Good for you guys hugglestein. My wife and I made the decision to be a one car family. I ride 11 miles a day to and back from work. I really like riding now, and we're saving tons of cash.

KKB: don't be willing to lavish praise on Bu$h co so soon....almost as soon as he said it, he took it all back...

"Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports"
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/13767738.htm

I must admit I was shocked when he said it. Confronted for the very first time with an instance in which I was proud of my president...alas, it was not to be.

America's addiction to hunting.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/02/13.html#a7149
I think bush reneged 24 hours after the state of the union. I think no one was surprised.

Last edited: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 5:44:51 PM

This just came in. Nytimes.
February 14, 2006
U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.
New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.
Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period.
Administration officials say that the benefits are dictated by laws and regulations that date back to 1996, when energy prices were relatively low and Congress wanted to encourage more exploration and drilling in the high-cost, high-risk deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
"We need to remember the primary reason that incentives are given," said Johnnie M. Burton, director of the federal Minerals Management Service. "It's not to make more money, necessarily. It's to make more oil, more gas, because production of fuel for our nation is essential to our economy and essential to our people."
But what seemed like modest incentives 10 years ago have ballooned to levels that have alarmed even ardent supporters of the oil and gas industry, partly because of added sweeteners approved during the Clinton administration but also because of ambiguities in the law that energy companies have successfully exploited in court.
Short of imposing new taxes on the industry, there may be little Congress can do to reverse its earlier giveaways. The new projections come at a moment when President Bush and Republican leaders are on the defensive about record-high energy prices, soaring profits at major oil companies and big cuts in domestic spending.
Indeed, Mr. Bush and House Republicans are trying to kill a one-year, $5 billion windfall profits tax for oil companies that the Senate passed last fall.
Moreover, the projected largess could be just the start. Last week, Kerr-McGee Exploration and Development, a major industry player, began a brash but utterly serious court challenge that could, if it succeeds, cost the government another $28 billion in royalties over the next five years.
In what administration officials and industry executives alike view as a major test case, Kerr-McGee told the Interior Department last week that it planned to challenge one of the government's biggest limitations on royalty relief if it cou! Ld not work out an acceptable deal in its favor. If Kerr-McGee is successful, administration projections indicate that about 80 percent of all oil and gas from federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico would be royalty-free.
"It's one of the greatest train robberies in the history of the world," said Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who has fought royalty concessions on oil and gas for more than a decade. "It's the gift that keeps on giving."
Republican lawmakers are also concerned about how the royalty relief program is working out.
"I don't think there is a single member of Congress who thinks you should get royalty relief at $70 a barrel" for oil, said Representative Richard W. Pombo, Republican of California and chairman of the House Resources Committee.
"It was Congress's intent," Mr. Pombo said in an interview on Friday, "that if oil was at $10 a barrel, there should be royalty relief so companies could have some kind of incentive to invest capital. But at $70 a barrel, don't expect royalty relief."
Tina Kreisher, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said Monday that the giveaways might turn out to be less than the basic forecasts indicate because of "certain variables."
The government does not disclose how much individual companies benefit from the incentives, and most companies refuse to disclose either how much they pay in royalties or how much they are allowed to avoid.
But the benefits are almost entirely for gas and oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico.
The biggest producers include Shell, BP, Chevron a! Nd Exxon Mobil as well as smaller independent companies like Anadarko and Devon Energy.
Executives at some companies, including Exxon Mobil, said they had already stopped claiming royalty relief because they knew market prices had exceeded the government's price triggers.
About one-quarter of all oil and gas produced in the United States comes from federal lands and federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico.
As it happens, oil and gas royalties to the government have climbed much more slowly than market prices over the last five years.
The New York Times reported last month that one major reason for the lag appeared to be a widening gap between the average sales prices that companies are reporting to the government when paying royalties and average spot market prices on the open market.
Industry executives and administration officials contend that the disparity mainly reflects different rules for defining sales prices. Administration officials also contend that the disparity is illusory, because the government's annual statistics are muddled up with big corrections from previous years.
Both House and Senate lawmakers are now investigating the issue, as is the Government Accountability Office, Congress's watchdog arm.
But the much bigger issue for the years ahead is royalty relief for deepwater drilling.
The original law, known as the Deep Water Royalty Relief Act, had bipartisan support and was intended to promote exploration and production in deep waters of the outer continental shelf.
At the time, oil and gas prices were comparatively low and few companies were interested in the high costs and high risks of drilling in water thousands of feet deep.
The law authorized the Interior Department, which leases out tens of millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico, to forgo its normal 12 percent royalty for much of the oil and gas produced in very deep waters.
Because it take years to explore and then build the huge offshore platforms, most of the oil and gas from the new leases is just beginning to flow.
The Minerals Management Service of the Interior Department, which oversees the leases and collects the royalties, estimates that the amount of royalty-free oil will quadruple by 2011, to 112 million barrels. The volume of royalty-free natural gas is expected to climb by almost half, to about 1.2 trillion cubic feet.
Based on the government's assumptions about future prices that oil will hover at about $50 a barrel and natural gas will average about $7 per thousand cubic feet the total value of the free oil and gas over the next five years would be about $65 billion and the forgone royalties would total more than $7 billion.
Administration officials say the issue is out of their hands, adding that they opposed provisions in last year's energy bill that added new royalty relief for deep drilling in shallow waters.
"We did not think we needed any more legislation, because we already have incentives, but we obviously did not prevail," said Ms. Burton, director of the Minerals Management Service.
But the Bush administration did not put up a big fight. It strongly supported the overall energy bill, and merely noted its opposition to additional royalty relief in its official statement on the bill.
By contrast, the White House bluntly promised to veto the Senate's $60 billion tax cut bill because it contained a one-year tax of $5 billion on profits of major oil companies.
The House and Senate have yet to agree on a final tax bill.
The big issue going forward is whether companies should be exempted from paying royalties even when energy prices are at historic highs.
In general, the Interior Department has always insisted that companies would not be entitled to royalty relief if market prices for oil and gas climbed above certain trigger points.
Those trigger points currently about $35 a barrel for oil and $4 per thousand cubic feet of natural gas have been exceeded for the last several years and are likely to stay that way for the rest of the decade.
So why is the amount of royalty-free gas and oil expected to double over the next five years?
The biggest reason is that the Clinton administration, apparently worried about the continued lack of interest in new drilling, waived the price triggers for all leases awarded in 1998 and 1999.
At the same time, many oil and gas companies contend that Congress never authorized the Interior Department to set price thresholds for any deepwater leases awarded between 1996 and 2000.
The dispute has been simmering for months, with some industry executives warning the Bush administration that they would sue the government if it tried to demand royalties.
Last week, the fight broke out into the open. The Interior Department announced that 41 oil companies had improperly claimed more than $500 million in royalty relief for 2004.
Most of the companies agreed to pay up in January, but Kerr-McGee said it would fight the issue in court.
The fight is not simply about one company. Interior officials said last week that Kerr-McGee presented itself in December as a "test case" for the entire industry. It also offered a "compromise," but Interior officials rejected it and issued a formal order in January demanding that Kerr-McGee pay its back royalties.
On Feb. 6, according to administration officials, Kerr-McGee formally notified the Minerals Management Service that it would challenge its order in court.
Industry lawyers contend they have a strong case, because Congress never mentioned price thresholds when it authorized royalty relief for all deepwater leases awarded from 1996 through 2000.
"Congress offered those deepwater leases with royalty relief as an incentive," said Jonathan Hunter, a lawyer in New Orleans who represented oil companies in a similar lawsuit two years ago that knocked out another major federal restriction on royalty relief.
"The M.M.S. Only has the authority that Congress gives it," Mr. Hunter said. "The legislation said that royalty relief for these leas! Es is automatic."
If that view prevails, the government said it would lose a total of nearly $35 billion in royalties to taxpayers by 2011 about the same amount that Mr. Bush is proposing to cut from Medicare, Medicaid and child support enforcement programs over the same period.

Last edited: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 5:51:23 PM

Oil companies need relief! Everyone knows that.

Instead of Donations to PTT we should donate to some unfortunate, needy oil company!~ :[

Its all just a sad, sick joke isn't it? :(

Yeah, if it were only a joke... I'm firing off a letter to the Senators and Congressional folks... :S

Hey, it does decrease our dependency on foreign oil... Eh.

I want a Mr. Fusion for my car.

Praise on Bush for this topic guys? I don't think so. It sounded all warm and fuzzy but I'm not buying anything until I see results. We do need to find alternatives, ethanol cars, hydrogen and more hybrids. When we accomplish this I think the US will leave the middle east alone.

Tally , I read that one too. Sickening. I'm sure somebody's hitting paydirt with that one, but it wont be the American public who supposedly own the federal lands. What a friggin rip!!

I drive a TDI (turbo diesel) Golf. 50 mpg. 15 gallon tank -- you do the math. Pittsburgh - Toronto on a fill up. I run Biodiesel in the summer, ^Racer445. I want to start a biodiesel coop. But it's still not the answer. What I really want to see is VW linking a hybrid with a TDI engine. 100mpg easy.

Anyone see those BS ads for GMs go yellow? Flex vehicles? Where the hell you gonna find 85% ethanol on the east coast? And the vehicle on the ad? Those huge Avalances!!!!! Holy sh*t those are big! Like that is going to make a difference. Besides, it take a lot of oil to grow corn in this country. Same goes with biodiesel, it takes a lot of oil to grow palms, soy, etc. To extract the oil. Not to mention the scarce water resources. Not much of an improvement, really.

How about, ahhh, I don't know... Public transport?

Pug, goin for that second star!

The immortal words of Tyrone Biggums on addiction:

Sounding a bit "progressive" up in dis hizz-ouse!

Favoritism from the government sucks in all its incarnations. Hmm, sounds like another argument for limited government.