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U.S. Gas Prices Continue To Fall
First time accepted submitter nmpost writes "Earlier this year, as gas prices hit record highs in the winter and spring for that time of year, experts warned we were headed for all time records this summer. Something strange happened before every motorists recurring nightmare happened: gas prices actually started dropping. In fact, prices have fallen over $.50 since they peaked in the spring. Experts have now flipped their projections, and believe prices will continue to tumble through the fall."
Or wholesale? FP, by the way.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
But a lower price will drive up demand again, no? I'm thinking this is why prices fell, because people were expecting the worst and cutting back on travel.
I guess that's one way to look at someone raising the prices extremely high then dropping them down a bit. The gentlemen who manage the prices are very good at planning ahead. Now Obama can use this information to swing votes.
I wish everyone had a better memory.
You say expert. I say idiot. No one predicts gas prices right. Except for maybe: Spring forward in the spring, fall back in the fall (sounds familiar...).
There you go. Anything in between is wildly inaccurate.
I live on the west coast you inconsiderate bastard!
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
And the Right is ominously silent. They couldn't talk about it enough when prices were high.
Experts have no clue what will happen and guess like everybody.
Saudi Arabia is currently flooding the oil market to drive down prices in an attempt to destabilize the economies and governments of Syria and Iran and weaken their broker Russia.
More or less anything else that might be conjured up to explain this precipitous drop (aside from a worldwide recession that is driving down consumption and demand) is just nonsense. This is an odd byproduct of economic warfare. My only question is looking for the bottom so I can maximize returns after this economic war turns into a shooting one.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
Until the week of July 4th. Then they'll drop until Labor Day weekend. Halloween is a good holiday to go for a drive, except for the egg thing.
Yeah, gas prices peak in the late spring around Memorial Day. Refineries have less capacity in May as they transition from making home heating oil in the winter to summer gasoline blends. Last winter was one of the mildest on record, so less home heating oil was needed. Also, cheap natural gas and popular migration to warmer areas of the country are leading to less use of home heating oil in the northeast. So refineries were able to stop making home heating oil earlier than normal this year. The gas price spike happened earlier in the year than normal, at a time that coincided with Iranian sabre-rattling about closing down the Persian Gulf. Now, as TFA mentions, weak economic growth worldwide is holding down demand, and prices are dropping.
Why does anyone listen to stupid news reports predicting future gas prices anyway? You only get on the news by predicting extreme change or extreme hardship. When you say it will be about the same as always, there's (magically) no air time available for that report. This goes for all predictions that masquerade as news. Predictions are not news, and no one know the future. Stop listening to them.
Incumbent qualifies for another term... Need i say more?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Demand destruction benefits the US enormously. We now export gasoline and now care about fuel economy.
Use less fuel, keep more of your money.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Too late, the AC before you already did that.
But the real point here is: economists continue to have no clue about the economy, yet are still taken in consideration for policies. What about asking some astrologers too?
[I'm overgeneralizing, but how to find the REAL economists, not the clueless ones?]
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
How much of this is due to currency fluctuations? The US dollar has risen in value against many other currencies lately, particularly against the euro. Since we're valuing oil in USD couldn't this be largely due to the USD value going up relatively?
Your dollar is buying more so imported goods seem cheaper.
after which the Saudis stop over-pumping. Before that, however, the "wall of oil" (http://www.safehaven.com/article/24788/saudi-arabia-aims-to-deliver-wall-of-oil-to-us-) promised by the Saudis has brought prices down enough to give a mild boost to the economy which insures Obama's re-election.
Fundamentally, nothing's changed. The amount of oil in the continental USA and the Gulf are still relatively trivial. We are and always will be dependent of foreign oil to maintain our current standard of living. This is a blip. Diminishing supply, and more importantly, lousy energy return on the world's remaining oil guarantee higher prices over time.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Experts Agree: With this trend, by this time next year gas will cost $1.50, and 2 years from now, they'll be paying US $0.50 to take away a gallon of gas!
Did everyone already forget our current Administration saying they'd try getting gas prices below $2.50/gal by election time?
Ahem, it's election year, folks. Pay attention.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Someone claim Republicans successfully destroyed the Communist Muslim Obama's plan to force us into capitulating to the Brown People over yonder.
In other news, Presidents don't control the price of gas.
Why the hell won't Obama make an executive order making it illegal to invest speculatively (so basically at all) in gasoline and oil? That would solve half the problem right there. It's a pretty damn direct path from my pocket book at the gas station to some asshole investor's portfolio balance when they buy up a bunch of gas just because they think it will go up and that makes it go up even more. It's a non-congress, simple executive order caliber thing and it really does sound like something that would be inline with his politics. Hopefully he reads slashdot lol.
Complaint: Gas isn't delivered free to my car every morning by a government employee.
And if that did happen, then it'd be the Government is stifling the free market by providing it through taxes or something.
Heaven help them if the Water Car was ever real.
It's not, but if it were to be developed, by government-funded research, they'd cry about the massive unemployment.
(No, Ayn Rand devotees, you aren't the only ones who can make up such situations!)
so is the gas price cheap compared to a year ago? two years? what about 5 years? yeah.. It's sad but gas prices are so high that even a $0.50 drop is not very meaningful.
"It's not, but if it were to be developed, by government-funded research, they'd cry about the massive unemployment."
Don't worry. They'd sell the taxpayer funded research to the highest bidder, to allow them to strangle the market for the technology with patents. There would be no need for any worry about post-scarcity economics, since we have already shown that scarcity will be legally enforced by those who currently profit from it if it ceases to exist. That's why we have copyright.
Great Intellect...
Will those people who put signs up at gas pumps blaming Obama for rising gas prices put up signs giving him credit for the drop in prices?
Because the US President clearly has a whole hell of a lot of control over the price of a global commodity.
not bad I think, especially for my 7MPG vehicle!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
... an "expert" is just a drip under pressure.
No matter who wins, the day after election day it will go right back up again and then some.
Does this not *always* happen during an election year?
Cheapest in my area (central coast California) is $3.85/gl and the California state average is $3.83/gl. Trending down, but still much higher than national average.
Overall, sustained higher prices will benefit the US in the long term. It's putting upward pressure on fuel economy so we're finally making progress catching up with the rest of the world. We have a long way to go still but it's improving. Electric cars are just starting to become viable for the American worker's commute, now price just needs to come down. They are still over twice the price of the ICE versions.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
California's gas prices are always a bit higher because we have about 50 cents more tax per gallon than most states - but it mostly goes to road maintenance, and otherwise it would just be built into the income tax or sales tax (which are also very high, but that's a separate problem.)
The other issue is that California requires somewhat special mixes of gasoline to reduce pollution, and that means there's less flexible supply chasing our demand, so we're likely to have higher prices and higher variability than states that let you burn anything. It's arguable how much of that is necessary - we could probably have more flexible definitions of low-pollution gas that would still keep our air clean, especially since car engines are more efficient and cleaner today than 10 or 20 years ago. (With my old telecommuter-friendly car, I also noticed that I consistently got about 10% worse mileage with winter gas than summer gas, though I'm not sure if my current car is as sensitive.)
By the way, if you're buying a new car, expect to spend about $1M / YourMPG on gas over the lifetime of the car. It'll last about 200K-250K miles, and gas will cost $4-5 much of that time, so you'll end up spending $20K if you buy a 50mpg Prius, or $50K if you buy a 20mpg car. (Your miles per year don't affect the total, just the variance - you can burn up your car in 5 years or keep it around for 20, you're still buying the same amount of gas before it dies. If you sell the car while it's still working, obviously the gas cost gets pro-rated.) I figure my current 30-33mpg car will cost me about $30-33K in gas, so $10-13K more than a Prius (which would have cost about $8K more to buy.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
And here I expected a story about changes in the price of something over time would include a chart.
To remedy the lack of charts: http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2012/02/27/how-high-have-gas-prices-risen-over-the-years/
(This is a good link because it includes an inflation-adjusted chart.)
In the mean time demand from Europe has fallen off a cliff, and demand from China has turned down. The US is not doing half the growth economists were predicting 6 months ago. All in all, it would be strange if we weren't seeing a significant drop in crude prices and the associated gas prices.
Preferably in the Middle East !!
BP says, Jolly Roger Me !!
Cheney says, Fuck with me and I'll shoot you again !!
Bush says, yay !! can i play the red guys this time ??
Mobile/Exxon/Shell/Esso/Phillips/Conoco says, let's do it for the children !!
And Israel says, fuck iram !!
Experts who claim that prices will continue to rise when prices have been rising, or continue to fall when prices have been falling, are nothing but weather vanes. These are the same idiots who have denied that we were in the last half dozen bubbles; the same idiots who were excited about DOW 30,000; the same idiots who claimed that stock/housing prices could just keep going up and up FOREVER!
just a ghost in the machine.
Peak demand happened in 2008, so supply actually exceeds demand sometimes. Technically peak production happened then as well, but so many people bring their own unrelated baggage to "peak oil" when it's just the maximum point on the production graph. In this case the decline has happened because people we unwilling to buy more oil, for mostly economic reasons, and to a much lesser extend which is only really kicking in now, because other sources of energy become increasingly popular the longer the oil price is high.
Personally I'm hoping for a very slow slide down the oil production graph instead of a sudden drop to nothing which is what some people think of with "peak oil". Before people start arguing about irrelevant stuff, you should note that's liquid oil, the easy to get stuff, not the more expensive per Joule stuff like oil from tar sands, shale, made from coal or whatever. That stuff will be our liquid fuel of choice only when mineral oil is scarce enough to be very expensive to obtain.
"Earlier this year, experts predicted higher gas prices....Experts have now flipped their predictions, and now believe prices will continue to fall." Would be more simply said, "'Experts' admit they have no fucking clue what gas prices are going to do."
The penguin made me do it.
like falling demand due to anemic world economic performance?
ockham has a razor, you should use it on your crazy man beard some day
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Supply and demand
At least call it gasoline man - gas is something which is gaseous in nature.
I expected an article about Natural Gas.
As a side note, in case you missed it. Bank Holidays are all the rage now in Europe. With even one bank in the Brits saying, oh, we had a bad software upgrade so we have to shut everything down for a few days....
Yeah. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggght.
Gas and everything else is in a huge decline because western civilization is collapsing and is corrupt from top to bottom.
1% take 99% of everything while the 99% get less than 1% of anything.
We have a corrupt society, where huge numbers of resources go to people who don't do, or make anything of value for society.
So as the economic collapse happens, prices are going to plummet as people like me can't afford to run a car let alone the gas to run it.
People working at Apple's stores can't even afford the products they sell and they are so called Geniuses?
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
The whole thing is coming down, and it is going to all end very badly.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
The problem with economists is, they get tied up into their own little school of thought and won't budge an inch. Any significantly large system will have rules it seems to run by, and once you figure out the rules, predicting it is reasonably possible. Where everybody falls down is, some people look at the ruleset, game the shit out of the system for their own gain and fuck the rest. Just because there are rules doesn't mean everybody will play by them fairly. They won't. And bending the shit out of the rules past the point where they break fucks up the models.
Marx figured this out in the 1800's, but was so wedded to his model of Communism that he couldn't let go of it to take the data he was seeing to its logical conclusion - once you let human beings into the system, the system will break down. It's the main reason that Engles had to finish Das Kapital, for Marx had lost his faith and wouldn't admit it. If he'd manned up and finished up with what he was seeing, he'd be hailed as a major economic prophet today instead of being relegated to the 'also-ran' pile, and there would have been no Communism as we had inflicted on us.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Also it's OIL not "peak fossil fuels". There is a lot of coal around for instance but for a variety of applications it's not as convenient as oil so it's availability has almost never had any impact on the price or availability of oil. You don't drive a Stanley Steamer so it's an expensive and lossy process to get coal to produce the energy to move your vehicle (even if it's electric).
Marx figured this out in the 1800's, but was so wedded to his model of Communism that he couldn't let go of it to take the data he was seeing to its logical conclusion - once you let human beings into the system, the system will break down. It's the main reason that Engles had to finish Das Kapital, for Marx had lost his faith and wouldn't admit it. If he'd manned up and finished up with what he was seeing, he'd be hailed as a major economic prophet today instead of being relegated to the 'also-ran' pile, and there would have been no Communism as we had inflicted on us.
I thought you just got done saying the system will break down once you let human beings into the system. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, so many others, were very much human.
At most, others would have taken the same roles, into the same directions, with any difference being questionable.
Unless you have a Hari Seldon level of computation anyway.
You don't.
stupid!
if it's going up, they'll say it will be higher,
if it's going down, they'll say it will be lower,
you are not using those old BS battery life numbers that were trotted out a few years ago. I'd like to think that there are some new fantasy stories out there to laugh at.
What about asking some astrologers too?
Nancy Regan did. That alone should get Republicans on board with it.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Jewish bankers.
Twitter: @dainsanefh
Why do you call petrol gas, it is a liquid.
Here's one guys take on The future of oil prices. He basically expects the price of a barrel of oil to bounce between $85 and $125 for the next couple of years.
Thank GOD that our hard working President Obama has FINALLY gotten the price of oil down from the crazy high that Bush and his oil cronies driven it to. The oil is coming down because the economy is doing better and the world knows that he will be reelected. I lost my job last year and had almost given up until I heard him say that the private sector is doing fine. I knew after I heard that I was going to be OK. Obama Biden 2012 HOPE AND CHANGE!!!
Your argument is invalid.
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot all proved the point. Communism would work wonderfully if it weren't for human beings. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, et al gamed the system, and eventually the system fell apart.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
The prices are falling simply because it's an election year. It happened the same year Obama got elected.
I don't find anything that verifies this and it seems like mandating that gasoline be refined in-state would be violation of the US constitution.
still wrong.
Some Saudi oil costs under $10 to produce a barrel of oil.
The lower the price, the less oil it is feasible to produce.
The higher the price, the more oil it becomes feasible to produce.
It is quite likely for the price of oil to return to $20 to $25 a barrel.
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/historical_oil_prices_chart.asp
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's the collapse of the European economy. Duh. Back when these forecasts for high oil prices were made, the "experts" were also forecasting all kinds of other B.S., like economic recovery in the Euro zone. Guess what, it didn't happen, and isn't going to happen because the Euro is going to collapse--with massive economic fallout. It's happening now. The reduction in demand due to this catastrophe explains the drop in oil pricing.
The problem is, a) low oil prices are now making certain oil fields too costly to explore, plus b) worldwide supply is now at peak, a future spike in demand is going to send prices skyrocketing. It's only a matter of time.
Republicans control the gas prices. During an election year right around the same time gas drops before November....
Sorry, I wasn't describing refined petrol/gasoline in the United States but instead the global production of crude oil which does have an effect on that price.
Could I please ask our American friends to stop refering to the stuff you put in cars as gas? Its very cinfusing for the rest of us English speaking people where gas means light stuff that floats around in the air like oxygen or something. Please call it petrol or go juice.
The reason we run out all but completely by something like 2055, it may be 2060 now because of drop in demand, is we use too much and waste too much. If we cut usage by 50% we'd still have nearly a 100 year supply. Sound outrageous? Hardly. When you factor in older gas guzzlers like older SUVs, we are only managing 25 or 30 miles per gallon. Doubling that is 50 to 60 miles per gallon which some cars already do. Come up with sensible hybrids and we can probably make the average 60 to 80. By sensible I mean limited or no battery storage. Most of the waste is from constantly changing engine speed. Make the engine run at optimal speed then add in a limited battery storage just to buffer excess and cars wouldn't need to cost much more. The reason is the gas engine would be radically smaller since the car would be run by electric motors which are more efficient. There's extra hardware so the buy in would be a little higher but cutting your gas bill would save you money. Also with regenerative braking in city would be only a little lower mileage than highway since the engine is running at the same speed. You'd have unlimited range as well. Make the cars smaller and lighter and you save even more. It's why I always say conservation is the only real solution in the short term. Everyone says to build more nuclear plants which are very expensive. Switch to efficient appliances and bulbs as well as improve insulation and you save a bundle and we can shut down some coal plants instead of opening new nuclear plants as a stop gap. I used to live a half hour from my mother. She just redid her house with new windows and insulation and she had to replace her AC unit anyway. Her power bills are under a $100, usually $80. My bills for a similar sized house were $150 to $250. FYI why didn't I do the upgrades, I was renting. Most people would save the most for the cost of investment just by replacing their fridge which is the biggest energy pit. I'm against fracking but the up side of poisoned well water is cheap gas. Forget coal and nuclear build gas fired plants. Less pollution and you can build one in a quarter the time you can a nuclear plant. Decommissioning one is radically cheaper and they have a longer service life. There are fixes to get us through the next century and lessen environmental impact we just need the will to do it.
If you compare oil, gold, and the stock markets, they all move in unison. The price of gas has dropped about 15%, the S&P dropped about 10%, and gold dropped about 7% over the last 6 months. This is driven by monetary movements. The dollar has been getting stronger (due to the Euro crisis) driving down the price of commodities (priced in dollors, but demand influenced by how expensive they are in foriegn currency).
When the dollar goes up, commodities and investments drop, but we get deflation because oil and food markets are lower. When the dollar goes down (like from 2009-2011), you get inflation and higher investment prices. The weak dollar can help domestic employment because it is relatively cheaper to employ somebody here than when the dollar is strong.
Bernanke and Obama have been playing with the dollar the entirety of Obama's term. While they've been saying they are for a strong dollar, they let it go weak, angering the Chinese and oil nations, who threatened to move markets to a non-dollar currency. The weaker dollar did allow employment to drop from near 10 to 8.5 percent. I predicted months ago that eventually, the administration would flip a switch, and allow the dollar to strengthen, thus driving gas prices down leading into the election despite the damage that would be done to investment portfolios.
I don't know if Obama and Romney understand this because they all blather on about the same nonsense about job creation, and whether this is Obama's fault or Bush's. You know what, the fault for this lies with the 60+ years of Democrats running things (control of Congress) from 1930-1994, never bringing spending under control and paying off the debt and justifying creating Social Security, Medicare and the (Un)affordable Health Care Act which are eventually going to bankrupt our government. I think those programs can be done by government, but they must be done at the county level, not the federal. Unfortunately, we may be permanently handicaping ourselves with these stupid programs.
Obama made a deal with OPEC, just like he was caught on an open mic pleading with the Russians that he can be more flexible with them ( yielding to them ) after the election. OPEC wouldn't deal with Bush because of what his dad did in the 1st Iraq war. As Obama has promised, "under my plan energy cost will skyrocket" - if he gets reelected will see $5/gallon as the norm shortly after.
The carbon credits you refer to, otherwise known as cap-and-trade, is pretty simple and great system that combines the best of free markets and government regulation. There is a consensus that we need to lower emissions and most people agree that some form of regulation from the government is needed. The problem is that it's very difficult to create a set of rules that work as intended.
For example UK recently built a massive power plant that runs on biofuel and what actually happens is that they transport the fuel all the way from Canada to be burned in UK. Why? Environmentally it would be better to burn it in Canada but UK provides greater incentives for such power plants. We could try to fix every small issue like that - both internationally and inside countries - but we'll always be left with incomplete (and increasingly complex) set of regulations that encourage to do stupid things. We need a free markets based solution that discourages polluting, not regulations that encourage finding workarounds.
Cap-and-trade is exactly that system. Rights to pollute are auctioned and the acceptable amount of pollution is slowly reduced over time, which encourages solutions that efficiently reduce pollution but discourages expensive solutions that provide relatively little benefits. The economic incentive for any environmental decision is directly relative to how much it actually helps the environment.
Now... that all said, there are some flaws. First of all, for the system to work perfectly, (nearly) all countries should participate and all pollution (be it traffic, energy, industrial...) should be distributed like that. Certain aspects need tweaking (For example, a ton of greenhouse gases released to the upper atmosphere by airplanes are about as harmful as two tons of such gases released at ground level...) and others are difficult to handle just through cap-and-trade (relatively small amount of pollution to a very important wildlife sanctuary, for example) and one can argue that the way that the pollution rights are currently distributed is unfair towards developing countries... even so, the concept is great and with a little more effort put into cap-and-trade, it could allow us to abolish huge amounts of inefficient regulation and incentivize us to reduce pollution as efficiently as possible.
world recession.
Give or take. I just moved to Alaska from New Zealand, it's sure is good to fill a car for under $50 again, what we pay here is what we were paying in NZ 10 years ago. In NZ we pay the equiv of 6 to 8 US$/gallon. Running a cheap efficient car is a costly exercise - it was costing me $130 to fill a 1999 Ford Mondeo (2L inline 4 and 5 speed manual trans) which is by american standards, a small station wagon like a Subaru Legacy - that would get around 30mpg highway. We also pay over $300 a year in yearly car registration / licensing costs, thanks mostly to a thing called ACC levies that pays for other peoples time off work when they have an accident. It adds up really fast. You really just dont realise how good you all have it in this country! I sure do, and Iove it :)
Pretty much. The whole fuel economy thing is something that's already got a solution. Whenever the price goes below a certain amount you ratchet up the tax on it. Use the tax to pay for maintaining the crumbling infrastructure. It's why Seattle beats the crap out of the other major cities on fleet efficiency. It's not solely a matter of environmentalism, the gas is expensive and taxes make sure it stays that way. Same sort of thing goes for water consumption, keep the price high enough and people find ways of reducing their demand.
What's worse is that Jevon's Parodox has been known for well over a century, and yet we continue to pretend like it doesn't apply to fuel consumption.
does everyone always forget that gas prices fall during an election year? they don't want it to be an issue during campaigning.
On the second Wednesday in November
If the "Experts" and I use the term very lightly, already claimed that gas price would rise and they were completely wrong, then why should we believe them that this time it will continue to fall. I could ask my 5 year old cousin and get the same answer, so I guess he's an expert.
we've dropped about 10p in last 3 weeks, yes once again we're getting stuffed royaly in the UK.
(£1.30 a litre is the cheapest I can find anywhere. $7.63 a US Gallon)
Anyone wonder if it's partly because this is an election year? I don't usually watch these heads on TV talk about their half-empty promises or any political accolades they take credit for, but if he hasn't done it already, how long until Obama starts blasting about fuel prices?
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Exactly, the differential between CA gas prices is NOT because of extra taxes, it is the result of bill AB32's Low Carbon Fuel Standard.
AB32's LCFS mandates a special formulation which will change for the next few years, so refineries will be constantly having to change to accommodate this. There hasn't been any increase in refineries or production on the West coast as far as I know. Therefore, this is a reduction in supply, thus the increase in CA price over other states (such as AZ).
You seem to be nearly there with that first sentence - diminishing returns. My point is all the options to produce a liquid fuel from coal, shale, natural gas etc require more energy to produce than from crude oil so more effort (and expense) is required to fill the tank - thus more expense and diminishing returns so that's why running out of crude oil is such a big deal. The "centuries of supply" made from a far more expensive energy source that would better used as it is (eg. coal or natural gas as is instead of made into a liquid fuel) is not very useful after a point. Running out of crude oil potentially marks a point where cheap shipping of goods as we have it today doesn't happen anymore and nearly everything becomes far more difficult and expensive, whether it's more expensive synthesised fuels or more infrastructure to move things around using generated electricity. With a slow change (as the other energy sources are taken up or less reliance on liquid fuel) it will be more inconvenience than disaster, but a few years ago it looked like it would be a rapid change which is why peak production was seen as a big deal.
I'm trying to get the point across that using a lot more energy to do the same thing makes things just that more difficult and expensive. I'm sorry for being rude before but I did try to head all this off in my comment above and thought you were deliberately pretending to misunderstand it as some sort of "peak oil denier" than mistakenly thinks they are doing a good turn for myself and others in the oil industry by pretending it's going to last forever and badly twisting the meaning of a very simple term. When it gets to be more of an economic and energy consumption pain to get the difficult to produce oil than it is to move coal seam gas around in vehicles then the shift occurs to that form of energy for example.
More resources per Joule. Using a lot of energy to provide a more convenient energy source really chews through resources at a rapid rate, which means digging up a whole lot more of whatever you are making the oil out of and putting it through a very lossy process instead of just using it to provide energy directly. That takes more effort and expense than with crude oil, so it really means once the crude oil is gone road and sea transport will never be cheap again unless there are some very major changes (once again expensive in energy and economic terms).
Burning a lot of energy to make an energy source is a bit of a fools game when you can do something with the original energy source instead of throwing most of it away.
When your gas price gets that high you can shout about it from the top of the Empire State Building, until then STFU.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
To be fair, Marx predicted that capitalism first had to fail by concentrating all wealth into the hands of very few. No such thing happened in any of the countries which turned "communist"; most of them went there straight from a society based on agriculture without significant industrialism. This did cause a number of headaches for the communists in China and Russia, but those governments were very good at maintaining cognitive dissonance and various explanations were invented.
Meanwhile, capitalism succeeded in spreading the wealth among everyone -- not equally of course, but most everyone saw their economic situation improve and they also saw their children have more opportunities. In such an environment, thoughts of revolution are unlikely to take hold. Just like they are not taking hold in China today.
Now, if instead people ended up in a situation where it was clear that there was wealth enough for everyone available, yet their own situation was markedly worse than say 10 years ago. That is what Marx expected to happen in fairly short order in the Western world, but people were smarter and managed to avoid it. Hopefully we will all be equally smart in the future.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2107374/Fuel-tax-British-motorists-pay-60-duty-VAT-petrol.html
Without all of the UK taxes, gas would be 53p/liter.
That was back at the end of February when gas was $3.77 per gallon in California. Gas tax is about $0.68 of that (35c CA gas, 15c CA/local sales tax, 18c federal), so $3.09 actual gas cost.
That's $0.82 / liter or (wait for it) about 52p per liter, or nearly exactly the same cost for gasoline.
Excuse me while I grab my bullhorn and get a train ticket to NYC.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The more I study economics, the more I think that any economist who claims that a theory is wrong is right, and any economist who claims that a theory is right is wrong. Classic example: Marx was wrong about communism, but right about capitalism.
Interesting. Do you have a reference or proof? would like to find out more, e.g. usual volume of release of oil on to the market compared to what you see happening now. cheers.
Let's try it another way, when it is economical to do so, it will be done. It IS being done, e.g. tar sands are 15% of U.S. crude imports. e.g. shale oil ramps up whenever crude prices and demand stay high for sufficient time. you lose, engineering and economics win. environment loses.
Let's try it another way, for every one barrel's worth of electricity delivered to your home, two more barrels are eaten by your power plant. None of the processes I mentioned are that bad.....your phase "a lot" means nothing and shows your ignorance of engineering.
I paid $3.26 a gallon for gas this morning. A short time back it was pushing $4 a gallon in my area. Gas prices always go up in the summer, yet this year gas prices are coming down.
I'm still seeing Republicans who are fighting for Mitt Romney getting stopped in video interviews after claiming that President Obama has "done nothing about high gas prices".
I don't think the President can do much about gas prices at all, though I would love to give credit to President Obama.
BTW, I highly recommend this site and paying in cash. You will get a MUCH better deal than you could hope to get with any gas/credit card and the place you will get it at will likely be around the corner from where you live or work:
gasbuddy.com
The Saudi's are pumping at an incredible rate at the request of our Commander-in-Chief. They give a little now and get a little after the November election.
Obama Viva 2012!!
US fuel prices?
So maybe by November gas prices will be the $1.85 they were when Obama took office?
Its happened every election since 2000 (and maybe more - I didn't pay attention before then)
Obama put in place several regulations to control oil speculation. During the Bush administration the laws governing commodities trading where changed (laws, not regulations) so that you no longer have to take delivery of a commodity to buy it. Before that, if you wanted 40,000 barrels you had to have someplace to store them. They did it for food too, which is why the cost of food went up 40% and there were food riots in Mexico...
Obama pushed through several regulation to control what they could do (sadly, he did not restore the laws about commodity trading). The is why you're paying less at the pump. He also has used the threat of flooding the market from the national reserves to keep the speculators in check. He did these things well over a year ago, but it takes that long for the savings to make it through the pipeline.
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It's a presidential election year. Nothing to see here. Move along... ;-)
I see why you are deliberately pretending to be ignorant here. Look kid, I'm not arguing ideology but instead physics and the economic consequences of such. If you want to cheer blindly for some political team or another and "bait greenies" then please jump on a political discussion instead of trying to create one here - or grow up!
Those masters students I taught that graduated in 1999 before I went back to the private sector had a different idea Mr MSCE (if that) coder.
An optimistic expectation from a newly developed oil from coal process is 1.5 barrels of oil per ton of coal (2011 - East Texas lignite coal) and there are other energy inputs into the system to give you that liquid fuel. It's not about losing just half the energy, it's about losing "a lot" of energy, to put that in easily understandable terms.
Existing methods are worse than that.
Last month, they eviscerated Obama for rising prices, now they blame him for lost jobs as prices fall..lol.
There's only one explanation for the drop in gasoline prices. Let me remind you that the news reports a few months back referred to the wave of greed being exhibited by big oil and the gasoline retailers. That being the case, the only reasonable explanation is that there has new been a wave of altruism affecting big oil and the gasoline retailers, cancelling the earlier wave of greed.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Hmm, seems there's an election coming... Prices should be below $3 / barrel by November.
The experts say prices will now drop.
Definition of an expert: A drip under pressure.
That's not gas prices are plunging. Gas prices are plunging fracking right now is producing the same amount of oil and natural gas monthly as previous modest releases from the SPR....
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