From $2.00 gas to $5.00 gas in 4 years

Because, much to the surprise of some, not being able to afford an I-Phone will not leave you to freeze to death, nor prevent you from getting to work, nor stop industry. What the oil interests are doing is akin to the gougers that hit Homestead after Huricane Andrew with generators, food and water.

Here's a lesson in geography. Long Island is 120 miles long. There is no single location that can support a captain, electronics guy, mobile mechanic, etc. We are an island of commuters in every trade. If you live near your job the odds are that you are either very rich (Houses in the Hamptons start at about $900K, house taxes throughout the Island average $10-15K a year)or very poor, and if you ever leave that job for any reason it's a fair guess that you will become a commuter traveling in excess of an hour each way to work. I'm centrally located and shy away from jobs up west or in Montauk, because with traffic that can be a 2 1/2 to 3 hour commute, however many do it. We are held hostage to the oil companies. It's also quickly becoming an island of chiefs with no indians, because the middle and lower income workers are fleeing. They can't afford to live here mainly because of the commuting costs. The Long Island Expressway is called the longest parking lot in the country. Yes I can leave the island, and many are doing it, but it's my home and there are people here (and many boaters) that depend on me. So the bottom line is that I can pay whatever the oil companies charge or I can give up working and/or freeze to death come winter. That's the difference between oil and I-Phones.

Well put, NYCAP. Mid 20th century I was born in Freeport LI and from 3 to 17 yrs age lived in North Merrick. Grew up working at Woodcleft and Hudson canals on boats and in boat yards... and... would often cruise the LI/NY area waters as well as up the coast Ended up in Maine's Penobscot Bay area at 18 and by mid twenties onward to many other points in U.S. Live in SF Bay Area now; since 1984. I often must travel hundred ++ miles for biz meetings or take plane to further locations. Boat is docked 99.8 miles door to door. I understand what you say.

The words Extort and Extortion have interesting implications/connotations regarding the prices/costs forced upon the general public (by what I believe are national and international price fixing coalitions) that are associated with “need-be” products and services of which when trying to live without a person would likely not be able to feasibly continue their life-style (and I do not mean - - > I phones, or ice cream cones, or yard maintenance, or boat captains, or brick masonry!). For much time in America business products and services were associated with “good products at a fair profit and acceptable price”. That was one of the generally unspoken premises of fair intra-nation U.S. trade that helped build our country into the great nation we grew up in. But... somehow along the way the patterns of more is better and greed is good entered our lifestyles and lexicon. America’s national and international business concerns morphed into the gouge-syndrome which has entered into most levels of trading along most lines of big-business, big-financials, and big-govt. Extortion-like-procedures (via collation price-gouge) seems to have become the rule of thumb regarding access to many need-bes. Unfortunately the term “Greed Is Good” has become an accepted thought pattern by too many. There will eventually be a clearing... but at what national and international human cost?? A cost that undoubtedly could have been avoided, if “good products at a fair profit and acceptable price” had become a permanent business mantra – not – Greed Is Good!

Extort:
Law .
a. to wrest or wring (money, information, etc.) from a person by violence, intimidation, or abuse of authority; obtain by force, torture, threat, or the like.
b. to take illegally by reason of one's office.

Extortion:
1. Law . the crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one's office or authority.
2. oppressive or illegal exaction, as of excessive price or interest: the extortions of usurers.
3. anything extorted.

I love boats... Man I Love Boats!! And... To help keep our boating industry and boating enjoyments “floating-correctly” it is time we squarely face current and oncoming national and international financial problems. United We Stand – Divided We Fall!

Know the area well Art, and do quite a bit of work there. But that area is handled mostly by a couple of colleagues who live there. It's 70 miles round trip for me. That's 1 1/2 hours in rush hour each way (1/2 hour at night). They won't/can't work the east end unless they're desperate and then charge a hefty premium as it takes them 2 hours + just to Sag. I've positioned myself in the middle where houses and taxes are almost affordable and the commute to either end is only miserable and expensive, but not impossible...yet. Plus, NYC is only just getting to here. Freeport/Merrick might just as well be considered part of Queens today and their taxes would put you in cardiac arrest.

You know, the bottom line is inflation. Don't forget credit card fees.....If a gallon of gas is $3.50, the gas station is losing 3% or .11 cents a gallon to the credit card company, that puts it at $3.39 a gallon, now lets say $.47 in tax so the gas which is $2.92, the fuel delivery company is probably getting $2.85 and then they're paying the refinery etc etc.........Remember prior to 10 years ago, almost everyone paid cash for gasoline and the gas stations weren't losing 3% right off of the top to the credit card fees. Also the EPA mandate where by 2010 all in ground fuel tanks had to be replaced at the tune of $250,000 dollars a fuel tank...even if the tanks aren't that old.........causing the cost of doing business as a gas station to skyrocket......which the station then has to pass onto the consumers in order to keep their doors open.

The bottom line is our dollar is worth less due to the current administration spending way too much money and artificially keeping interest rates down, causing imports to cost more. A gallon of gas is $3.50, a pound of Ground Chuck is $3.50. When I was 10, a gallon of gasoline was $.99 and a pound of Ground Chuck was $.99 also......see the similarities here......what's a gallon of Milk now $4, a pound of butter $3-4. 5 years ago a gallon of milk was $2.75, a pound of butter was $2, and Ground Chuck was $1.99 a pound........The Canadian dollar, Aus dollar, and several others are worth a LOT more than they ever used to be compared to the dollar.........

Any business is going to charge what the market will bear......whether it be the oil company, Apple, or your local grocery store.

Absolutely incapable of resisting the urge to spout political dogma, aren't you? I won't give that the respect of a rebuttal beyond saying you are wrong, and spouting the normal political nonsense and lies.

Oil is not "any business" any more than suppliers of water or air. That's the difference. People's lives and livelihoods are at stake. That argument is the typical misdirection of con artists same as 3 card Monte or the shell game. That's why those games are illegal and why the oil industry needs to be nationalized.

The reason the dollar is so low is because we have such a large deficit and that downgraded our credit rating from AAA to AA for the first time in the Histrory of the United States, that's the fact and cause of a weakened dollar pure and simple. Just as Greeks /debtfinancial issues have pulled down the value of the Euro by about 20%. And yes, the current administration caused that, and ran up the deficit almost 40% more than it had ever been.

How do you feel gas is too expensive at $3.50 per gallon, what means do you use to justify it? A gallon of gasoline is too expensive compared to what? A gallon of water is $1. 2-2 liters of soda are $4. Both of those are easier to make than a gallon of gasoline. A gallon of gasoline in Europe is around $8 a gallon in a lot of countries.

No that is not the reason, but what part of no politics are you not understanding. Are you trying to get yet another thread closed?
Let me know where you expect to find fuel for $3.50 a gallon for a car, much less a boat. Find it in NY and I'll buy a few gallons for you as well to celebrate. Current price in my area, which is one of the cheapest areas on Long Island is $3.77 for regular and $4.07 for 93 Octane at the no name stations ON LAND.

I agree that fuel could and should be cheaper. However if you're putting 20 gallons of gas in your car and it's $3.77 a gallon, you just spent $74. If you find it for $3.50, then you spend $70 to fill up the same tank. If your car gets 20 mpg, then you're going 400 miles on it. What's $4 a week if you're making $400 a day????

Most of us here are making a living off of the yachting industry. We are making a living based upon someone wasting money and resources on a big toy. Honestly, I burn more fuel in 1 day during a delivery, then I use in my vehicle for an entire year, so someone can go out with their family and have a little fun........I really enjoy what I do and derive a living from it and cannot knock it, but when you talk about totally wasting fuel and limited resources, yachting is on the top of the list. Unfortunately the days of taking on 1200 gallons at $0.67 a gallon from a truck like I was in the early 2000's is long over. It's due to a combination of many reasons: the value of the dollar, the epa mandating cleaner fuel and more refining, investors, the economy, other countries increasing demand, but at the same token the cars are getting more and more efficient and so are the yachts. So has our cost per mile really gone up that much more? Some cases yes, some cases no. But in reality, every single thing you buy goes up in price each year, and that's just the way things are, once upon a time candy bars were a nickel and so was a coke. What should gas really cost......who knows......what's fair.....I don't know......I'd say somewhere around $3 per gallon for gasoline when you compare it to the prices of every other consumer good such as water, milk, coffee, eggs, clothing, etc etc etc....Everything has gone up in price considerably in the last couple of years. I spend a heck of a lot more at the grocery store each week than I ever did before, compared to gasoline..........But gas is just like anything else, self regulating and supply and demand.

I will say the fuel prices have changed the way many yacht owners run their yachts and many yachts are travelling more efficiently.....doing 10 knots instead of cruise etc etc.......But recommending that the Government Nationalizes a private company is just completely wrong and against everything the United States stands for, it is Communism. How would you feel if people were recommending that the Government should nationalize Captains because we as Captains are responsible for others lives?

fuel cost have changed just like has been stated now throw in the fact that a lot of other things are made from oil based products as well ,i built my first fish boat for 425,000.00 dollars in 1972 a now i am looking at building another new one almost the same size at the cost will be about 10,000,000.00
in 1972 i paid .09 cents for fuel and today i just filled up at 3.71 per gallon it is all relivant , the bottom line what ever the cost is we still have to work and we will figure out how to servive

have fun travler

a) Most people don't make $400 a day, especially not marina workers. There reaches a point where it doesn't pay to drive to the marina for $5 an hour after taxes. That means marinas get the employee who lives close rather than the one who works best. That makes boating less attractive to the boat owner.
b) $4 is a meal for many people. Combined with the other price increases which have their origins in the price of fuel it combines to become a boat payment or a mortgage payment or a life saving medication not bought.
c) Although fuel price increases are grumbled about they tend to get accepted as "a fact of life". The big exception is the even dollar amount. Those are milestones. Anybody who has advertised a product for $19.99 will attest to that. When Fuel hit $3.00 a gallon it severely altered our industry. $4.00, combined with the recession devastated it. People left their boats on land or walked away from them. $5.00 a gallon is going to put a lot of people out of business, out of work and out of our industry. The 80, 100 and 200 foot boats may still be moving, but the 25, 35 and 50' boats aren't going to get built because the people in that income bracket won't have the money to buy or run them. They will know that because $5.00 a gallon will stare them in the face like a loaded shotgun. Where a few years ago there were about 20 F/T independent captains on Long Island it has now become at best a side job for all but a few. At least 5 marinas I know of have given up their diesel mechanics. That makes boating less attractive because he's no longer in the marina when you pull in after having a problem and he now charges travel time at a significantly higher rate than they were getting just 2 years ago.
When boats travel "more efficiently" that translates into less cruising and less usage. That means less need for captains, mates, mechanics and the list goes on. All that translates into fewer people buying boats and the chain continues down the line, and that chain starts with the price of fuel. It drives the price of everything. Every piece of plastic you buy (plastic is made from petroleum), every piece of food you eat (it takes fuel to run the combines and to truck the food to market), everything.
Free enterprise is wonderful, but it is not perfect, nor is communism, nor any other system invented by man. We'd have no need for laws against murder if people didn't kill, and most don't. But unfortunately there are those who will so we have to regulate it. We wouldn't need banking regulations if banks treated their customers fairly, but they don't so we regulate them. Despite that we have lenders charging over 100% interest. So we're looking at stricter regulations, and these are things that our citizens voluntarily walk into or at worst out of desperation. Oil is not a luxury. Our entire society depends on it for their very lives. If the oil companies, commodity traders, refiners, producers and everyone else that has their sticky fingers in the pie acted with fairness there would be no need for regulation, but their only thought is "What will the market bare", and who dies or loses their job or home or goes without needed medication along the way means absolutely nothing. If an industry refuses to act responsibly, especially if that industry can cripple nations and kill their citizens, they must be regulated to the point that forces them to act responsibly. Maybe nationalizing them isn't yet necessary. I don't know. I'm not that learned. But they have to be stopped whatever it takes. Society as we've known it is breaking down and the root cause is oil. Right now all options need to be on the table and explored. Unless they are very scared they will not act in society's best interest voluntarily.

NYCAP, just get used to it. Fuel is too cheap and will only go up in price. Besides, having a yacht is no human right and contrary to cars, most of them last "forever". Many can even be sailed without any fuel...

That's like telling a rape victim to lay back and enjoy it. I'm surprised that anyone other than an oil executive would take that view. Having a yacht is no human right, but having a job and a warm place to sleep is a human need. People in our business need people to buy boats. We need them to use them. We need them to be able to afford to do that.

In the 70:s we produced ten times as many boats, most of them are still around, why production of new boats have gone down ever since. The fuel was more expensive than today and we were all complaining, but got used to it and adjusted our lifestyle to be more energy efficient. This will be even more important in the future and is creating new jobs...

I certainly hope that smiley face was meant to include the "too cheap" comment as well as the reference to sailing yachts!

While the expense of drilling and processing oil into a refined product has gone up over the years, the price it is currently sold at has absolutely no relation to the expense or market demand whatsoever. Oil ceased to be a free market commodity long ago when companies controlled the flow from wellhead to pump. Combine the speculative interests buying huge quantities temporarily for pennies on the dollar with media manipulation driving the costs up on "fears" of this or that nation's internal struggles or predicted development and you have continual price increases, never decreases. Just the other day there was an article in a local paper "explaining" the recent rise as a result of lesser demand due to a warmer winter and less driving??? Didn't we hear just the opposite last winter?

Certainly no legislative or executive branch of government in any nation will ever make any effort to change the status quo, they all owe too much to their campaign donors who have too much at stake. We can expect no help from that direction.

One thought, and it is admittedly fanciful, is what if one oil company decided to buck the system and offer fuel at a realistic price and profit margin. Would the masses flock to them like the pied piper? Would they sell every drop they could and kill sales at all the others and send a message? Would the volume yield just as big a return for their stockholders? Will it ever happen? The answer is a resounding yes to all of the above except one, guess which.

From my admittedly narrow field of view, we are seeing a pardigam shift in boating habits. The uber rich are continuing on in normal fashion, larger and larger megayachts are under construction and operation worldwide. Smaller boats are becomming popular again. Boat ramps are more crowded than ever and small boat sales are actually up in recent months. It's the mid-size, 45-100' market that is lagging and in decline. Unfortunately that is the segment that so many of us are or were involved in.

This is how I see it:

Looks like the US military-industrial complex together with its' global affiliates are shaping up for the latest episode in middle-eastern conflicts (where else, after almost 2 decades of the same...? =), this time round (2012) with Iran at the epi-centre and Syria on the sidelines.

With Israel in the lead role (haven't seen that since Operation Opera / Babylon, when Israel destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor back in 1981 with a daring attack), though we've seen Israel involved in a similar incident in Syria a few years ago.

Oil prices will undoubtedly double over the next few months once "they" get their way.

How in the world can you marry the concept of producing ten times fewer boats with it creating jobs? It may be creating more wealth for those with jobs, but it is not creating more jobs. That "adjusted lifestyle" meant colder, more expensive homes, smaller less comfortable cars, and fewer boats on the water. BTW, most boats from the 70's have long since become landfill.

That is already being done by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and many people in the northeast U.S. are not freezing to death because of him. Gasoline in Venezuela costs about 12 cents a gallon, well below the $4 a gallon or more paid in most of the industrialized world. (The price of gas in Kuwait- not a member of OPEC- is U.S. $ 0.87 per gallon.) Unfortunately Chavez is a communist (along with other major flaws) and the oil companies are using that in a very good campaign to crush him as much as possible. It will take more than one (relatively) small country or oil company to stop this. In the U.S. there were once many small refineries. Most were bought up or otherwise closed through the use of friendly (bought) legislation designed to kill competition.
There is no realistic justification for the price of fuel except for extreme greed and the ability to get away with it.

Airship, although I agree with your statement that "Oil prices will undoubtedly double over the next few months" because of what's going on, this is not the forum for political debate about world politics nor your well documented anti-American sentiment. It's about the price of oil and its effect on the world's population.

The oil companies are using it against him? All along I thought it was the media, what was I thinking. I have spent quite some time in Caracas and Saudi Arabia back in the opening days of Desert Storm and know firsthand what pump prices were compared to ours back here at home. I guess Hugo is making up for his cheap fuel home at all the Citgo stations here in the US. Ah the old days when there were "pump wars" between neighboring stations, each trying to best the other to get business. Back then they couldn't advertise gas prices on signs so they used "cigarette" prices instead but everyone knew what they meant. Remember those days?You're quite correct, greed is keeping that from happening today especially with a commodity we have very little choice about.

One of my first jobs was pumping gas. There were 3 stations on that intersection and we were in constant competition with prices going between $0.26 & $0.27 a gallon. When you drove in we cleaned your windshield, checked the oil and transmission fluid, checked the tire preassure, you got "Green Stamps" and a real quality NFL or Nescafe glass coffee cup with a fill up of 8 gallons. Most of our fathers held one job, were home on Sundays and the wives were able to stay home to teach their children right from wrong. Tell me the world is better today.