Bad gasoline--stinks! Oil running out?

Recently there's been a sudden development here, in the Bay Area (CA). Oil has spiked up to $2.50 per gallon. More importantly, it STINKS at the pump--sulfur. Gasoline literally comes out smelling like sewage. And, recently, when I picked someone up at the airport, I could smell the big Chevron refinery miles away--its strong sulfur odor. That means that the old, good quality oil isn't coming out like they want it to, so they're settling for the suflur containing oil (a lower quality) instead. Like Matthew Simmons' argument about Saudis lying about their oil reserves www.motherjones.com... , the Saudis apparently can't meet demand with best quality Gawahr field clean oil.

Something is going on that the press is not talking about. The Chevron refinery near Benicia CA emits a new odor that smells like that goop they put on a woman's hair to do a permanent: strong, acrid and repulsive. Driving to the airport, we smelled it about five miles away from the Chevron refinery the first time, but today, just as we began to rise up out of Vacaville (in the big valley in CA) we could smell the Chevron refinery about 15 miles away! I've NEVER smelled it like that before---the same putrid sulfur-containing stink (like a woman's permanent hair treatment).

Pass the word: the stink is out. This may be a major turning point in US oil consumtion. It's bad for business when gas at the pump smells like sewage. Major retailers wouldn't buy such oil unless it was all they could get. The once reliable Gawahr oil field in Saudi Arabia may be over with. Here in California, the oil may come straight from the Mideast, where the stinky, suflur containing oil is now being peddled.

Has anyone else noticed the stink at the gas pump, a drastic increase in odors near refineries?

Follow Your Nose

Originally posted by gl2
Has anyone else noticed the stink at the gas pump, a drastic increase in odors near refineries?

This is a neat perspective on the situation that I would never have thought about.

I haven't noticed any difference, but I'm in Nevada and haven't bought gas lately (I'm a tightwad, and higher gas prices mean I buy less gas).

I'll keep an eye -- er, nose -- open here, and encourage yourself and other members who live near refineries to update this thread if you or they see -- er, smell -- anything unusual.

This is what I love about ATS: news and perspectives I'd never see anywhere else.

gl2, very interesting angle on things!



[edit on 7/8/2005 by Majic]

Very interesting perspective. But remember that just plain old bad gas can have a sulfer smell too. I did a quick Google search and found the following:

The USDA says the bad gas can have a sulfur smell and looks dull.

From:
home.aol.com...

What some don't understand is that as we pass the mid-point of total remaining oil supply, even if there is more oil, the good quality oil is gone, leaving only the sulfur containing oil, the smaller, more expensive-to-extract fields, which rockets the price up. Then, as demand increases, yet supply begins to drop FOREVER (never to meet the demand), the economy changes. Prices are too high for the poor and unimperialistic. The entire world economy changes. Even though oil remains, it isn't cheap and we can't coast along on autopilot. Every single day there will be crisis, political maneuverings and protest over scarcity--which hits some all over the globe. Supply no longer is adequate for demand.

All those oil shales in Canada? Expensive to extract: they require a huge energy use to get the oil out.

And when poorer nations don't have enough oil to truck their food, use their generators and plow their fields, prices for food, medicines and more will go up. They won't sit and wait for us to sell them energy alternatives. They'll do their own research and will market alternative energy products (like electrogravity) without waiting for a weapons-manufacturer like the US to tell them how to do it. A larger alternative to the G-8 and WTO will form up quickly, an independent non-aligned movement that won't wait for the US to okay their credit. It will change international politics. China will have most of the money and the US will go begging for credit to finance its wars and scams and fear-mongering. But when the oil is no longer controlled by US and allied flotillas, the real money powers (not the US, which is a great debtor, a pan-handler trying to scam positive trade balance countries with terror schemes and WMD scams and economic pyramid schemes like Enron and Bechtel water takeovers) the real money powers will assert more control.

Saudi Arabia will overthrow the monarchy, which will try to sabotage both the Saudi people and US credit if they don't get their spoiled child way. The Saudi monarchs, who propagate a fanatical chop-their-heads-off kind of Islam to stay in power yet are drunken, womanizing drug money manipulators, will flee Saudi Arabia and try to live behind the scenes in the US and Europe. But then their money, if tied up in US banks, won't be so secure. Chinese money will be stronger. Imagine the Saudis trying to hang out in China... They won't last. Their last gasp will be sabotage and some bizarre elitist agenda.

When the oil gets dirty and stinky, when the price goes up but the supply is short, countries like Russia and Venezuela will be free to demand that the US sign on to Kyoto, that the US think about international law rather than spoiled child histrionics and saber rattling. Other countries will have their fingers on the pulse, not the US, which will see the dollar dive. Other currencies will be stronger, forcing the US to do common sense, basic things that it now thumbs its nose at. Conservative ecological derelicts won't be so popular. Ann Coulter won't be able to sell books with chapters that pooh pooh people for simply being Muslim.

When you have to change to survive, you do so. The US will try to pull its final card on the world: electrogravity and reverse-engineered technology. It will try to say it has cut a deal with a giant alien empire, believe it or not, which is why it has what is known as "electrogravity" technology, but the US has been scammed. It is the biggest dupe of an alien incursion, at this point. The weakness and spinelessness of imperial economics involves a monstrous lag in conscience and simple survival logic. All those well dressed, Bohemian Grove campers who cheat on their wives and try to bundle into every scam of the taxpayer are weak and scammed in return by a more advanced power. Only when their survival is threatened, when disclosure blows the alien intervention out into public view, will they even begin to think logically. At present, they don't give a crap and won't do anything to seem controversial. To do so risks luxury and sexual opportunity. Why bother, when it isn't necessary now?

They will wait but are so deeply compromised by a larger scheme that survival of the planet is in question. Once oil is no longer the main issue (it's simply declining--not the economic regime that it once was), then the real issues will begin to arise. The US isn't psychologically equipped to deal with the real issues, for the most part. It will suffer its own excesses: waste of energy, bad transportation, greed and sheer ignorance. Its media will be its own worst poison. It will be like an infantile Big Brother state of moronic media denial and spineless gofers trying to avoid all the obvious issues. Then will come the great revelation, when Big Brother throws open his trench coat and tries to give us a glimpse of the X-22A, the TR-3B, and the various other NWO teasers of US imperialism (reverse engineered trinkets of little major importance). None of the reverse-engineered trinkets will be enough to sway the world public because along with them comes a US dogma about NWO control of all such technology. Meanwhile, the world will move toward alternative conventions. The US revelation of its trinkets will try to play on world fears, and will excite some issues, but the people won't buy it.

They won't agree to being the little Big Brother of an alien empire. They won't duck their heads and be cowed by a former drunk's TV sense of himself (a la Bush). Instead, they'll convene without being coerced by the big oil flotilla, the economic threats and lies of the NWO wolf pack. Imagine the spectacle. Revolution in Saudi Arabia, political scandals in the US and Europe. Exposure of massive narcotics trafficking and murders by a black budget cabal trying to sell itself as a kind of protection racket and big movie kind of thrill pleaser, while the world suffers deprivation and uncertainty. They won't buy into the NWO formula at that time. The US will experience an internal struggle to expose the narco regime and take back the technology achieved by scamming the Constitutional order (that remains). Then Du Ponts and Bush types will look just like the Saudis: bizarrely discredited mafioso trying to sabotage that minor percentage of deluded regime partisans at the last minute, trying to stampede them into a bad deal with an alien empire.

It will all be about fear and spectacle. It has all been planned out in advance. They want crisis and disaster to achieve their ends, which aren't ends, but are yet another stupid compromise with yet another criminal regime. They want us to to be led like sheep into the arms of an alien Genghis Khan, a regime that sabotages and abducts and destroys to expand itself, irregardless of cost. The NWO isn't about elite economics and laissez faire; it's about alien empire and the infiltration of human elites via the breeding program. It's a sad and stupid spectacle. Only good thinking and humility will get us through. And peaceful revolution.

I havent noticed a strange smell ( but i havent put gas in the car in nearly 2 weeks)

I have noticed that my car is burning up fuel nearly twice as fast. I normally get around 26 mpg but im on empty right now and have only gone 80 miles (last time i filled up i put 6 gallons in)

Could this less quality oil have something to do with that? Or do I need a mechanic

Hello,

Have a question.....anyone wan'a explain if it's also with Diesel also and/or other gases?
Guess Natural Gas is not an issue ?

And would it not to ask the Backbone People of most countries....."Truck Drivers, Bus Drives, Construction Equipment etc. etc." figure they best to ask if they notice a difference in "smell, effiecency etc".

Y'r Canadian friend,
Sven

Thousands of acres around the Chevron refinery used to have cows on them, but not anymore. A few years back it seems the marginal toxicity of the air compelled the removal of the cows--who would want to eat them? Meanwhile, the elementary school just a few hundred yards from the refinery is still going, except when refinery alarms go off.

I live in Davis, about 50 miles away. I've passed the site for years, hence I noticed a truly unusual smell and the unprecedented distance--all the way over and just rising up out of the big valley. I was just two minutes from that Jack in the Box by the big dairy in Fairfield when the smell hit. Previously, I'd only noticed the refinery odors within 1-2 miles of the refinery.

Compounding the odor is that chemicals containing the sulfur get into the by-products of cracking and refinement, hence when the last gasp flames out of that tall stack that is always burning, the burnt sulfur is part of yet a different chemical compound--it literally creates something else when it burns. Imagine it: the local Chevron stations wouldn't sell gas that stinks like a sewer at certain moments when you gas up, and the refinery wouldn't waft out a noxious stench unless they had to---there is no other cheap oil to be had.

So, we had a war on Iraq under false pretenses, plus a flubbed CIA-sponsored coup attempt in Venezuela in recent years--none of it about the Cold War, of course. Did we pass the petroleum peak, making the future crisis all the more imminent? The peak oil crisis doesn't appear at the consumer level, at first. It isn't going to be on CNN or Fox news in a big headline: Global oil production just passed a major, all of time peak and Saudi Arabia is sputtering to keep production up.

No, instead we will see weird government and corporate lurches to somehow cover their rears by doing whatever they can to keep whatever oil they can flowing, keep it all going as though it's the same as always: a steady state regime on autopilot, easy glide. One coup, another war, weirdly compounded risks all rationalized. First it's Bin Laden the bad devil, then he's a nobody that we don't even need to worry about. Instead, it's Saddam's hidden nukes that could take out Manhattan, then "oops" we were slightly wrong: THERE ARE NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, WHATSOEVER.

Sorry we shouted "Fire" in a crowded theater, but after all, terror is evil, isn't it? And is America evil? Of course not!

We lie to get into Iraq, supposedly because Bin Laden was somehow tied to Saddam, which is another complete lie (imagine Hussein dumping his poison gas shells to call the dog off, but then meeting with "the evil one?" Not likely).

There is a crisis, either upon us (too bad about your Constitutional rights, but Iraq is now "the central front in the war on terrorism...") or coming soon to a major retailer in your area. Which is how Bush actually admits that the war wasn't only a lie, it is an ongoing disaster. *Don't say too much about this in your hometown or you might have a hard time getting that job where you say hi! to all the shoppers coming in the door at Walmart...

Stinky gas may be just the tip of the iceberg. Take a whiff, when you can. Now that the story is on the web, the stink may be delayed for a few weeks, but it will be right back. Don't buy a house too close to one of those refineries in the meantime.

Here in Rhode Island, as far as i can tell, the gas smells fine. I dont think there are any processing facilities in my area though. I did see a huge price rise though which might be because of the looming Hurricane or because of the destruction of the oil pipeline [i dont know how long ago that was?] The prices on regular gasoline went from 2:20-2:25 two weeks ago to over 2:45 today. How are the price rises in other places?

I gassed up yesterday here in Indiana. The gas is unchanged. There is no odd smell to it or anything, but the price for regular is now $2.46.9 per gallon!

So what is going on?

I am convinced that BIG OIL is the real world government. I also believe, that they want us all to believe that the oil is running out. However I seriously doubt the oil supply is really drying up. Not all of a sudden like this anyway.

To me this seems like an abrupt unplanned transition. Now would the Corporate OIL government be taken by surprise so? I doubt it very much.

Perhaps public support for the OIL war is not strong enough, and or, maybe they recently realized something. Like maybe there is just too much potential guerrilla resistance, for a takeover of the world's OIL supply by military force, to remain 'cost effective'. Maybe the idiots really did think that Iraq would shower them with rose petals when the troops arrived to "liberate" them, as Rumsfeld said he believed.

So could it be, that because of these things, the OIL government has fallen back on a contingency plan? I mean does it really make sense, that now so very suddenly, low quality high sulfur crude is being refined in California?

I think something else is going on. I believe they have long planned to implement a world government, and a new global economic exchange system to go with it. The signs have all been there for a long time now.

Perhaps they recently decided on a change of plans. To an an abrupt, drastic shift, of the global economic paradigm. Could it be, that they intend to scare the world into embracing a new global government, and cashless electronic monetary system?

Think about it. Can't you just see Bush saying this on TV?

"Folks, guess what." "The oil has run out much sooner than we thought it would." "Please remain calm." "We have a plan." "In order to forestall global chaos and anarchy." UH HEM "Well." "For the good of all, we need to implement a united global government, and a new cashless monetary exchange system." "You know." "Just RFID touch-less cash cards."

Wont that be sweet? For them? They will have total control of our lives. They will know what we eat, read, what medicines we take, where we go, when we go there, and so much more.

I wish I had a space ship. I hear the Vega system is nice.

The world is NOT running out of oil. It is true, however, that the US is short of refining capacity, as no new refineries have been built for decades.

GL, for your benefit, it is the US that has the oil shales. Huge quantities of them. Canada has the oil sands - containing as much oil as is in Saudi Arabia. Yes, they are expensive to extract, compared to shallow pools of light oil. But it is there, and quite economical at today's prices. That's why major investments in new oil sands plants are happening as we speak.

The oil shales are a little more difficult, but will be economical at some point.

Methane gas is in abudance off the gulf of Mexico.
I hear that is what causes boats and planes to go under in the bermuda triangle even though thats the atlantic side...

anyone else heard of this?

Chevron gas in Alabama smells fine, and has become extremely cheap!

Of course, one day they'll catch me doing a gas-driveoff and it'll get real expensive!

Originally posted by tbare
Methane gas is in abudance off the gulf of Mexico.
I hear that is what causes boats and planes to go under in the bermuda triangle even though thats the atlantic side...

anyone else heard of this?

yea i saw some show on that, supposedly it bubbles to the top and causes ships to sink into the vacumlike area that it leaves... how it happens to planes i dont know but if a huge bubble of methane can rise to the surface, and engulf a ship then i guess that can explain how the bermuda triangle works?

on the topic of gas drive offs, we should all become farmers and get our gas for cheap because i think diesel for agriculture is cheaper or something [something like that?]

The Dude Of Hazzard

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
Of course, one day they'll catch me doing a gas-driveoff and it'll get real expensive!

I hope your car can jump!

I'm sure you're just a good old boy, never meaning no harm.

If the legend is true, someday the mountain might get you but the law never will.

One of these days, we'll find out why gas is the only thing that one can charge 9 tenths of a cent on......

I've definitely noticed the "bad gas" sound on occassion lately, in addition to the smell....

Majic, the Law is alraedy trying to catch me, but they're gonna lose!

As far as methane taking down a plane, the belief is that if a large amount of gas is released and a cloud of it rises, the ignition of the plane will ignite the gas and destroy the plane.