Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Friday, June 22, 2012

Oil and Gasoline Prices

Commentary By Ron Beasley


Instead of the predicted $5.00 a gallon gasoline this summer it looks like we may have $3.00 a gallon instead.  The sinking economy is of course responsible for the sinking oil and gas prices but there is a floor - companies won't produce is they can't make money.  I think we are at the floor for crude oil prices.  The last couple of days the price for WTI has dropped below $80.00 bbl. 





It would appear the floor for crude is about $80 bbl.  There are reasons for this.  The non conventional sources need $80.00 bbl to be profitable.  That includes deep water drilling, fracking and the tar sands.  In addition The exporters like Saudi Arabia need $80 to $100 bbl to finance their social programs that keep people from revolting.  Here in the US we can't afford to pay as much as they do in the rest of the world because we use it less efficiently and it's world demand that determines price.  So we may see $3.00 a gallon gas in the fall but don't expect it to go much lower or stay that low very long.  The producers are not going to keep producing when they are losing money.



1 comment:

  1. In the meantime those cries of "drill, baby, drill" would ring hollow this time around. They put a sock in it.

    ReplyDelete