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Oil shipments falling faster than railroads anticipated
Barack Obama is glad his efforts to kill domestic energy production are paying off! Never mind the lost jobs, rotating blackouts and rising energy costs.
That Obama is one powerful dude, having singlehandedly caused a 50% drop in world oil prices. Aren’t you going to thank him for your cheap gasoline?
Cheaper gas angered the little tyrant.
Drilling on state and public lands is what caused the oil surplus/lower prices. No thanks to the feds who keep taking more and more federal land away from oil production and exploration.
Geez I thought this was an apolitical forum. Seems like market forces are at work, except when special interests are gored in the market, which of course it’s Obama’s fault. Puh-eeze. Same nonsense with ethanol subsidies and others similar.
Gosh what goes up may go down. The oil business is full of booms and busts for as long as oil has been pumped out of the ground. How quickly everyone forgets the skyrocketing oil prices in the 70’s followed by the 80’s bust. The Saudis have not forgotten they are still pumping. Now this week with Yemen on traders minds the price of oil is going back up. Free market hard at work.
Thanks Ian and Nathan for some sensible comments. Anyone who makes half an effort to follow world supply and demand trends along with the actions of the Saudi’s not too mention that close to 90% of US storage capacity is filled with crude already out of the ground would understand that markets is driving things. Not to mention the fact that it costs more to get oil out of the ground if you have to pump something like sand into the ground in the first place. Rails have benefited from the plus side of high prices and the lack of pipeline infrastructure. If anything, this might slow down pipe line construction and therefore protect rails market a little bit longer when oil prices are on the upswing.
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The plus side, oil doesn’t go away when prices drop. It goes away after you pump it out of the ground. So the question that people might want to ask themselves, do you want to buy Saudi oil when prices are down even if some lose and others gain or expend our own resources no matter if world prices are low or not?
Maybe with the loss of oil traffic, grain shippers, and others, can get all the service they want
I really cant believe people actually believe any president controls that, how misinformed and uneducated some people are.
@ Peter M Benham, just what country and time frame are you talking about with your comment about the POTUS causing lost jobs, rotating blackouts, and rising energy costs? Cause here in the US we are enjoying an rebounding economy when compared to what it was in 2008. We don’t have any electrical blackouts and even manage to get some of our electricity from non traditional sources which as a byproduct doesn’t pollute the air we breath or water we drink. As for energy costs, I can’t remember the last time I bought, at retail, diesel for $2.28US/Gal. or gasoline for under $2.00US/Gal. Our employment is at a healthy number but wages could be higher in some fields and lower in others. That though is just how a growing economy works, as here in the US we have a Capitalistic system (which means gouge your neighbor for all you can) nation wide as it was established when our country was formed.
@ Jim Norton, can you read? the Bakken oil field in ND and MT as well as the oil areas in OK,TX, and NM are all in private ownership which is why there’s a glut of oil on the market at the moment. The oil in AK mainly goes to Japan while the coastal oil in CA stays in CA, just the offshore oil in your area stays in your area. Now if the Fed’s really controlled the oil production, do you think that the offshore oil well would have been allowed to drill with as lax a blowout preventer as it had, which to our knowledge and sadness now, know it didn’t work, there by causing the worst oil related catastrophe to date?
Call it an outlandish idea if you want, but I see a vast potential market in the Western US for Eastern water. Suppliers such as American Water could sell and ship to Western buyers, both private and public. California’s water situation, and all the agriculture that depends on it, is in seriously bad shape. Can large-scale water shipping be economically viable? If so, can rails handle a significant part of it?
Yes Michael, Water could be shipped in the 111 tank cars, and I had already suggested Ed Ellis ship it from the Hudson River at North Creek, NY from his Saratoga & North Creek RR. But no one has extablished the freight rates and got ENCON approval.
I agree with Michael Stokes. Shipping water to California would be a great idea–especially with the drought we are facing. Who has ever heard of a tank car with water exploding? The people in the eastern United States have water to spare. I don’t think we would hear any crying outbursts from environmentalists.