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Strategies & Market Trends : The New Economy and its Winners -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (20976)	6/1/2004 2:16:33 PM
From: Logain Ablar	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 57684

Hi Bill: I see panic here on oil prices. Its also pervasive in what I'm hearing @ picnics. Must mean the top is close in time if not in price. As for $100 / bbl for oil all I can say is: 1) The US environmental policies push for higher prices. The policy is basically Drill new oil fields and build new refineries anywhere but in the US. 2) GE just acquired a synthetic fuel facility. I don't know where the price point is but if the Germans could produce synthetic fuel in the 1940's we should be able to do it now. I doubt its much higher than this level. [it was expensive for the Germans but they had no choice] 3) The Canadian and US tar sands are profitable to extract oil if the price is sustainable over $30 / bbl (requires capital investment) 4) As for getting off the hydro carbon fuel standard, the consequences are massive unemployment in the US auto industry as our automakers can't compete with some of the foreigners. 5) The SUV tax break. This has been twisted. Actually there was a limit imposed on depreciation of luxury automobiles (where luxury was $13k, which has been indexed for inflation and may be up to 15k). An exception to this was business vehicles with a gross weight greater than 6,000 lbs. So now any SUV over 6k is excluded from the luxury vehicle depreciation category and it qualifies for the special depreciaiton deduction if business use is over 50% (but then the % relates to the business %)