Oil or Gas?

tommyoil

How do I know when?

If you get a flat tire you change it. If you get a nail in your tire do you wait until it goes flat? or do you change it before you drive. I know what I would do.

Ken_8

Well,

That's certainly good to know.

I had some doubts about your predilictions - especially in view of the fact that you call yourself "tommyoil." (:-o)

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Ken_8

FYI

Very little gas comes from Mexico (if any) - yet ALL our oil comes from the place where an American seems to die every few hours or so.

Let's not even go there. Geo-politics would never be a debate oil could win. And we both know it.

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tommyoil

Name could be decieving

Actually, someone else( a good friend /customer) gave me that one a real REAL long time ago.It so happens I worked on all his stuff which is all oil fired equipment.It also kept me seperate from Tommy cars, Tommy shoes,and Tommy deli. He told another,and another ,and another and it kind of stuck. I guess its a little better than Tommygas which could have other meanings. My kids would argue at times that I should be Tommygas, but thats usually after a trip for some Tex-Mex takeout.Ya follow?

tommyoil

Name could be decieving

Actually, someone else( a good friend /customer) gave me that one a real REAL long time ago.It so happens I worked on all his stuff which is all oil fired equipment.It also kept me seperate from Tommy cars, Tommy shoes,and Tommy deli. He told another,and another ,and another and it kind of stuck. I guess its a little better than Tommygas which could have other meanings. My kids would argue at times that I should be Tommygas, but thats usually after a trip for some Tex-Mex takeout.Ya follow?

lchmb

one other thought.

Ken in your area sound's like a wonderful product and a awsome way to heat. In my area the natural gas company has sucked in enough people that they are now bleeding them dry. What do I mean, the gas supplier was nice enough to actually give boiler's to people swapping from oil to NG. Six month's later they tacked on a number of charges to include a "delivery charge". When all is said and done in my area the price of oil would have to hit 3 dollars a gallon to exceed NG..
P.S. I don't care which product a customer goes with, long as he's happy...:) JMHO

Maine Ken

What kind of fuel is this?????

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5760255/

What about this one????

http://www.wmtw.com/Global/story.asp?s= 1600196

I don't sell either. I have no agenda. Just please don't claim safety as a deciding factor!!!

PJO_3

Actually...

Just over half of our oil comes from outside this country...and if we simply got 3 mpg more from every car on the road the oil imports would be halved (source; The Hybrid Car Institute). Not to take this a different course...that discussion is for another thread.

I have oil here because of no NG pipes...that's a no brainer. I've had both NG and oil in properties I've owned, and here's what I think; if you have NG pipes AND you want all the bells and whistles of gas cooking, VENTED fireplace, hard piped grill (mostly propane I think...), etc. then maybe you want gas.

I have an electric radiant stove and electric washer/dryer, a real fireplace that burns wood (insert coming soon), but I also have an off-peak electric meter (A/C units hooked to it as well)...my electric bill is half of my neighbors and I also heat my home for half of my neighbors cost (they have propane w/FHA while I have radiant/baseboard).

I built this house six years ago and I think I made the right decision...two tanks in the boiler room, but I wish I would have put a 1,000 gallon DW tank in the yard. They have sensors, liners, you name it...so anything going in the ground TODAY can be safe if installed correctly. That might have paid for itself already...and I'm not leaving here unless it's feet first! :-)

Take Care, PJO

jerry scharf_2

my thoughts on a gas shortage

Kal,

Sorry, I'm about to dive into some of the economics and motivators of fuel usage. For the most part, I try to separate the faftual/model part from my opinions.

With all things dealing with oil, getting to the bottom of the costs involved is challanging. There is an intentional fog that makes it almost impossible to attribute the costs of any of the combustables we use.

With natural gas, I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but a large percentage (maybe 75) of the gas in the middle east is burned off at the well head as waste. (I never seem to see that discussed in the global warming talks.) So it's all about delivery and not availability.

So like so many things, the price is more a matter of cost and lack of investment in delivery systems than actual lack of availability of the raw product. With the 10 year run of very low crude oil prices in the 90s (especially inflation adjusted), there was little to no investment made in production/delivery capacity. You then increase the global demand by over 25%, and you have record fuel prices.

It's the classic economic cycle. Something becomes cheap, and then people use more. Because it's cheap, there is little desire to invest in increased capacity. At some point, the lines cross and the price shoots up. Then everyone is yelling and it takes years to recover. At that point the conservation sets in as the availability increases. Because the increases in capacity were based on the higher demand and takes years to bring on line, capacity continues to grow while demand continues to shrink, and down goes the price. And up and down we go!

At this point it is clear that the US and China are the major factors in the increase in demand. China's a hard one, but the US contribution can be solved without undue hardship, IMO.

(climbing on a soapbox)
Here's my view of what drives this in the US. We have a strong cultural identity/mythology in the US. We grow up learning about the expansion west, the bold explorers and the limitless view of growth. It hasn't been true for a long time, but it's still what we get fed. Any view of limiting the BIG nature of life is viewed as "hair shirt" incursions in to our god given right to expand and consume (no religious meaning here, just the type of words used that convey the mind-set.)

The challange is to maintain the identity/myth that the US is the land of opportunity while shifting the identity/myth that we can limitlessly expand and consume. Since these myths are to most extent self feeding and self fulfilling, it's a delicate process. I would not want to lose the land of opportunity mind-set for anything!

jerry

Ken D.

FYI Ken

I disagree. The debate rages on.

Constantin

Above-ground Oil storage is widespread in ME....

I just spent two weeks crusing the great Penobscot, etc. bays with many island stays. Noticed that many native homes in ME have above-ground horizontal 275 gallon tanks installed outside. For some reason, these folks seem to be doing just fine despite temperatures below -15°F this winter...

...and I didn't see any burn marks below the tanks where fires could have been made to get them up to temperature like the truck engines in Alaska during the highway construction...

As for oil versus gas, I think the maintenance costs are pretty much a wash even if oil does probably require more knowledge and time... I am betting on oil simply because the local utility prices for gas are quite high and oil prices would have to be around $2.00 a gallon to be equivalent to the current gas prices. Then, I look towards the future and notice how all the local powerplant conversions are from oil to gas...

... where is all this gas going to come from? No new pipelines are being built from Canada or Texas... LNG facilities are years away... if they'll get built... and gas demand is soaring.

So, our house will have indoor oil storage... two 275 Gallon Roth tanks because I like my oil where it belongs... inside the tank. Should be interesting to see if I can run the place on one or two refills a year... particularly if we go for solar hot water heating.

Furthermore, who knows if my tea-leaf predictions will come true... at least the Vitola can get a new burner head if my predictions are totally off.