xandandl Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 (edited) Dear Mr. Furlano, Please read the third sentence of my post. You are over defensive if you read what I wrote. xandandl, on 03 Dec 2014 - 2:20 PM, said: Based on this poster's position in his corps, I trust his word on this subject. However, his corps tends to take a very timid tour up and down the Mississippi with not so many variations or wanderings compared to other finalist corps. I believe the "timidity" is actually a strategic business plan working for the corps thus far. What you call timid, others call smart. We tour in the early season where our support network is the strongest. However, if our ultimate goal was to lessen the number of miles on tour, we could easily slice another 2000 miles off the tour without losing any shows. Edited December 3, 2014 by xandandl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xandandl Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 Hey Garf, Not only did your Muskies from Ohio get BD's contract, for a season or two back they simultaneously also were the bus company driving the Cadets throughout the US. And Cadets always do more shows than BD in any given DCI season. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perc2100 Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 Of course, Garf, if gas does descend to $2 per gallon, what will happen to that $56K? I have already seen the social sites of some of DCI directors ruminating on just this topic... It would be nice if $56k were divided by 150 so that the membership fees would drop $373 per member, or essentially one plane fare for a winter camp; and perhaps greater accessibility for more students to participate in the activity. But there have also been brass instructors rumbling how to out do Madison's 48 contras/tubas, and how many horns that might buy. And those designers could splurge $56K for props even to surpass those BD, Cadets, Blue Stars, Coats and Crown cash outs.. Since it's DCP, and the season to be nice, I won't even mention how many synths and additions to the front ensemble those perc guys dream about like sugarplums in their beds. $56K new found dollars, just where will they go??? Of course member dues are already published for the 2015 season and it would be foolish for corps to assume significant summer savings this early (i.e. it's likely too late this year to change member fees). I would think the corps would be "forced" to have already budged for the higher-end of tour fuel costs and are hoping to have a windfall by the end of summer. Maybe this is the type of thing that could really help a corps pay down debt or bank as a surplus or something instead of "we have $54k extra lets spend it all now!!" 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garfield Posted March 11, 2015 Author Share Posted March 11, 2015 A walking dead thread. Prices Roughly $1/gallon cheaper than a year ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lincoln Posted March 11, 2015 Share Posted March 11, 2015 (edited) Your viewpoint would make it tough for you to negotiate a "wet" lease for tour buses, I'm afraid. You are right - I was wrong on this. Sorry. Edited March 11, 2015 by Lincoln Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sideways Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 If Magic was still around they could afford food then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Freedman Posted March 14, 2015 Share Posted March 14, 2015 (edited) Oil prices could jump right back where they were at any time. Oil prices are low because on November 27 OPEC failed to reach an agreement on production. This opened the floodgates internationally. The next scheduled meeting is June 5, right before drum corps season, leaving plenty of time for prices to shoot back up and the media to act all surprised about it. Watch that date: June 5. A special meeting is possible before then, however. Contrary to much discussion on this thread, fracking is about to experience an epic fail if prices don't rise, because the staggering amount investors have put into it will only make money if the price is high enough to cover the high costs of fracking. This is all according to articles I read, not my own knowledge. http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/12/economist-explains-4 http://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/311.htm Edited March 14, 2015 by Pete Freedman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimF-LowBari Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 Has Central PA been the only area where gas has been going up the last 2 months or so? Hard to tell from the last few posts..... About 50 cents/gal up from the lowest point earlier. Only good thing for me is just got the (hopefully) last fuel oil top off for the season. That was up ca 35 cents/gal since the last one.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghost Posted March 15, 2015 Share Posted March 15, 2015 Has Central PA been the only area where gas has been going up the last 2 months or so? Hard to tell from the last few posts..... St. George, UT area has had several good size jumps these past few weeks. With Crude oil closing around 45 on Friday, which might be the lowest price since the drop began, would someone explain why pump prices have gone up around .70 since the lowest prices several weeks back. Can't be speculators. Have refineries switched to Summer blend already? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garfield Posted March 15, 2015 Author Share Posted March 15, 2015 (edited) Oil prices could jump right back where they were at any time. Oil prices are low because on November 27 OPEC failed to reach an agreement on production. This opened the floodgates internationally. The next scheduled meeting is June 5, right before drum corps season, leaving plenty of time for prices to shoot back up and the media to act all surprised about it. Watch that date: June 5. A special meeting is possible before then, however. Contrary to much discussion on this thread, fracking is about to experience an epic fail if prices don't rise, because the staggering amount investors have put into it will only make money if the price is high enough to cover the high costs of fracking. This is all according to articles I read, not my own knowledge. http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/12/economist-explains-4 http://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/311.htm Yes, of course you're right, they could pop back up quickly, but don't count on it. There's so much more going on here than the Economist article suggests (further, it's from December - the whole world is different since then). The biggest issue here is not fracking, and I disagree that it's about collapse. The average "lay down" price (the price at which producers will lay down their rigs - which is itself not an accurate verb) in the Bakken reserve in N. Dakota is just south of $40 per bbl, and the exploration companies that sank the first wells there in 2008 are in at around $28 per bbl. The issue here is not the price per barrel nor the flow of oil coming out of existing wells. The issue is the stockpile we're building because of two issues: 1. Current refiners are not set up to refine sweet crude but are, instead refining heavy imported oil, and 2. the 1974 US law that prohibits crude exports. The House of Saud is playing hardball all right but it's not with the US even as they say that. What the Economist doesn't speak of is the price per barrel to keep OPEC member countries' economies running and its citizens happy. The Saudis want to make sure that they remain the single, dominant player among OPEC nations. I read an analysis recently that suggests that the US and other Allied NATO countries are conspiring with the Saudis to break Putins back. The US fracking produces about 4mm barrels a day. While that's surely good - especially in light of the quality of oil coming up - it's still only about as much as Iraq and Libya combined and hardly enough to compare to Saudi's 10mm barrels. The biggest impact is coming from the surplus of oil we've built up, now estimated to be approaching 5mm barrels. Watching the costs for storage in Cushing, OK tells the tale (Cushing is the largest storage tank farm in the country) as well as the salt mine storage caverns in TX and OK. The US could dethrone the House of Saud (while maintaining them as a "partner") by overturning the '74 law. These factors affecting oil will not resolve before the 2015 drum corps season starts or even ends. They are political and sociologic. Almost everything I know comes from reading data produced by someone else. That you didn't think of it yourself, Pete, is no reflection on you at all. Investing in oil can be a quagmire because of the politics involved; ditto any prescience about the future of US production. Have you SEEN the price of corn? Edited March 18, 2015 by garfield Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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