$$$$ Are you still gonna burn

[mtalea]

I am burnin regardless,rather give my money to pellets companies the the arabs.

 

[imacman]

Using the Pellet Fuels Institute calculator, and based on the $4.19/gal my @#$%&*! oil dealer pumped into my tank in August, my pellets would have had to cost me $495/ton for them to be EQUAL in price per BTU as the oil.....my actual cost averaged out to $280. I will be burning a LOT of pellets this winter.

And besides, it just makes me feel good knowing that I kept some of my $$ in the US this year.....now that I have the stove, I'll feel even better about it next year!

 

[DiggerJim]

Digger, my reasoning for not buying from Exxon/Mobil or Citgo has nothing to with what you mentioned. I KNOW all the gas comes from the same central distribution center...there's one about 3 miles from my house in Newburgh. But if I DID buy gas there, I don't want the $$ I spend to go for buying more imported oil to begin with.

I have investigated where different companies buy their crude, and Exxon/Mobil buys the most of any company from the Middle East....so guess where most of their (my) $$ goes?

And even though Citgo uses 0 crude from the Middle East, that's because they only use their own oil....the $$ goes to the nutcase Hugo Chavez...I will NOT subsidize him either.

Do I know that other companies buy some of their crude overseas?? Yes, of course, but the percentages are much lower.

BTW, I buy the great majority from Sunoco and Hess (Hess isn't listed, but has no operations in Saudia Arabia, etc)

You say you know that the retail dealers all get their gas from the same distro tanks yet you then say that it matters that Exxon/Mobil or Citgo gets their oil from people you don't like. So on one hand you know the gas from the local Mobil dealer didn't come from Mobil and therefore where Exxon/Mobil buys their oil doesn't matter...but you'll punish your neighbor anyway.

It's entirely irrelevant. The 20 gallons you buy from whoever makes you feel good is simply part of a base matched system where the gas produced very nearly matches the gas consumed. Whether you buy it from Fred's Backyard Distillery and Refining Company or Billie's Bedouin Burnoose & Arabian Drilling doesn't matter one whit as to how much the Saudis, Libyans, Russians, Canadians, or anyone else is going to sell. Your 20 gallons adds to the full production run of Fred's that he's going to sell and someone else who would have bought Fred's but can't because he's sold it all will buy it from the bedouins. And vice versa. So it matters not where you buy yours - the "bad guys" get exactly the same $.

Rationalizations to the contrary, unless there's a reasonable surplus of supply vs. demand, in a global environment the commodity has no borders & no nationalities - whether you believe it or not, a pretty much equivalent portion of your $ goes to "bad guys" no matter who you buy from. John Maynard Keyes wrote a wonderful book called The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money way back in 1935 that explains how this works.

If you really want to have an impact, stop using so much oil altogether. Drive less, heat less, consume less of everything. Lighten your consumption load and you will impact the financials of the Saudis and whoever else is this year's bogieman...or just screw your neighbor's gas station operation and feel like you're making an impact by pretending you can violate the laws of physics (economics is physics of another sort).