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Rising Grocery Prices
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<p>[quote user="edbenton"]Actually OIL PRICES are the main reason why food proces are going up. The trucking comapnies that deliver the food to the gorcery warehouses can only eat teh higher fuel costs for so long. Every company out there has a Fuel Surcharge on every mile they are running anymore. Now the stores are being forced to pass the costs onto us the consumer and it may not seem like much but it adds up. We pay a few cents more for every item but it adds up in the totals at the end. Yet you see the OIL compaines report 9 Billion in profits each QUARTER and nothing gets done about it.[/quote]</p><p>Several things here need clarification. As a trucker you'll notice that diesel fuel really hasn't changed much in price over the last 6 months, while it is gas that has risen in price. Thus, the cost of delivering food hasn't really gone up, yet food prices have risen during this same period. Now, it could just be a lag time from when diesel spiked up last year to that spike affecting retail costs, but the rise in food costs right now is more relatable to the spike in commodity prices due to the ethanol mandate.</p><p>That being said, what would you like to have done <em>to</em> the OIL companies? It's not their fault they can't build new refineries to meet growing demand, what incentive do they have? Too many environmental regs, too low a profit margin on refining oil into fuel, too many EPA seasonal boutique blends to have to retool for every 6 months, too much liability to take on.......heck, only a fool would try and build a refinery in the US these days!</p><p>Exploration and drilling? Same story, the oil companies are not allowed to explore/drill/develop potential new oil fields in ANWR, off the California coast, et al. How are we supposed to bring down the base price of oil if we don't add to the supply from our own known domestic sources?</p><p>You know perfectly well that when supplies become constrained (and in this case that constaint is artificially induced from government regs), the profit motive shifts from maximizing volumes to maximizing margins. It costs a lot of money to retool a refinery to produce 46 different fuel blends every 6 months while the foreign sources of crude oil stick it to us, and it is perfectly just for them to pass these costs onto the consumer, most of whom probably voted for the politicians who instigated these absurd environmental regulations in the first place. Keep in mind also, the OIL companies today make most of their profits from overseas opeations, not from their US operations. </p><p>Hey, you want a solution? Then next time you vote, make sure you vote for someone - regardless of party affiliation - who endorses development of <strong><em><u>all</u></em></strong> known domestic sources of hydrocarbons, who endorses a protective price floor for the development of coal-to-liquids/oil sands/oil shales technologies so they won't get burned by an unexpected flood of oil from OPEC, who endorses rationalizing and streamlining environmental regs to allow us to build more refineries while keeping our fuel blends down to one or two basic formulas, who doesn't get all caught up in the promoting of so-called alternatives like corn ethanol and biodiesel which of course are causing the price shocks in our food supply, and most importantly........<font size="4"><u>allow for higher GVW and longer LCV regs so that the truckers who deliver our retail supplies can do so more efficiently.</u></font></p>
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