Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 9 Sept. 13th, 2008
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++ News -
The big news over the weekend is of course Hurricane Ike. We noticed a spike in Gas prices and rumors of a ’shortage’ here yesterday and there were lines at the gas pumps and even some fights were started. I would just like to mention that the US has a huge petroleum reserve for cases when the gas supply gets short. I don’t think we’ll have any severe shortages, just a glitch or two as things get lined out.
Price for a barrel of oil fell briefly yesterday to below $100 barrel but rebounded a bit at the end of the day. That was even with Hurricane Ike… so my prediction is after hurricane season they will fall even further. Next week we’ll talk some about the Hurricane season.
Found this link yesterday which is like a Hurricane situation room with news and live feeds.
http://www.vuetoo.com/vue1/SituationPageNews.asp?sit=2190
Ike has forced some shutdown of Refinery Capacity. Details can be found here.
++ The Oil Industry - Domestic Supply - Alaska
This week we’re going to talk about Alaska oil supplies. Unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere you’ve heard the debate about drilling in Alaska.
We talked about the oil that comes from Alaska some last week but the controversy is drilling in the Arctic Refuge. The Arctic National Wildlife reserve (ANWR) consists of almost 20 million acres of the Northern Alaska Coast. The controversy is between getting the oil and disrupting the environment and the habitats of the animals.
I’m not going to take sides on this, but hopefully will give you an idea of the controversy.
The Environment
The argument here is that the disruption of Eco systems and habitats would not be worth the amount of oil that would be obtained from drilling there. Reports say that oil production from there would have minimal impact on oil prices. There is also a fear that there would be oil spills. Everyone remembers the Valdez.
The Oil Reserves
It is estimated that drilling in the ANWR and surrounding areas would produce an estimated 10.4 Billion (yep that is Billion) barrels of oil. Without actually drilling there this is a rough guess. The estimated amount of oil still in the US is 120 billion barrels of oil. So ANWR constitutes roughly 10% of the US reserves.
So what are your thoughts, make sure to leave a comment and let us know.
You can find much more information (including arguments for the pros and cons here). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Refuge_drilling_controversy
Saving you Money
Short and Sweet this week. We’ve mentioned coupons. Here are a couple of different ways to get additional coupons.
1. When you see an advertisement on T.V., note the URL with the advertisement. Sometimes they will provide a coupon at the website.
2. Do a search for the coupon your looking for on Google - we did this the last time we bought a Dell computer and saved about $400.
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If you haven’t had a chance to buy our gas mileage guide we would encourage you to do so.
you can find it here. Thanks so much for sharing your day with us and we hope you have a wonderful weekend.
