World's Oil Supply "Alarming"

We haven't liked to see gasoline go from $2.50 per gallon this summer to $3.15 today. But $3.15 could be the lowest price we see for gasoline in a VERY long time.

Of course the main reason for oil prices shooting up is all the unrest happening all around, and in, the oil producing countries.

"This is potentially worse for oil than the Iran crisis in 1979," said Paul Horsnell, head of oil research at Barclays Capital. "That was a revolution in one country, here there are so many countries at once. The world has only 4.5m barrels-per-day (bpd) of spare capacity, which is not comfortable."

Global oil inventories are higher than before the 2008 price spike, and OPEC can raise output if needed. It has refused to act so far despite pleas from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that the supply picture is already "alarming".

See it here; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/oilprices/8339440/Oil-shock-fears-as-Libya-erupts.html

Ask yourselves how high gas prices would need to get over the next few months before UNREST started happening in the USA. Diesel is already at $3.60 gallon and we all know that EVERYTHING we buy in Walmart, Target and Cub was brought to the story using a diesel truck. How much would the prices go up on EVERYTHING we buy if diesel went to $8 per gallon?

When we grew up our family had one car. My dad rode the bus downtown for 30 years. My mom stayed home and cooked, cleaned and cared for our family. There were many days where our car DID NOT leave the garage. Even though church was only 4 miles away from our home, our parents carpooled us to confirmation every Wednesday night so they only had to take that 4 mile trip ONCE per month.

Can you imagine anyone calling you today and asking to set up a car pool to drive someplace 4 miles away? People would think you were insane!! Today we run around in our cars and trucks and think nothing of putting 100 miles per day on our vehicles. Many of us today will just "run down" to Maple Grove from Buffalo simply to have a bite to eat. The round trip has to be 60 miles and depending on your truck might take 4-6 gallons of gas.

This cheap fuel WILL be coming to an end. Our economy was built on cheap fuel and now that it is collapsing...will we be able to innovate fast enough to keep our lifestyles going? Or will we come to a grinding halt as people RE-LEARN how to stay home, play with their next door neighbors, walk to bridge club across the street, have their kids play hockey in the street instead of driving them to Bloomington, and entertain friends in their dining rooms instead of everyone driving 60 miles and laying out $65 for a few ribs and $50 for a movie and a bucket of popcorn?

Are we capable of re-learning how simple our lives USED to be?