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As you may have noticed, all those military vehicles are in action right now, not sitting in storage. I wonder what all that increased usage is doing to oil demand...probably not a big chunk of where all that oil goes, but it's gotta be something...

Wed., April. 2, 2008

WASHINGTON - Think you're being gouged by Big Oil? U.S. troops in Iraq are paying almost as much as Americans back home, despite burning fuel at staggering rates in a war to stabilize a country known for its oil reserves.

Military units pay an average of $3.23 a gallon for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, some $88 a day per service member in Iraq, according to an Associated Press review and interviews with defense officials. A penny or two increase in the price of fuel can add millions of dollars to U.S. costs.

The U.S. military, through its Defense Energy Support Center, buys fuel on the open market, paying from $1.99 a gallon to as much as $5.30 a gallon under contracts with private and government-owned oil companies. The center then sets a fixed rate for troops, currently $3.51 a gallon for diesel, $3.15 for gasoline, $3.04 for jet fuel and $13.61 for a high-octane fuel used mostly in unmanned aerial vehicles.

Kuwait does grant substantial subsidies, but they cover only about half the fuel used by the U.S. in Iraq. And the discount is eaten up by the Energy Support Center's administrative costs and fluctuations in the market.

Overall, the military consumes about 1.2 million barrels, or more than 50 million gallons of fuel, each month in Iraq at an average $127.68 a barrel. That works out to about $153 million a month.

Historically, figures are astounding
In World War II, the average fuel consumption per soldier or Marine was about 1.67 gallons a day; in Iraq, it's 27.3 gallons, according to briefing slides prepared by a Pentagon task force established to review consumption.

The Pentagon's demand for fuel in Iraq has had little if any effect on global oil prices. Frank Verrastro, director of the energy and national security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the military's use of 1.2 million barrels a month — or roughly 40,000 barrels a day — represents a small chunk of the 86 million barrels demanded each day on the global market.

When Taylor pressed Pentagon and embassy officials on the matter, he was told Kuwait was actually offering a rare discount. Unlike other oil-rich allies, Kuwait is estimated to have saved the U.S. government $1.2 billion in four years, from 2002 to 2006, U.S. Embassy officials told the congressman in a Jan. 3 letter.

Under the current agreement, the Kuwait-owned company supplies 7,000 gallons per day of free fuel to U.S. forces operating inside Kuwait. For troops in Iraq, Kuwait offers 860,000 gallons of jet fuel a day at less than half the market price. This discounted fuel represents more than half the fuel the U.S. uses in Iraq each day.

The rest of the fuel — about 100,000 to 200,000 gallons a day — is sold to the U.S. military at market rate.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23922063/

I am not here to America-bash, but with 2/3 of adult Americans now clinically obese (that's double what it was 20 years ago), and consuming as a country 70% or more of the energy used in the world each year, at some point habits are going to have to change, aren't they ?

Even a Little Helps a Lot
"Even a modest weight loss of 5-10% of body weight decreases blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugars," says Dr. Zebrack. Her advice? Basic common sense. "A combined therapy has proven to be most effective for weight loss: dietary therapy, physical activity, and behavioral changes." She recommends first seeing your health care provider for an assessment. He or she can tell you how much, if any, weight you need to lose, as well as help you set goals and make a plan. Your provider may also have you see a dietician who can help determine your daily calorie requirements for weight loss.

You ARE being sarcastic, right?! PLEASE tell us you are!!!! Because anybody who seriously cannot see the relationship has got a serious problem with their perception (or rather, lack thereof) of reality!!
How can obesity and consumption of any sort NOT be linked?! As "boblite" noted, the common thread is GLUTTONY, which is epidemic in the North American mindset. Anyone who has trouble with the link between obesity and over-consumption of energy need only remember the following term:
DRIVE-THRU

nuff said.

We have solar and wind power and deisel. A car with solar could also use the wind that moves thru it to move turbines to charge the car as well and would be betteter than electric.

Those turbines would require energy to charge the battery, much less efficient than charging directly from solar panels. Current solar cell technology would require a solar array the size of the roof of a small house to power even a very small car. Solar powered cars may be a reality in the future, but with current technology (no pun intended), they wouldn't be practical.

Boo freakin' hoo!

I wish gas was $10 a gallon. It would be worth it to get more of the riff-raff off the roads so the rest of us could drive in pleasure and peace without worrying that some idiot with a cell phone grafted to their ear was gonna smack into us.

Do not say it is due to overconsumption as no one has come up with a feesable method to do with out oil.

Then why do prices still rise?

There is growing evidence that the recent speculative bubble in oil which has gone asymptotic since January is about to pop.

Late last month in Dallas Texas, according to one participant, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists held its annual conference where all the major oil executives and geologists were present. According to one participant, knowledgeable oil industry CEOs reached the consensus that "oil prices will likely soon drop dramatically and the long-term price increases will be in natural gas."

Just a few days earlier, Lehman Brothers, a Wall Street investment bank had said that the current oil price bubble was coming to an end. Michael Waldron, the bank's chief oil strategist, was quoted in Britain's Daily Telegraph on Apr. 24 saying, "Oil supply is outpacing demand growth. Inventories have been building since the beginning of the year.”

In the US, stockpiles of oil climbed by almost 12 million barrels in April according to the May 7 EIA monthly report on inventory, up by nearly 33 million barrels since January. At the same time, MasterCard's May 7 US gasoline report showed that gas demand has fallen by 5.8%. And refiners are reducing their refining rates dramatically to adjust to the falling gasoline demand. They are now running at 85% of capacity, down from 89% a year ago, in a season when production is normally 95%. The refiners today are clearly trying to draw down gasoline inventories to bid gasoline prices up. ‘It’s the economy, stupid,’ to paraphrase Bill Clinton’s infamous 1992 election quip to daddy Bush. It’s called economic recession.

The May 8 report from Oil Movements, a British company that tracks oil shipments worldwide, shows that oil in transit on the high seas is also quite strong. Almost every category of shipment is running higher than it was a year ago. The report notes that, "In the West, a big share of any oil stock building done this year has happened offshore, out of sight." Some industry insiders say the global oil industry from the activities and stocks of the Big Four to the true state of tanker and storage and liftings, is the most secretive industry in the world with the possible exception of the narcotics trade.

Goldman Sachs again in the middle

The oil price today, unlike twenty years ago, is determined behind closed doors in the trading rooms of giant financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank or UBS. The key exchange in the game is the London ICE Futures Exchange (formerly the International Petroleum Exchange). ICE Futures is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Atlanta Georgia International Commodities Exchange. ICE in Atlanta was founded in part by Goldman Sachs which also happens to run the world’s most widely used commodity price index, the GSCI, which is over-weighted to oil prices.

As I noted in my earlier article, (‘Perhaps 60% of today’s oil price is pure speculation’), ICE was focus of a recent congressional investigation. It was named both in the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' June 27, 2006, Staff Report and in the House Committee on Energy & Commerce's hearing in December 2007 which looked into unregulated trading in energy futures. Both studies concluded that energy prices' climb to $128 and perhaps beyond is driven by billions of dollars' worth of oil and natural gas futures contracts being placed on the ICE. Through a convenient regulation exception granted by the Bush Administration in January 2006, the ICE Futures trading of US energy futures is not regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, even though the ICE Futures US oil contracts are traded in ICE affiliates in the USA. And at Enron’s request, the CFTC exempted the Over-the-Counter oil futures trades in 2000.

So it is no surprise to see in a May 6 report from Reuters that Goldman Sachs announces oil could in fact be on the verge of another "super spike," possibly taking oil as high as $200 a barrel within the next six to 24 months. That headline, "$200 a barrel!" became the major news story on oil for the next two days. How many gullible lemmings followed behind with their money bets?

Margin rules feed the frenzy

Another added turbo-charger to present speculation in oil prices is the margin rule governing what percent of cash a buyer of a futures contract in oil has to put up to bet on a rising oil price (or falling for that matter). The current NYMEX regulation allows a speculator to put up only 6% of the total value of his oil futures contract. That means a risk-taking hedge fund or bank can buy oil futures with a leverage of 16 to 1.

We are hit with an endless series of plausible arguments for the high price of oil: A "terrorism risk premium;" “blistering” rise in demand of China and India; unrest in the Nigerian oil region; oil pipelines' blown up in Iraq; possible war with Iran…And above all the hype about Peak Oil. Oil speculator T. Boone Pickens has reportedly raked in a huge profit on oil futures and argues, conveniently that the world is on the cusp of Peak Oil. So does the Houston investment banker and friend of****Cheney, Matt Simmons.

As the June 2006 US Senate report, The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices, noted, "There's a few hedge fund managers out there who are masters at knowing how to exploit the peak oil theories and hot buttons of supply and demand, and by making bold predictions of shocking price advancements to come, they only add more fuel to the bullish fire in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy."

Will a Democratic Congress act to change the carefully crafted opaque oil futures markets in an election year and risk bursting the bubble? On May 12 House Energy & Commerce Committee stated it will look at this issue into June. The world will be watching.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9042

Global Research Associate F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (PlutoPress), and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. (Global Research, available at www.globalresea

Through a convenient regulation exception granted by the Bush Administration in January 2006, the ICE Futures trading of US energy futures is not regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, even though the ICE Futures US oil contracts are traded in ICE affiliates in the USA. And at Enron’s request, the CFTC exempted the Over-the-Counter oil futures trades in 2000.

And refiners are reducing their refining rates dramatically to adjust to the falling gasoline demand. They are now running at 85% of capacity, down from 89% a year ago, in a season when production is normally 95%. The refiners today are clearly trying to draw down gasoline inventories to bid gasoline prices up.

Money, its a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think Ill buy me a football team.

Money, get back.
Im all right jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, its a hit.
Dont give me that do goody good bull++++.
Im in the high-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a lear jet.

ExxonMobil has made pre-tax profits of $164 billion on sales of $369.5 billion.

Exxon Mobil, the largest oil company, reported at the start of this month a record 2007 profit of $40.6 billion, earnings that trounced any other company. Royal Dutch Shell reported the largest earnings of any company in Britain, at about $31 billion.

Terry Macalister
The Guardian,
Friday May 2 2008

Exxon sees production slump by 5.6%

Pressure on ExxonMobil increased yesterday when it disappointed investors with a lower-than-expected set of quarterly earnings as its overall oil and gas production slumped by 5.6%.

Just 24 hours after the board was roundly criticised by members of the founding Rockefeller family, Exxon reported a 17% increase in profits compared with a year ago. The $10.89bn (£5.5bn) net income figure, worth £2.7m an hour, was bolstered by a 70% increase in US crude prices, but Exxon's oil output was cut after some of its assets were seized by Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, and it was hit by quota effects in Opec countries.

Profits were also tempered as margins to produce petrol plummeted, with refiners struggling to push through higher crude costs to customers. First-quarter petrol prices rose only 33% year-on-year in the US, less than half the rise in the price of crude.

It was the second biggest quarterly profit in US corporate history, behind the $11.66bn Exxon posted in the last three months of 2007, but many analysts had been predicting the company would go on to break new records.

The bit about turbines and dynamos and guitar tuning is too incomprehensible for me to follow; it really doesn't make sense.