cashy,
this is a hot topic to bring up among us the petrolhead revving like nobody's business when the oil price is shooting up...
csl,
well, i do have some input to your questions..just my 2 cents anyway.
Q1: Indeed, we are producing oil and we are still a oil net exporter country. Oil for producing nation means so much, for security reason, for wealth, for commodities, for subsidies of all sorts..and there were even news that our government is still under a contract wtih Japan which we are selling about $78 per barrel until 2010, but we signed it during 1990s when the barrel price is around $50++.
However, i think Petronas, by itself and under so much of constraint from goverment, is still doin very good job to make sure their Green Book every year...our Petrol and Diesel price are subsidies by goverment, but do you know the GAS price for all the taxi ( less then 1% production ), for power plant of TNBs station ( almost 70% of production ) plus all the sales to factory are sold by Petronas by their own Subsidy. Yes, i mean their own. Break even price for the gas for a unit is still around RM1.30 now, but we are getting it at RM0.68 per unit....
Like u mentioned, raising the price step by step is always NOT the correct way to many rakyat, they are hoping that goverment will keep subsidising. But then, raising step by step is the ONLY way our goverment have..what else can they do?? Perhaps, we are being so damn lucky to be one of the largest producer of Natural Gas, which we can use for energy, in SEA region. Defintely one of the goverment's backup plan, i hope...
As citizens, i think we just have to prepare for the price hike, not to mention about those businessman who depends on oil..transporter, fisherman even..
Well, the best long term way i see now is...i got my Perdana V6 installed with the NGV...really saving up and i'm proud that at least my Perdana is 4 times cleaner then any newest Gasoline Emission regulation in the world
Goverment for all these effords??...well, who knows what the "NEXT GEN" government's gonna do and how they gonna act???...the good old TUN 's' time is really coming to an end i think...:slug:
again, just my personal thoughts..