Gas prices...

I think the prices shown are what americans think of gas prices today :thumbsdow , hope the price of gas goes down soon.

AlexGT

it has gotten to the point where we just need to find a new source of energy (maybe ethenol). I heard that the head of a major gas selling industry (exxon???) is getting 400 MILLION dollars a year. That one guy is getting all that cash by ripping us off. Its an outrage.

-David

Love that sign! I paid $2.98 for regular for the work truck yesterday.

I keep reading in new articles how much more the price is than this time last year. Maybe I should have bought a car that runs on old french fry grease. Caught a small part of an HBO show on global warming today, some guys that met on the internet were having a contest to see whocould get over 100mpg in a hybrid. Reminded me of some of the ones posting here.

It's also been interesting to see the two major political parties scramble to come up with "solutions". My recommendation is to buy Exxon Mobil and other oil company stock!

AlexGT said:

I think the prices shown are what americans think of gas prices today :thumbsdow , hope the price of gas goes down soon.

AlexGT

Click to expand...

I work in the oilfield....trust me, it's not going down anytime soon...

I've been paying $3.14.9 for the past two weeks for unleaded.

Don't be so unkind to the CEO of XOM! He only makes 8 Million a week! The poor guy is struggling to make ends meet. His company only made 8 BILLION profit in the last three months. They need to squeeze us harder. Did you notice the price of oil has dropped for the last four days? I am sure if it went up, the price of gas would have jumped everyday! Where is our drop in gas prices? They have us by the _____ and they know it. This is a prime example of the fact that too much power corrupts. I hate to say it, but besides everyone needing to use more gas efficent cars, our government needs to take some immediate and strong steps to reign in the oil companies. How about this - in Venezuela, gas sells for 12 cents a gallon! And they make a profit! Maybe we could do a group buy? How much to rent an oil tanker? How many people on CPF? HA HA, just a thought to keep me from boiling over. I pumped gas a few years ago, it was over priced at 29 cents a gallon! Now it has gone nuts! I wonder if the 8 million/week the CEO makes includes unvouchered expences? How about a free car to drive? I bet he gets free gas.

There's a couple of ways to lower the cost:

1. Decrease demand
2. Increase the supply of fuel

Decreasing demand is not so easy because China is growing their oil use at 15% per year. On other hand, any amount we decrease our demand is just that much less the price will increase 'cause the China increase will happen anyway and we might as well slow down the increase in demand to the fullest extent that we can. Switching over to Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) with a modest 20 mile all-electric range on batteries with a liquid fueled engine to take over for long range would let us cut our use of petroleum by about half.

Increasing supply is certainly possible. We can build quite a few more ethanol and biodiesel plants before we exhaust the available corn and soy beans (we'd get about 7% of our diesel and about 13% of our gasoline that way). We can also speed up the research and commercialization of algae for biodiesel and switch grass for ethanol. Both seem feasible and quite economical if oil is selling for $70/barrel. We can use Thermal De-Polymerization (TDP) like the ButterBall Turkey plant in Missouri to convert organic wastes into fuel.

I'm sure we will also drill the currently off limits shoreline oil fields and the pristine area of ANWR (I notice the Congressional Republicans are offering to trade us a one time $100 gas rebate in exchange for drilling ANWR). It is too bad about that. Neither source of oil will last forever and we could just as easily put our efforts into renewable sources now rather than drill the natural areas we have left.

We'll need to switch to renewables anyway sooner or later, why not do it now rather than waste time on more limited resources of petroleum? Last time I heard, it will take 10 years for ANWR oil to come online and in that time we could easily bring just as much or more renewables to market that will last forever.

You ain't seen nuthin' yet.

My tea leaves and chicken entrails tell me to expect $5+ and sporadic unavailability (a la the mid '70s). We traded my wife's great 02 4wd Trooper for a Prius in January. May well be one of the wisest thing we've done.

The bad news - gas is $3.00 a gallon.

The good news - the Prius gets 50mpg.

A little different thought regarding gas prices. The gas companies huge profits are based primarily upon volume of business. Drug manufacturers, large financial companies and insurance companies all have a greater return on investment (ROI) than the energy companies.

So as far as the ripoff factor, you're getting ripped more when you buy grandma's heart pills than when you buy gasoline.

I think.

I've lost all faith in both political parties. Give millions of families $100 each. STUPID!

It would actually be better if the other parties idea to take away the tax was put into motion.

But just like immegration, I don't believe ANYTHING will be done.

Glad we got my Ram when we did. It doesn't hurt QUITE so bad as I get 19ish in the 4 ton beasty. I'd be doing good to get 10 if it were a gasser.

It's all about supply and demand, pure and simple.

We (consumers) obviously can't alter the first...we can't drill for, or refine oil.

But we can affect demand. Simply don't drive somewhere you don't really need to go. Skip that summer vacation out-of-state. Yeah, I know...you earned it. But if it is going to cost more hours of overtime during the year to be able to afford the fuel for that trip, you're losing out in the long run.

Now I know that many of the vehicle trips we make are necessary. So don't bite my head off over this suggestion. It just seems to me that we can ***** about it and do nothing, or we can ***** about it and work to change the situation in whatever way we can. (Can you tell I like to *****?)

Think of it this way...

If each American could reduce their driving miles by just 10%, then supply would drop...causing prices to shift downward at about the same rate. But the effect might be even more profound if oil traders (the guys driving up the price of crude) became fearful of consumers ability to reduce consumption. Right now, traders assume (correctly) that we are addicted and can't change our ways. A consumer led change in demand would drive some of the speculation out of oil trading, and work to reduce volatility of crude prices.

Well...it might...I mean it's possible...I mean...

Ok, Ok, here's my wallet...just give me some gasoline.

Sheesh...

Can't control supply, eh? I'm surprised no one has brought up the idea of gasoline rationing yet.

I'm not saying it's a good idea...just surprised it hasn't come up yet.

JM-99

Actually, we already have gas rationing...by price.

Those that have money get the gas...it's still a rationing system. You mean a rationing system based on something other than price...like the day of the week or your license plate number.

But please realize that economically speaking, we always ration supply. We're just used to doing it by price.

Ikendu has the right ideas. I hope some of our leaders have half his intelligence. We missed the boat in 1973, now may be our last chance to do something to avoid a total collapse of our way of life. BIGIRON made a smart move in buying his Prius. I just parked my Silverado and bought a used Civic. 35 miles/gallon around town sure beats 15! As for the drugs, thank your lucky stars that Grammie can't drive anymore! She just pops a pill when she wants to take a trip! I feel bad for the people that have to take numerous medications and drive a vehicle. They are getting ripped two ways. Most likely, we will run out of gas before the drug companies run out of pills. What kind of world are we leaving our kids? I still like the idea of a group buy for a tanker of gas from Venzuela for 12 cents a gallon!

A big part of the sudden increase lately is due to speculators in the market. They read news stories predicting doom and gloom and predictions of oil prices skyrocketing. So they try to buy up the supplies cheap now thus driving up demand and price higher than what the normal supply & demand would dictate. They are banking on being able to sell it at an even higher price in the future. For a while, this is a self fufilling prophecy as this "speculator demand" drives prices even higher. But just like the Dot Com bubble, once the prices stop going up and the speculators start to sell off, the price will drop quickly. Of course, that never makes the news. I always have to laugh when there's a story about "Gas prices are the highest in 8 months". Funny, I missed the story about the prices "dropping to the lowest levels in 5 months".

Keep the government out of it and everything will work itself out. Sure it will be painful for a while, but it's better than the alternative. Even though I was just a kid at the time, I remember what happened when the government got involved in the 70's and there were long lines at the gas stations because you could only gas up on even/odd days and you stood a good chance of there being no gas left by the time you got to the front of the line. At least those "record profits" are enough incentive to keep the pumps running. When there were price controls in the 70's the oil companies had no reason to go after other more expensive sources of supply since doing so would have reduced their profits even more than the price controls had.

Of course, even with the "massive windfall profits" by the oil companies, they still only get about half as much as the government gets.

metalhed said:

If each American could reduce their driving miles by just 10%, then supply would drop...causing prices to shift downward at about the same rate. But the effect might be even more profound if oil traders (the guys driving up the price of crude) became fearful of consumers ability to reduce consumption. Right now, traders assume (correctly) that we are addicted and can't change our ways. A consumer led change in demand would drive some of the speculation out of oil trading, and work to reduce volatility of crude prices.

Click to expand...

Like almost all great ideas about complex problems, Yes, but:

The problem is that any reduction in price brought on by a national reduction in demand will result in renewed demand as the consumer population inevitably responds to the lowered price.

Low gas prices ==> less fuel consumption concern ==> greater demand ==> higher prices ==> greater fuel consumption concern ==> lower demand ==> lower gas prices ==> less fuel consumption concern ==> greater demand ==> higher prices... and so on.

The sad fact is that what we are going through right now has to happen, and this is what will be viewed in the future as what drove the inevitable development of alternative energy technologies. What is going on right now is no different than other periods in history when sufficiently expectant Need birthed inevitable Invention. Its just that the history books rarely give us an adequate perspective on the actual discomfort of the labor.

supply and demand I understand. What angers me is when oil prices go up, gas prices go up, when oil prices go down, gas prices stay and the same, and when oil prices stay the same, gas prices either go up or stay the same. Thats kinda messed up logic, and while we all pay at the pump the select few get rich. Yes I suppose its the 'american' way to some exstent, make a living and all, but I wish they would charge a bit less. its not like knocking it down 20 cents a gallon would make them go broke...

I believe the push for more alternative fuels and more hybrids with eventually moderate gas prices. Alternative fuels will also help out the poor American farmers who take a crap shoot every year wondering what their crop will yield at the market. It would be nice for the farmers to grow something that will actually be in demand when the crops are harvested.

On another note, we complain about high gas prices to power our vehicles and heat our homes, but will readily consume a four dollar cup of Starbucks (8oz) or a 1.50 bottle of water (16oz)??? ...... It is all how you look at it????

thesurefire said:

supply and demand I understand. What angers me is when oil prices go up, gas prices go up, when oil prices go down, gas prices stay and the same, and when oil prices stay the same, gas prices either go up or stay the same.

Click to expand...

You'll love the system we have of taxing fuel then. It's a cliquet where eacht time the fuel prices goes up, taxes stay at the same %, but the total amount of revenue goes up. (logical, but not nice) now when the prices go down, half of the amount they go down is souped-up by a tax-increase.

As an example, price starts at 1$ for a litre and 50 cents is actual fuel cost and 50 cents is tax.

Now the price of the actual fuel cost doubles to 1 dollar per litre resulting in 1$ tax + 1 $ fuel cost = 2$ per litre.

The price of the actual fuel goes down again to 50 cents resulting in 75 cents of tax and 50 cents of fuel cost is $1.25 per litre. and this system repeats each time the price goes up and down. can you imagine the tax percentage on fuel by now?

We just traded in our Ford Freestar for a Mazda MPV. Smaller but 10-15% better mileage. Our beater is a '98 Explorer that gets maybe half what the MPV gets - we'd like to trade it in but we put so few miles on it (45,000 after 8 years) that it makes no sense.

It's anyone's guess but it's pretty clear the days of $20 a barrel oil and $1-$2 gas are over for now. As has been pointed out, it's simply supply and demand. Rationing actually does nothing for either supply or demand - it simply interferes with an efficient market. When the price goes up, people self ration based on their need. This isn't perfect, particularly at the ends of the income spectrum (lowest income people have a lot more pain, highest income people barely notice) but the long gas lines people remember from the 70's had more to do with price controls and rationing than with actual supply and demand.

I blame the current administration - it wasn't until these most recent price spikes that they finally started using conservation instead of conversation to address the issue.

Let's try and keep the politics out of this thread. It's safe to say that despite all the rhetoric by both sides none of the administrations in the last 30 years have done anything significant to help stem the problem.

Supply, demand and fear use to be the only forces that drove the oil and gas market but no longer. I believe much of the market today is driven by pure speculation. The price of oil and gas is set by the market not the oil companies and not OPEC. You might be surprised to discover you are partly responsible for the increase in cost. Many 401k's, and others are investing in oil and gas because it has an upward trend. I watched the price rapidly climb the previous couple of weeks while reports were being released about increased reserves and supplies. This week they reported a decrease in supply and the price kept dropping, hmmm. There is also an element in the country (not the oil companies or their shareholders) that wants the price of gas to be $5.00 a gallon to help further their agenda. Don't jump to conclusions, I don't mean a political party.

The oil companies have been the main target for blame because they are making big bucks and even get accused of causing the price to increase. If that were the case then we wouldn't have seen years of $20 a barrel oil. There is no profit in producing oil at $20 a barrel. This is clearly evidenced by all the rigs sitting idle when that was the price. When you drove down the road and saw all the pump jacks idle it was because the price of oil was to low to make it worth turning them on. Iraq and other countries selling gas for 12c a gallon is a loser, that's subsidized prices.

So why are the prices dropping this week? I believe it's because the President ordered an investigation of the commodity and futures market as well as the oil companies. The politicians will make it about the oil companies and not the market because that's a popular sentiment being driven by the media, especially my old buddy Bill Orielly. However, if there is a villain to be found I believe it will be a group of investors trying to manipulate the markets.