Shag555

Ease up on "burning coal"... Its been my livleyhood for 22 years, and without it, this country wouldnt be in the position it was in from about 1890 through the last recession. NG prices are killing the coal industry, along with BS EPA Regulations, otherwise known as treehugger regs. Power plants are switching over to NG because its cheap with several shale plays coming on line (i live in the heart of the Marcellus and Utica plays). A very mild winter has also played havvoc on the coal industry. Just remember... Kill coal, and you kill half the power supply in the US. Yeah it could be replaced by gas over the short term, but then NG prices go back up, and so does your heating AND electricity bill. Theres no easy solution.

I'll stick with coal, otherwise my lifestyle goes and Ill be working at wallmort.

Marginmn

iTrader: (1)

Ray, the much anticipated jobs report was released on Friday and there were just 115K new jobs created in April vs the 160K that were expected; also, it was announced that the labor force participation rate fell to just 63.6%, the lowest level since 1981. The low participation rate means that many Americans have given up even looking for work. That in turn means the real unemployment rate in America is much higher than the 8.1% figure announced on Friday by the gov.

In light of those terrible economic numbers oil sold off to price in a more tepid economic recovery. To repeat, bad economic numbers were announced and Oil sold of sharply. And you have a problem with this? A sharp sell off in oil is exactly how oil markets should react to the release of poor economic data. Lower employment = Lower demand for oil = a lower price for oil. Now if the price of oil had gone up after the release of this bad economic data then your rant against the evil oil speculators and your cries of manipulation would make sense. But as it is, you have it ass-backwards. The markets reacted in a perfectly logical fashion.

Toffen

Hi,

Norway is with the north sea one of the major exporters of oil and gas in the world Despite that fact we pay usd 12 per gallon. Lucky us our unemployment rate is approx 4%. However, mainland europes economical problems (they are huge, some are by definition bancrupt) with up to 20% unemployment will hit us.

I am booking international acts for festivals. What we see is that the agents want to stay away of euro, so they prefer usd and gbp. They have lost faith in euro. A bad sign.

My concern is the chinese. They are buying up evererything and they do have a different business policy than ours. Thats for sure ...

Cheers Toffen

Shag555

Don't know how many of you know about this, but there is a electro-chemical process for making petroleum products from coal. Just add heat, pressure, and electricity, and presto... You got diesel, or add more, and presto.... Gasoline.

We in Ohio here were supposed to get a coal to diesel plant near Wellsville on the Ohio River. The company who was building it was guaranteed a contract with the US air force for jet fuel if built - that's until Obumba got elected, the EPA got involved... The final blow was that the Sierra Club made the company sign an agreement that they would not use coal as a feed stock, or they'd sue.

Our "energy independence" in green eyes means walking, and in our case, rowing or sailing. Better build a reed boat though, cause any of the hardware ultimately came from mining raw materials. Can't do a dug-out either, cause they like their trees. Actually now that I think about it, cant do a reed boat either - wetlands are restricted from being disturbed in the US.

Dean Ferry

BINGO, this is the problem the US is facing. And you think it's bad now, wait to see what happens if BO gets
re-elected!
Dean

CrownHawg

Actually I have heard before from the greenies, that the only thing they will be satisfied with is when humankind is GONE FROM THE PLANET!!!

So, they advocate our demise to SAVE THE PLANET!!!

Steve 1

This : http://news.investors.com/article/61...f-fracking.htm


Plus there are Gas to liquid technologies that the Oil companies have , we have huge NG supplies.








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Shag555

That's what the coal to diesel feed stock plant agreed to switch to with the Sierra club. The company soon sold all interests to an Indian corporation. Nat gas is really cheap right now, but down the road, if gas goes back to +4/Mcf, it's not economic, and I'd say they knew it.

twinskrewd

FYI, summer is the prime season for nat gas consumption. The US consumes something like 4 or 5 times as much nat gas in the summer making power to fuel air conditioners than consumers use in the winter to heat their homes.

Just curious, has anybody ever built a nat gas powered boat? As I understand it is not super complicated to convert a gasoline engine to run on natty. I always wondered how it would run in a performance engine.

Just my two bits, we don't actually need to stop using oil, we just need to create a legitimate product to compete against it. I always thought natural gas would be the best way to go since the US has so much of it. Ray you're an engine guy. How hard would it really be to convert a car to run on natty? If we could get something to compete against oil, that would ultimately drive price down. Since there's no ready substitute for the black stuff, there's no limit to what price can do. Ultimately without a ready substitute it's the elasticity of demand that will dictate the final price. Oil is one of the purest economies I've ever seen. Kinda cool, but not always in a good way...

Steve 1

Simple convert NG to liquid Fuel !