If gas gets to $5.00 a gallon will we be able to quit buying foreign oil?

Question

I'm thinking if it keeps climbing in price than we can tell the big oil companies where to go and start using alternative fuels.

Answer 1

THERE ARE SOME PROBLEMS:

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THE TIMELINE !!!!

CEO´s have a jobspan of only 5 years, shareholders even shorter. The market is oriented generally toward short term profits.

This is contradiction with large changes in the energy field which require 10, 20 or even 50 years long investments (e.g. power plants and large factories).

Renewing all the cars of a country to have them to new stringent fuel economy standards: 10-15 years.

Renewing the stock of install buildings to have only zero energy buildings: 100 years

Changing urban schemes to make the society more energy efficient through reduced distances: 300 years.

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THE PRICE AND THE DEMAND: There is a strong certainty that the price you are talking about will be hit by 2020 latest with a $200 to $250 dollars per barrel, especially given the fact that the supply for oil grows slowly and that on the other hand, cars like the nano ($3000 new per car) become increasingly affordable to the 1billion Indians.

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So as you can see, people saying "the market will solve everything" are merely dreamers.

There is on the energy field a huge intertia. It´s like trying to stop a heavy truck one foot before a crash: Impossible!

This is the reason why contersteering now is necessary to achieve objectives in 10 to 50 years. This requires subsidies to green energies to push in the right direction as well as strong legislation to take the curve earlier.

Answer 2

why would u think that?..at five dollars a gallon gas is still a deal...i know ill get yelled at for saying it....today and into the future nothing is as good for the price....ethanol is already driving up corn prices and wheat prices....and electrict?  coal and nukes make the power...sooo..

Answer 3

not if they do it over the next couple years.  People complain every time it goes up another dollar, but very few do anything at all other than complain.  Suv's are still considered a status symbol, the bigger the better, american car companies wont make them more fuel efficient and foreign companies dont bother selling efficient ones here either for the most part.  People still drive much more than they need to, and I always see vehicles idling away while the owners are no doubt inside complaining about how much gas costs.  Its been well over five bucks a gallon in other countries for years now, our tax money subsidized about 50-75% of the actual cost for the oil companies here, imagine that.

Answer 4

This is such a contorted nightmare! British Columbia has just opened a HUGE oil field...we've yet to touch the North Slope, the Gulf of Mexico has untold fields to explore...and yet, the oil companies do what THEY want to do....

When the American people get off their apathetic behinds and start protesting and demanding a change...we might have a chance. But, right now, all I see is a flock of sheep, blindly paying, and paying, and paying...saying nothing that really matters to the right people!!!

Answer 5

No, since we get 60-70% of our oil from outside the US.  We would however get rid of the SUV, since the middle class could not afford it.  When gas went to $3 in 2005, people went back to carpooling and working from home.  Two years later, it's over $3 and our usage is increasing.

Answer 6

It won't need to. Last time it hit $3.65 for the 'cheap' stuff, people began getting interested in ethanol on an individual basis. That scared Bush so badly that the oil companies began looking into alternative fuels, too. They now know that if they try to charge $5/gal it'll only drive people to make their own ethanol using homemade stills. They have no choice now. And foreign oil's time is  running out.

Corn is the worst POSSIBLE means of making ethanol. You can run your car for a year on 2 acres of switchgrass  'clippings'.

Answer 7

It's currently nearly $8.00 a gallon in the U.K. but everything just carries on as normal.

Answer 8

We will never be able to quit buying foreign oil until we allow our oil companies to drill in the U.S. and the gulf of Mexico. O yes we do some drilling at these places but not what we could do. The crazy environmentalist would rather wreck the economy of the United States than allow the oil company to drill where they would like to.

Answer 9

The amount of fuel used in the U.S. exceeded the domestic supply long ago. Domestic supply has been declining for many years as all the oil in the country has been identified and largely exploited. I remember growing up in the Los Angeles area and there were operating oil pumps all around. They were in shopping center parking lots and in residential neighborhoods and just everywhere. And there were drilling rigs on Signal Hill. The rigs on Signal Hill are gone, replaced by pumps that are still operating today, and the other pumps I remember in the shopping centers and neighborhoods are all gone, the wells pumped dry.

So it is not enough to stop increasing the amount of fuel we use. We would have to DRASTICALLY REDUCE the amount of fuel we use (by 60% or more right now) to stop importing oil. And then we would have to continue reducing use every year as the other domestic wells were exhausted. So how much would gas have to cost before YOU skipped 2 out of every 3 trips you make in a car today? Or how high would it have to go before YOU bought a flex fuel car and took the trouble to seek out alternative fuel stations to fill up? I don't know about you, but for me $5 or $10 or even $15 a gallon wouldn't do it. Oh, I would reduce my driving, but not by 60%. And the ethanol would go up in price just like the gasoline, because of supply and demand market forces, so I would have no real incentive to switch fuel types.

Answer 10

I would think that the answer is no. We are simply importing too much oil now.

However, I think that at $5 per gallon total demand for oil would start to roll back, but I don't think the economists and experts know how big that impact would be. I believe that to quit buying imported oil will require huge changes that can either be done in a planned way that is less disruptive or we can simply do nothing now and the market will force a change that could be very disruptive as world demand continues to squeeze world supplies. (That is why the price is climbing now. World demand is increasing dramatically and supplies are having trouble meeting that demand.)

A solution that I agree with is to conserve oil with more efficient cars and changes in lifestyle, change to other non-oil sources of energy for cars/vehicles. Those other sources would be ideal if they are from sustainable/renewable resources instead of non-sustainable/fossil resources. I believe that a gradual and planned shift towards this goal is the best plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Timothy D.

West Melbourne, FL