This is the first and only book dedicated to this popular and growing segment of the sign and vehicle graphics industries. Craig Campbell offers the benefits of his years of experience with vinyl products, ...
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"The average price for gasoline is now .434 cents per gallon more than it was at the beginning of the year."
—The American Petroleum Institute
On March 16, John Schoen, MSNBC's senior producer, said that OPEC had lost control of its oil prices. He said the OPEC ministers, meeting in Iran, were facing a new problem, one they hadn't encountered in the alliance's 45-year history.
Schoen, saying world oil production may be at its limits, wrote, "In the past, OPEC tried to cool overheated prices by pumping more [oil] when supplies got too tight. But most OPEC producers say they're already pumping as fast as they can." Some OPEC ministers, he said, believe they've run out of options in controlling the price of crude.
On April 5, CNN quoted Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan: "World energy markets are being strained, but market forces should eventually lead to higher oil inventories and help bring prices back down." He didn't list those market forces.
In the real world, on that same day, I paid $23.40 for 10 gallons of regular and, as the pump numbers whirled, remembered reading reports of sweet crude predicted to reach $100 per barrel. Sweet crude is the easiest to process into gasoline; it sold for $58.28 a barrel that day, and it dropped a few cents the day after.
Greenspan said vehicles on U.S. highways currently consume about 11% of total world-energy production. He also said that higher prices have slowed oil-demand growth, but only modestly.
Highway usage isn't the only problem, however, because other products, many used by signshops, also contain or require oil. Basic vinyl, PVC, for example, is made, mostly, from hydrocarbons and sodium chloride — oil and salt — 43% of the stuff is oil.
For that reason, if you're a vinyl processor, expect your vinyl-chloride suppliers — Formosa Plastics, Shintec, Occidental Chemical or Borden Chemicals — to ratchet up your prices.
Ditto on price increases if you're a supplier or own a signshop.
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