Gas Price Questions

[WMAMOS]

Fuel prices are definitely impacting my fishing. Last year I joined a club that fished 8-10 tournaments on the major water bodies in Indiana (Patoka, Monroe, Ohio River, etc.). Due to gas prices I dropped out of the club this year. Last year I fished practically every Tuesday night tournament at Geist. This year I'm fishing every other Tuesday. I did join a Geist only circuit that fishes once a month through September. That's the extent of my fishing plans for 2008. I'm going to rethink things come Fall and possibly put my 1998 Ranger up for sale. Notice that I said "put it up for sale"......selling may be hard to do. I'm just glad I'm not committed to making 144 payments on a $50K rig.

And as a side note, say no to ethanol based fuels. It is not the answer as you'll notice from your grocery bills. Not My Man Mitch needs to recognize this as well. The benefit the local farmers noticed from the ethanol craze is over and his input costs have caught up. Diesel, fertilizer, pesticides, etc. have all risen sharply causing his net profits to be the same (or less) than they were before the push for ethanol.

Don't vote Mitch in November!

[Bragger]

Fuel prices are definitely impacting my fishing. Last year I joined a club that fished 8-10 tournaments on the major water bodies in Indiana (Patoka, Monroe, Ohio River, etc.). Due to gas prices I dropped out of the club this year. Last year I fished practically every Tuesday night tournament at Geist. This year I'm fishing every other Tuesday. I did join a Geist only circuit that fishes once a month through September. That's the extent of my fishing plans for 2008. I'm going to rethink things come Fall and possibly put my 1998 Ranger up for sale. Notice that I said "put it up for sale"......selling may be hard to do. I'm just glad I'm not committed to making 144 payments on a $50K rig.

And as a side note, say no to ethanol based fuels. It is not the answer as you'll notice from your grocery bills. Not My Man Mitch needs to recognize this as well. The benefit the local farmers noticed from the ethanol craze is over and his input costs have caught up. Diesel, fertilizer, pesticides, etc. have all risen sharply causing his net profits to be the same (or less) than they were before the push for ethanol.

Don't vote Mitch in November!

I have to disagree on the ethanol. Other than the direct purchase of corn and corn based products (very small amount of my groceries), ethanol is not making your grocery bill go up. Your grocery bill is going up becasue a truck driver had to use diesel fuel to deliver those groceries, and diesel prices are not going up because of ethanol.

I think you are also missing the whole point of ethanol. It is not to make our farmers rich. It is to break our dependance on foreign oil. Personally I think ethanol is a possible solution, but I think we should be producing it from grasses rather than corn. From what I understand there are some grasses that would produce much higher ethanol yield per acre.

[WMAMOS]

Bragger,

You are mistaken. Do you eat pork? How about chicken? How about a greasy burger now and again? Eat eggs? Ever drink milk? Well, beef, pork, and poultry, in case you didn't know, also eat corn based products. You eat these products and so do the gazillion Chinese. You have livestock producers, food companies and ethanol giants competing for the same important ingredient.......corn. Its simple economics: increased demand increases costs. The rising demand for corn is driving grocery prices significantly higher. Experts have said that ethanol is responsible for approximately 40% of the increase in grocery prices.

http://www.shout.net/~bigred/Groceries.html

[Bragger]

Bragger,

You are mistaken. Do you eat pork? How about chicken? How about a greasy burger now and again? Eat eggs? Ever drink milk? Well, beef, pork, and poultry, in case you didn't know, also eat corn based products. You eat these products and so do the gazillion Chinese. You have livestock producers, food companies and ethanol giants competing for the same important ingredient.......corn. Its simple economics: increased demand increases costs. The rising demand for corn is driving grocery prices significantly higher. Experts have said that ethanol is responsible for approximately 40% of the increase in grocery prices.

http://www.shout.net/~bigred/Groceries.html

Here are some different reports:

http://www.napsnet.com/articles/58615.html

http://www.valleynewstoday.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19782919&BRD=2703&PAG=461&dept_id= 555139&rfi=6

Interesting....in the above article they say there are only 8 cents worth of corn in a box of corn flakes. The majority of the cost is transportation, packaging, & markup. So....your corn could double in price and your corn flakes should only cost 8 cents more.

I guess you have to make a choice. Do you pay more for your gas(oil) and continue to be dependant on foreign supply that could cut you off at any time.....or do you pay more for your groceries and be energy independent. I think you already know my choice.....although you are right about the corn, we need to forget the corn and use the grasses or sugar cane like Brazil.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2006-03-28-brazil-ethanol-cover_x.htm

[idbefishing]

What ever idea/theory you believe in you can always find the media to support it. To say that ethanol is not responsible or not is both right and wrong. To grow corn you have to use diesel driven farm machinery, fertilizer which is petroleum based which keep demand for petroleum high. The feedstock cost more because the supply is less causing higher prices in meats, egg, milk, etc....Everything else cost more because transportation cost skyrocketed due to high fuel prices. High fuel prices mainly caused by worldwide demand, the dollar lost value and those doggone speculators that keep speculating the prices to the point of crashing our economy.

[GeoFisher]

I have to disagree on the ethanol. Other than the direct purchase of corn and corn based products (very small amount of my groceries), ethanol is not making your grocery bill go up. Your grocery bill is going up becasue a truck driver had to use diesel fuel to deliver those groceries, and diesel prices are not going up because of ethanol.

I think you are also missing the whole point of ethanol. It is not to make our farmers rich. It is to break our dependance on foreign oil. Personally I think ethanol is a possible solution, but I think we should be producing it from grasses rather than corn. From what I understand there are some grasses that would produce much higher ethanol yield per acre.

I also have to agree.........the FUTURES market shows that corn futures have QUADRUPLED over the last 18 months.......THAT means the potential for 4X the cost of corn due to supply..........

Big money hedge funds are betting on a STEEP increase in corn prices in the next 18 months.....AND this is the price of the RAW grain, without any additional transport costs tacked on...........

Betting on corn for fuel is a HORRIBLE bet......

Drill here, DRILL NOW.........

Later,

Geo

[raporter]

Fuel prices are definitely impacting my fishing. Last year I joined a club that fished 8-10 tournaments on the major water bodies in Indiana (Patoka, Monroe, Ohio River, etc.). Due to gas prices I dropped out of the club this year. Last year I fished practically every Tuesday night tournament at Geist. This year I'm fishing every other Tuesday. I did join a Geist only circuit that fishes once a month through September. That's the extent of my fishing plans for 2008. I'm going to rethink things come Fall and possibly put my 1998 Ranger up for sale. Notice that I said "put it up for sale"......selling may be hard to do. I'm just glad I'm not committed to making 144 payments on a $50K rig.

And as a side note, say no to ethanol based fuels. It is not the answer as you'll notice from your grocery bills. Not My Man Mitch needs to recognize this as well. The benefit the local farmers noticed from the ethanol craze is over and his input costs have caught up. Diesel, fertilizer, pesticides, etc. have all risen sharply causing his net profits to be the same (or less) than they were before the push for ethanol.

Don't vote Mitch in November!

Corn based ethanol is a crock but I fail to see how our fine Gov is responsible for this mess. Now you want to talk about getting some things done for the DNR we can talk. Before he came along they were basically closing down facilities at our lakes and DNR properties. They are not only up and being taken care of now but if you have been to Patoka lately you will see some nice new docks instead of the Mickey Mouse things we did have. Better compare Indiana financially to all the states around us and you will see why I will be voting for OUR MAN MITCH again.

[TR21Bassin]

As far as the oil and being able to be self sufficient. I like the statement and believe we should do it "Drill here and Drill Now". We have enough oil shelfs in this country to supply us for many many years. In the last 6 months there have been shelfs found in Michigan, Arizona, and New Mexico the are reported to have over 2 trillion barrels of oil. These alone would run the US for over 60 years alone, without touching anything in Alaska or off of the coast of Florida.

Charlie

[wkerber]

I'm not sure of the unit of measurement that they used in a report I read, but the biggest problem with ethanol a year ago was that it took more than one unit of energy to produce one unit of energy of ethanol. That may be resolved by now, I'm not sure.
As far as inflation, the main issue right now is that the value of the dollar keeps dropping against other world currencies. I believe that is beginning to taper off lately. Related specifically to gas, increases can be significantly, attributed to speculators (kind of a middle man) who bet that we'll keep drivng even as gas prices increase. So far, they've been right and are making a ton of money.
Guess who has made the most off of the increase of gas. Our wonderful federal government. When asked if they are willing to give back some of what they are making, they just turn the conversation towards the oil companies.
Ole Barack has stated that he is ok with the price of gas and if it goes up, he just wish it would go up slower so it wouldn't be such a shock to people.

I could go on for hours about this. I'll leave with this... DRILL NOW.

[Bobby Headrick]

It has affected my fishing a lot as all my fav lakes area long haul, I live over the the river from Ind and would love to try the smallies up there, but with no raise in my salary this yr Ky State Emp's only got a 1%, not much to offset high cost of living. I agree that ethonal is not the soultion. We feed corn to all our meat animals and also with the droughts and flooding, like you all have in Ind and Iowa, and we had a really wet spring here that has put a lot of grain production way behind it does not seem feesable to use this for fuel, there are other crops that can be used but politics does not allow that yet, and won't until the corn lobbyests are out of the picture. I feel for all, and it is really depressing that we cannot do the things we want due to this fuel problem, and also today Ky is going to raise the fuel tax so go ahead and stick it to us,they kick us when we are up and then kick us more when we are down. I cut back too much on my fishing and tourneys due to this.

[kamper_]

Use it or Loose it!
10,000 permits have been issued to the oil companies and they are not drilling or exploring on this ground. Why not? If they were to drill and find out and bring it to market now it would lower the price of oil and they would loose money.

So Congress is telling them to use these oil leases or risk loosing them forever to someone else who will go and explore some 60 million acres of ground that could have oil. So yes drill now in these areas but stay out of ANWAR.

The Dems are not responsible for Big Oil not doing the drilling they could easily do today. The decision to not drill is coming from Big Oil not the Congress.

I could go on for hours about this. I'll leave with this... DRILL NOW.[/quote]

[billm_usa1]

There is a good Wall Street Journal arcticle today about those 10,000 parcels. Of those 75% don't have oil but are still on the books and rent/roylaties to the Gov't by the Oil Companies. The suggestion that the 10,000 parcels have Oil is not a reasonable belief.

ANWAR
Do you really know anything about ANWAR. Here is a map of what is being requested. The area is TUNDRA. No trees, no wildlife, no bambi, no murcats, just half frozen mud. It's the coastal plain. Here is the map of what is being proposed. If we had drilled during the Clinton administration the Oil if exists would already be in our pipelines. Get real the Oil has to come from somewhere we're not leaving an oil economy anytime soon.

If you really don't want to drill for oil in Anwar, the Pacific Coast, or the Gulf Coast then sell you car, truck and boat so the rest of us can use your portion of the gas and you'll be saving the earth and we'll both be happy.

http://www.anwr.org/docs/CloseupofareaIII.pdf