Gas Price Questions

[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

[kamper_]

Billm:
It's a wildlife REFUGE. And you say there is no wildlife there. Sorry but you lost credibility when you say that.

There is lots of wildlife on that Coast Line. That is exactly why it was made into a Wildlife Sanctuary in the first place.

Now tell me how many oil wells have been drilled on the ANWAR property? If you can't answer that question then I will. ONE. One test well has been drilled so far. And they are not telling anyone what they found

Now you claim that those 10,000 permits don't hold any oil. Care to tell me why you say that? How many test wells have been drilled in those 60 million acres.

And thanks for showing the map of ANWAR. From your map on Photobucket everyone can see how tiny that area is compared to the Rest of Alaska. The oil companies can drill anywhere in Alaska EXCEPT that small area called ANWAR. So why would they not drill in the rest of Alaska before drilling in ANWAR where it will disrupt the wildlife? Maybe you can find the answer to that question in the vaulted Wall Street Journal.

Hint: the Journal of Petroleum Engineers may be a better resource than the Wall Street Journal when it comes to figuring out where oil is located in untested areas of the USA. Geologists will be the ones that find the oil not journalists.

If you are right about those 10,000 permits then why don't the Oil Companies release their rights to those permits first and then we can see if they are willing to do that? I would bet that they want to hang onto that precious land and those drilling rights.

Like the post above said. Drill it or LOOSE IT and that's not talking about ANWAR. They want to explore fine. They have 63 million acres to explore first.

[bassmanic1]

Hey guys - what the heck does any of this have to do with fishing in Indiana ? It is WAY off topic . The price of gas is like the cost of most everything OUT OF OUR CONTROL , get over it .

[wkerber]

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]

The oil companies want to drill ANWAR and off the coast but they are not drilling in those leased areas. What that says is that the leased areas don't hold the big reserves and would be costly to drill. Given that, if they do drill in the leased land, it just means higher cost per barrel. Right now they are just taking a small fixed percent off each barrel from OPEC imports for the bulk of our oil. Don't you think that if it was cost effective that they would want to drill domestically and themselves keep the base revenue that OPEC gets per barrel? It's a business in a capitalistic environment. They'll pursue what ever generates the most revenue for their shareholders. That's just business. If we want them to drill and provide oil in order to lower the price, we need to let them do it in the areas were they can extract large amounts of oil cheaply.
Frankly, I don't care about ANWAR. I don't know anyone that has been there and I don't know anyone that plans to visit. As I told McCain in a letter, if you want to worry about the environment for me, worry about the one that I live and play in, not some lousy caribou in a frozen tundra area. Athough, I do hear that they taste like chicken.