ch.annel2-i.s-n.ow-a.ngry

A check late Wednesday night in Matthews and southeast Charlotte found gas at only two of 23 stations — less than 10 percent.

The problem seems limited to the western Carolinas, as there are no reports of gas shortages in Raleigh-Durham, Columbia, or along the coast.

Gas company and government officials are blaming the shortage on refinery problems in the wake of Hurricane Ike, which struck the Houston area more than a week ago. But it is unclear why only the Charlotte and Asheville areas — along with some other metropolitan regions, such as Atlanta and Nashville — have been more seriously impacted than others.

It feels as if Ike hit years ago.  Seriously though, gas shortages in North Carolina? That’s pretty far from Texas - where else? Not very specific, just regions in the south. I’m curious for specifics. This little blip with the specifics hasn’t hit the national news scene, a nod in the direction of W.G. 

The NYMEX is showing Light Sweet Crude closed at $102.16 per barrel today.

Bloomberg is showing the dated Brent Spot price at $98.52 per barrel.

Barchart.com is showing ICE Brent Crude Oil for Oct at $99.37 per barrel.

Stats wrassled by Calculated Risk.  Okay, so we had ~$150 barrel oil. Gas shot up to $4.50 per gallon for a while. Why has a drop in price of 1/3rd in the oil sector not triggered a similar decline in the pump sector? We are down to about $3.80 on the street around town.  But a correlation with oil prices should have seen that drop down more than a buck a gallon. Seems like every time the price of oil goes up quickly, so does the pumps, but when the price of oil drops, the pumps drift like economic feathers. 

That’s what it’s supposed to be anyway, economic Darwinism, but you fuck with it, and like nature, it fucks back with you.

Mr. Levin didn’t return calls for comment. But Representative John D. Dingell, the powerful Democrat from Detroit who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, argues — as he did more than a decade ago — that tightening CAFE standards unfairly penalizes domestic automakers while rewarding foreign rivals who make more small cars.

I bet they’re wishing they hadn’t fought those increases in MPG standards.  In Japan cars average 40+ MPG. My ten year old Honda gets 35 freeway. I laugh at the poor suckers who are paying $100+ for a fill-up. My car max costs $56 bucks to fill at current market prices. For years it was cool to spend money, it made you bad-ass. Now, you’re poor. : ( Of course, your profligate debt-spending has driven interest rates rock-bottom and killed my savings income. At least I got out of the market before it tanked too bad. Wish I had been paying better attention. But hey, I only lost 900 instead of 1400 bucks, so far.

Energy Department spokeswoman Angela Hill said the department will review Warner’s letter but added, “If Congress is serious about addressing gasoline prices, they must take action on expanding domestic oil and natural gas production.”

Ever notice how every time gas prices comes out of the mouth of one of this administration’s puppets they always manage to link any situation to expanding domestic oil and natural gas production, “if we’re serious.” Even though most reputable sources say that domestic production increases will likely mean about 3 cents difference at the pumps a few years down the road, if we’re lucky. The Saudis bumping up their output isn’t even expected to have much of an impact on the price of oil. What we need is a transition from an oil-centric situation to a locally-sourced energy. You know, it’s like, it’s always cheaper to grow your own vegetables than to buy from the store. 1 tomato plant costs about 5 bucks. 4 ‘good’ tomatoes cost about 5 bucks. Do the math. Tomatoes are so easy a 20$ water timer will get you literally more tomatoes than you can eat in a year from one plant. Solar power is easy. It’s so easy, it only requires labor once every 30 years, and hosing down once a year or so.

Now, imagine a grid where the grid is the power source. Everyone could hook up with their neighbors, share power when they needed it - need to run the hairdryer for 5 minutes but it’s a cloudy day? Done. (Yes, I know solar charges batteries, yes, I know it works on cloudy days because clouds don’t stop UV, the major source of solar kilowatts, I’m oversimplifying.) Now - imagine solar on the top of all businesses. I’ll go you one better - imagine solar-roofed parking lots, finally we’ll ALWAYS be able to park in the shade, and then you can just plug in your electric car while you shop - every store will be a refueling station, and can make extra money that way. Go one step further, solarize our transportation grid with visible-light transparent solar films, we should be able to acheive that. If we pushed hard enough, we could acheive energy independence and then some.

Think about it. The current most prolific form of life on the surface of this earth is plants - they cover pretty much every square inch they possibly can. They are also the most efficient form of solar collection we currently know. A few pounds of plant matter will power a human for an entire day, which takes about 2000 calories - nutritional calories are actually kilocalories, so that’s 2,000,000 calories, now at 4.184 Joules per Calorie this give us 8300000 Joules per day - to get Watts per day we’ll have to devide the Joules by the time in seconds, 3600 to be precise, and we get 2.3 kilowatts per day. And that’s not even using all of it - you poop something out, right? If we cover the world in solar, not only will we be drowning in kilowatts, the ground will be a more pleasant, weather-protected experience, and stink less with no polluting vehicles.

Things are not OK.

“I fear we might start eating one another. We will never stop protesting until traders accept the notes.”

I guess Ted Turner was right. Only he predicted 50 years from now, not tomorrow.

Though agriculturally fertile, the violence and anarchy in Somalia makes it dependent largely on food imports.

Sad fucking world. Go read Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix.

Local authorities and traders held crisis meetings in Mogadishu on Tuesday in a desperate move to quell the growing anger among residents of one of the world’s most impoverished and well-armed cities.

Correlation? Probably obvious, but under the radar for some voters.

U.S. crude oil futures rose to a new record high for a second day on Tuesday, with crude oil futures for June delivery touching a record of $120.70 a barrel.

London Brent crude oil futures set a new record of $119.03 a barrel.

Supply disruptions in Nigeria have helped push oil to new peaks. Royal Dutch Shell’s production from Nigeria, for example, is down by about 164,000 barrels per day.

Strikes and attacks by militants on oil installations have caused a succession of supply problems in the OPEC member country, the world’s eighth-biggest oil exporter.

Weakness in the U.S. dollar has also contributed to oil’s rise, as this had boosted the price of commodities denominated in the U.S. currency.

FUN!

UBS, the largest Swiss bank, said Tuesday that it expected to cut about 5,500 jobs, including 2,600 in its investment banking unit, as it announced a first-quarter loss of about $10.9 billion.

FUCKED!

UBS wrote down $19 billion in soured American subprime mortgage securities and other investments in the first quarter, bringing its total write-downs since the beginning of the credit crisis to about $38 billion.

40$ bil in less than a full year, more still to come, and currently all our fault. Wait until the rest of the world starts feeling the pop after their bubbles that were blown from ours pop.

Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida has been fighting to cut 10 cents from the state’s gasoline tax for two weeks in July. Lawmakers in Missouri, New York and Texas have also proposed a summer break from state gas taxes, while candidates for governor in Indiana and North Carolina are sparring over relief ideas of their own.

Oh, RIGHT, cuz paying $3.90 a gallon as opposed to $4.00 is SO FUCKING SIGNIFICANT. If you have a 12 gallon tank like my and you’re completely dry, you fill up - you save $1.20!!!!! HOLY SHIT! I’m fucking rich again! I can spend that buck twenty on coffee! But only because Starfucks is lowering their prices!!!!! We’re in great shape! Economy’s coming back, food is good, oil supply is totally in the positive and prices are coming down across the board!

Right?

Oh, no, wait, that last paragraph was total fucking bullshit.

We’re boned.

These senators, well-known war skeptics, could find allies in lawmakers who support Bush’s current Iraq policies. In hearings last week, Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates whether Baghdad should start paying some U.S. combat costs, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., raised the possibility that an anticipated Iraqi budget surplus this year could be used to help Afghanistan, whose $700 million in annual revenue represents a small fraction of Iraq’s $46.8 billion budget.

So we want Iraq… to pay for Afghanistan now? Because we… invaded them, and now… they… owe?.. us for it? Does this mean if Afghanistan had oil and had not only been making money from selling poppies that we would be asking them to help us pay for Iraq, or maybe help us fund a build-up to invading Iran? How about paying us to leave? Why are we saying what they should be doing anyway? They have a democratically elected government now. Much like Iran and Israel they should be left alone.

1. Bartender, This CPI Not So Think As You Good It Is!

Another round, please! The futures this morning spiked hard on what conventional wisdom suggests was a truly impressive Consumer Price Index print. Consumer prices in February came in unexpectedly unchanged thanks largely to 0.5% decline in Energy prices that, seasonally adjusted, turned into a 2% decline.

Consumer prices were forecast to rise 0.3%, according to the median estimate of 81 economists by Bloomberg.

Looking inside the CPI, Medical Care costs rose 0.1%, the smallest increase since March 2007. Food, which accounts for about 20% of the CPU, continued to show gains, up 0.4% increase.

The reality, however, is that this inflation measure is a lagging indicator no matter how it is sliced and diced. But credit markets are leading indicators. And while economists and market participants fight over the legitimacy of this CPI print, the credit markets continue to scream deflation.

My thought: What if the price Americans were paying in oil subsidies payed for by out tax dollars (the very same oil subsidies that we denigrate Venezuela for having) were factored into the CPI?

If you go to the first three web sites listed below, you’ll learn that the oil subsidies in the US are in the range of $20 to $55 billion per year (averaging and rounding off). The high end includes the military costs of “defending” Persian Gulf oil; the low end doesn’t.

So add that to the price at the pump and see what we get, I’m too tired to do the math right now (2am and don’t feel like decyphering the Consumer Price Codex at the moment). The above link is rather specious but I’ve had trouble coming up with hard data about oil subsidies. And you think all those taxes you pay at the pump are going to the gov and back to the roads, but it’s robbing Peter to pay Dick because all that money is at the very least going straight back to Big Oil. Conservative estimates put it at an extra 32 cents per gallon. Now, I pay about $400 bones in taxes per quarter, and in the last three month’s I’ve spent approximately $233 on gas in the last quarter (and that’s not counting cash or December, this is for the quarter ending 3/31), which, at an average of $3 a gallon ($3.41 now with Safeway discount) gives me roughly 78 gallons of gas bought in 2 1/2 month. That’s an extra $25 at the pump, so that means $25 less of my taxes going to pay for things for you and I. It’s going to help us drive our machines of war over Iraqis, and Saudi born Iraqi jihadis. Or at least a good $20 bucks worth is.