[sirwattsalot]

The recent drop in oil and gas prices has been designed by our government in the interest of destroying the Russian economy. In addition to Russia's economic collapse, US sales of electric and hybrid cars have also taken a hit. Our friends in other oil producing nations are also getting burned and oil exploration everywhere has come to a halt. Several people have asked me if I might convert my electric car to run on gasoline. My reply, heck no. Gas might be $2.00 a gallon now, but that just means that everyone will burn more of it and we will deplete our reserves of oil much faster. Oil companies are pumping everywhere and in fact, I can look out my own window and see one the many oil operations that are operating in the USA today. Most of these small oil fields will run dry in 20 to 30 years. So I wonder just how long the US government can fight this economic war before it turns out badly for all of us. Regardless of today's gas price, we should be preparing for a future without large reserves of petroleum. The future depends on what we do today. In a future where the demand for energy has doubled, the party might be over, and I will still be driving electric.

 

[PhantomPholly]

The recent drop in oil and gas prices has been designed by our government in the interest of destroying the Russian economy. In addition to Russia's economic collapse, US sales of electric and hybrid cars have also taken a hit.

Perhaps, but that is temporary. As prices continue to fall for EVs, purchases will again pick up. Also, this price drop is only a blip in the overall trend. Prices will again start to rise within a year.

Our friends in other oil producing nations are also getting burned and oil exploration everywhere has come to a halt. Several people have asked me if I might convert my electric car to run on gasoline. My reply, heck no. Gas might be $2.00 a gallon now, but that just means that everyone will burn more of it and we will deplete our reserves of oil much faster. Oil companies are pumping everywhere and in fact, I can look out my own window and see one the many oil operations that are operating in the USA today. Most of these small oil fields will run dry in 20 to 30 years.

That's not a real problem - 20 to 30 years from now no one will be buying ICE vehicles anyway.

So I wonder just how long the US government can fight this economic war before it turns out badly for all of us. Regardless of today's gas price, we should be preparing for a future without large reserves of petroleum. The future depends on what we do today. In a future where the demand for energy has doubled, the party might be over, and I will still be driving electric.

Well, surprisingly this one is not particularly our war - it is an economic war by a portion of the OPEC nations against Canada, Russia, and Iran. A bit towards our fracking, but they really can't do much about our cheap oil that is the result of fracking for natural gas. Canada's oil sands, on the other hand, definitely become unprofitable at current prices per barrel.

They (OPEC) are finally seeing the writing on the wall - get your money from oil while it is still worth anything at all, or end up with a bunch of useless product. They are doomed either way, but this gives them some cash now.

 

[dragonsgate]

The recent drop in oil and gas prices has been designed by our government in the interest of destroying the Russian economy. In addition to Russia's economic collapse, US sales of electric and hybrid cars have also taken a hit. Our friends in other oil producing nations are also getting burned and oil exploration everywhere has come to a halt. Several people have asked me if I might convert my electric car to run on gasoline. My reply, heck no. Gas might be $2.00 a gallon now, but that just means that everyone will burn more of it and we will deplete our reserves of oil much faster. Oil companies are pumping everywhere and in fact, I can look out my own window and see one the many oil operations that are operating in the USA today. Most of these small oil fields will run dry in 20 to 30 years. So I wonder just how long the US government can fight this economic war before it turns out badly for all of us. Regardless of today's gas price, we should be preparing for a future without large reserves of petroleum. The future depends on what we do today. In a future where the demand for energy has doubled, the party might be over, and I will still be driving electric.

There have been a few occasions I considered getting a gas powered hobby car or converting the one I have back to ICE but always come to the conclusion that I like what I have. There is something about driving an electric that is hard to explain. The ecology and gas prices are not the major factors anymore. My observance of the gas situation over the years is that the majority of the buying public is a bunch of idiots. Around 1975 when the second gas crunch happened my wife and I were into bicycling. We lived in Riverside California at the time and rode our bikes just about everywhere. I would ride with her to her job and then to the college and other places each day of the week. On occasion we got offers to sell our bikes as we were riding them. Some of which I am pretty sure were legit. I had eight other ten speeds in my shed, so I WD40’ed them and shined them up with some 0000 steel wool, tuned the derailers and set them out in the front yard with a for sale sign. Just a few years prior I had paid $90 each for our Schwinn Varsity 10 speeds new, so I put an $80 price tag on those old bikes and with in a month sold six of them for the price I was asking. After the crunch had subsided I couldn’t give the last two away. Later in the 80’s we had another ripple in the gas market and the interest in solar panels and solar heating made a big leap forward bringing about some small innovations in those products but just as soon as the oil industry settled down the interest began to dwindle. A few years ago when gas got up to $4 a gallon I couldn’t go anywhere with out one or two people stopping me wanting to know where I got the car and when I told them they wanted to know how did I convert it and so on. Gas prices dropped and interest waned putting me back into the interesting novelty category. Gas is below $2 here now and I am sure I have been demoted to the even lower category of silly old guy in that silly electric car. If gas prices drop even more or manage to stay where they are now for a few more months you will see a surge in bigger ICE cars and SUV sales. Then I am going to laugh my ass off when prices start to go up again. I don’t care I they start giving gas away I am planning on keeping and driving my EV because there is just something about it.

 

[sirwattsalot]

Thanks everyone for your replies. Yes, there really is nothing else like driving an electric car. It is just too cool! I like the simple fact that I am not burning gasoline, but sadly the world makes just about everything else from petroleum. I mean, plastic, tires, paint, glue, pharmaceuticals, fabrics, petrochemical fertilizers, many other chemicals and materials. We can stop using oil for fuel but if the wells run dry we will not know how to live without everything else that is made from it. So, regardless I can see the price of a barrel of oil going up in price in the future.

However, one thing is certain- my car will still run on solar even when the tires have to be made from soybeans.

 

[Moltenmetal]

It's such a shame to see those high value liquid hydrocarbons being wasted as transport fuel. They are valuable to humanity much beyond their current price because as chemical feedstocks they are so much more difficult to substitute with renewables than it is for us to substitute their fuels uses- most of them at least. We have good alternative energy sources or good alternative technologies to replace most of the liquid fuels we currently squander. And we squander them because they are not burdened with their full and fair cost. Fix that, and all of a sudden the whole energy market and our entire attitude toward energy use will change- greatly for the better.

 

[PhantomPholly]

It's such a shame to see those high value liquid hydrocarbons being wasted as transport fuel. They are valuable to humanity much beyond their current price because as chemical feedstocks they are so much more difficult to substitute with renewables than it is for us to substitute their fuels uses- most of them at least. We have good alternative energy sources or good alternative technologies to replace most of the liquid fuels we currently squander. And we squander them because they are not burdened with their full and fair cost. Fix that, and all of a sudden the whole energy market and our entire attitude toward energy use will change- greatly for the better.

Bold mine. Who determines what is "full and fair cost," eh? I hear that phrase, and it sounds a lot like the leftists' preferred battle cry of, "it's for the common good!" Both are BS phrases meant to rationalize a proposal to take from one group and use it some other way than those it was taken from would have agreed to otherwise.

The air is cleaner now that we use catalytic converters than it was in the 80's, and we have all paid in full for those catalytic converters. So assume I'm right for a moment, that by 2050 no one is burning oil or gas or coal for power (or at least in such small quantities as to be moot). The "full and fair cost" will be such that those who burned hydrocarbons should receive restitution for the overcharging they received, because the additional CO2 in the atmosphere will net out as beneficial not harmful.

So, in the spirit of the concept of "full and fair cost," I propose a new tax on those who demanded high taxes on gas, to be given to those who opposed those taxes.