h a l f b a k e r yBirth of a Notion.
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Even with the announced Opec supply cut, oil is at a
historic low.
While commodity traders can take advantage of such price
moves by trading on futures markets, the average person,
who can sure benefit from lower gas, can't quite create a
strategic petroleum reserve in their own back yard,
so he
can only look at the price per gallon and know with
certainty that the price will be much higher when he
actually needs to go anywhere.
this prepaid card buys the right to fill up the tank at
current prices.
It helps the energy companies by allocating capacity they
don't need.
It helps the consumer when the consumer finally wants to
drive.
Something the good ol' boys in Alabama designed and built.
https://en.wikipedi...GPN-2000-000630.jpg
"Hey y'all, watch this!" [doctorremulac3, Apr 20 2020]
There Is A Happy Land ...
https://genius.com/...far-far-away-lyrics
"Why will you doubting stand, why still delay?" [8th of 7, Apr 25 2020]
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I have a prepaid card for gas. As soon as the price went down I put a lot of credit on it. There's no tank, its town gas, but the meter registers in m^3 rather than £ so you can to an extent do gas price futures trading with it. |
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Is there, perhaps, some confusion here between US "gas" =
"gasoline" = a petroleum-based liquid fuel, and UK "gas" = fuel
supplied and burned as a gas, not a liquid (e.g., "natural gas",
"town gas", methane)? |
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Yes, there is. The Americans have been getting it wrong for generations... |
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There's a clear lack of discrimination between methane ("natural gas"), propane and butane, as opposed to gasoline ("petroleum spirit") and "gas oil" (a heavy oil usable by diesel engines). |
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It's likely that "gas" is used because it's a short, single-syllable word and has the merit of simplicity. |
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You say that like it's a bad thing. <munches crayon contentedly> |
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That's because it is a bad thing, unless you're too ignorant to grasp the implications. |
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<Stares suspiciously at [Voice]/> |
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Where did you get that crayon ? Is that one of our crayons ? If you are chewing Montgomery, we will be Most Displeased. |
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That would help rich people who don't gas their own cars
but occasionally say things like, "We haven't had 85¢ gas
since the 1950s." They can just say, "I paid the market rate,
but with a black card." |
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Those people really cheer up when you mention 'forever
stamps'. |
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//If you are chewing Montgomery [...]// |
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... and how would you characterize your likely affective
response if it turns out that [Voice] is *sucking* Montgomery? |
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To get an idea, make a sphere of Plutonium, and then squeeze it really rapidly with an explosive lens array. |
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Lens arrays are obsolete. |
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Yes, pusher plate designs are now the way to go, but the classic spherical implosion is simpler to engineer. |
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aw, I was hoping you would leak a nuclear secret. |
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We don't leak. However, you obviously have. Again. Recently. |
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$14 a barrel. Unbelievable. You'd think they finally solved
cold fusion. |
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Amazing what you achieve if you shut down the economy. Of course, lots of people will suffer, and there will be unemployment and riots and revolutions, but on the whole, that's good, right ? |
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//Yes, there is. The Americans have been getting
it wrong for generations... |
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There's a clear lack of discrimination between
methane ("natural gas"), propane and butane, as
opposed to gasoline ("petroleum spirit") and "gas
oil" (a heavy oil usable by diesel engines).// |
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Having invented oil drilling and refining we're
pretty tuned in to using context to determine
which type of fuel we're talking about. We don't
need to specify "Don't put crude oil in your butane
barbecue grill." |
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Does that apply to citizens of Alabama ? We have visited Alabama and have grave doubts that such subtle discrimination exists. |
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The phrase "Hey y'all, watch this ! " is a signifier that something interesting and entertaining (but potentially dangerous to onlookers) is about to happen. |
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Pennsylvanians, Texans, Marylanders, yes, they understand the differences. Elsewhere... maybe not so much. |
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See link for something designed and built in Alabama. |
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So, "Nazis are always welcome in Alabama". This is hardly News. |
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...that the Nazi, who had merely expanded on the design of
American Robert Goddard, had planned on a direct ascent
vehicle approach to land on the Moon, basically using the
design from Buck Rogers comic books. American John
Houbolt pointed
out that the nazi's plan wouldn't work and eventually, after
great push-back, convinced the program directors,
(including
the nazi) that they should probably put away the comic
books and use a little science and math to get the job done. |
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That must have been a struggle ... |
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// the design of American Robert Goddard // |
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... working from the theory of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky ... |
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Yet now, Werner von B.'s concept of SSTO has resurfaced. |
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How many of the engineers who designed the Saturn V were actually from Alabama, rather than just working there ? |
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//Yet now, Werner von B.'s concept of SSTO has
resurfaced.// |
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Like my concept of using "some method" of turning
humans into statues? |
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William R. Lucas, the director of the Marshall Space Flight
Center from 74 to 86 was born next door in Tennessee,
moved to Alabama in the 50s. |
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Although admittedly, he did "retire" in disgrace after the
Challenger disaster
which was largely blamed on his management style. Still,
got a lot of space shuttles up and back successfully. |
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That being said, the space shuttle was a horrible design.
Mission drift that got out of control, so keeping these
time bombs from blowing up as long as he did has to be
commended. |
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oil closed negative. Wow. |
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My teenager has requested that I don't talk about the
stock market so much. |
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I tried telling her that in sequential-pay market segments,
always diversify non-defaulted CDOs while in low-yield
markets, plan to cover exchange-traded reference
entities and always diversify from Low-IRR capital
structures in credit-linked market segments and she
barely looked up from her iPhone. |
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Kids nowadays, they just don't listen. |
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Oh, sorry, did you say something ? |
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//oil closed negative. Wow.// |
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Where I live, sure, we still drill for oil and gas off the north-west
coast, but we also mine for lithium. |
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Lithium is one of the most abundant elements in the planetary crust. The trick is finding a source that requires the least energy to extact it. Since it is an alkali metal and highly reactive, the energy cost to produce it in a useful form is high. |
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So it's a good thing we have plentiful solar energy around
here. Nowadays, a typical new mine site in this state has a
micro-grid using a lot of PV cells where, twenty years ago, it
would all have been fossil-fueled. |
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Photovoltaics are fabricated from silicon. Lithium mostly goes into secondary cells. |
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Lithium cells aren't commonly used with PV arrays because of their high self-discharge rate, and cost. Their niche is portable energy where low mass and high energy density are a premium. |
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For static installations where there's no weight penalty, older technologies like lead-acid are still much more cost-effective. |
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True, but I'm not sure what your point is. |
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The current gas price is low because of lack of
storage (no where to put it). Storage has costs, so
the gas price can go negative if a business can’t
afford long term storage and will actually save
money by paying someone to take the gas now.
Unfortunately an IOU / prepaid gas card doesn’t
help them with the current storage crisis (the
reason prices are low, which you of course want to
take advantage of). |
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In a normal economy, most companies make
margin (% markup on the price they pay for
something). When fuel is lowing freely, they can
kind of ignore the fuel sitting in their petrol
stations and just charge %markup on market rate +
cost of transport +\- local competitive factor. |
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Anyway, point is there’s not much risk for them in
the current model Providing a future IOU would
introduce risk (cost), and potentially storage costs
(if lots of people took it up they would have to
underwrite it with lots of storage, in case there
was a run on fuel). |
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Soooo... on reflection not saying it’s a bad idea,
just that you’d have to be willing to pay above
market rate (to cover risk and storage costs), and
accept the risk that the fuel may not be available
to you if there is a run on fuel... |
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// because of lack of storage (no where to put it). // |
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For crude oil, the option is to leave it in the ground. The lack of storage applies to refined products. |
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The refineries are a problem too. They're tuned to produce a narrow volume of output from a narrow blend of feedstock, and they can't be put into "tick-over"; they either run "on the step", or badly or not at all. The physical size of the equipment determines a minimum throughput. |
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An idle refinery is a hugely costly thing, with prolonged shutdown and restart times. |
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Oil producers/exporters have geared their whole economies to particular levels of production and therefore revenue. When demand drops, they cut prices to maintain income before the riots start. Law of Supply and Demand.... |
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Oil in the negative is just referring to oil futures. The oil
has
worth, it's just that the futures people purchased have no
value. It's a contract that's worthless, nobody will take it.
It's like if somebody bought this idea for $10 a gallon
locked in and the price dropped to $5. The card's
worthless. |
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In other words, nobody is paying you to take the oil off
their
hands or even giving it away. Speculators just lost money. |
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Bless you, dear gentle child, for showing such compassion for the sufferings of greedy, wealthy, manipulative parasites. Truly, thou shalt be richly rewarded in Heaven... |
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Cool, as long as I don't have to wear white pajamas and
learn to play the harp. |
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You can do anything you want, that's why it's Heaven. The harp and the white nightshirt are entirely optional. |
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Would you like to set off there now ? |
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I'd need a guarantee that's where I'm going. |
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And a much later travel date. |
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// I'd need a guarantee // |
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We will fully guarantee it, unhesitatingly. We give you our word of honour <Violent coughing/>. If it doesn't work out, we'll refund the full cost of your trip, and pay compensation to your next of kin. Can't say fairer than that, eh ? |
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Why not go early, and avoid the rush ? <link> |
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There's even a carpool option. |
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"You'll wonder why you ever hesitated ... |
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