U.S. Gas Prices Continue To Fall 398
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."
Is this pump price? (Score:2)
Or wholesale? FP, by the way.
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in the UK in 2008 petrol was 89p/litre. April this year, it spiked to £1.42, now it's down to £1.33... crude is at US$20/barrel (what?? I remember not so long ago it was over US$110!) and it's definitely going up again in August by 5p/litre - pretty much wiping out the reduction in pump prices we've had over the last two months as the oil giants will use it as an excuse to gouge the fuck out of us..
Re:Is this pump price? (Score:5, Informative)
crude is at US$20/barrel
It's actually at $80USD a barrel.
Re:Is this pump price? (Score:4, Informative)
Brent crude is around $90, only about a $10 premium over WTI.
Re:Is this pump price? (Score:5, Insightful)
Note the whole thing about oil prices having been spiked as a bubble, and in the process of being respiked. Also note the whole thing on carbon tax credits etc. If true, I wonder how much longer the world at large will put up with such shenanigans?
Re:Is this pump price? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is how much longer the world will put up with the economic shenanigans that our financial god-kings have been pulling for at least the past thirty years, with bankers getting parachute drops of free money which they then set on fire, while the people are being told to "tighten their belts".
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this pump price? (Score:5, Interesting)
What strikes me as particularly egregious, is that the last time the price of oil got this high, there was suddenly tremendous research into alternative fuels and particularly synthetic fuel from algae growth. Just as it became clear that algae was a viable technology and dozens of researchers were beginning to set up pilot projects to begin producing fuel, the price of oil crashed and wiped them all out.
I expect this will be a precise repeat of that exercise. It seems to me that the dog is shaking off the fleas. Perhaps its time for someone to subsidize the production of alternative fuels outside of the price of oil, until we have a product that is capable of competing with oil under any circumstance. Adding to the fact that we can slowly swap synfuel into the economy by taxing regular petroleum, and ultimately have a completely green fuel economy. Of course this presumes having federal legislators that don't own knee-pads or have the ability to whistle Dixie while tying a cherry stem in a knot with their tongues. Too much to ask for?
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This happens every election year. It happened in 2008 as well.
Give credit where credit is due (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Cap-and-trade can be pretty awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
California Gas Prices (Score:5, Interesting)
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.)
Re:California Gas Prices (Score:5, Informative)
Considering that the total tax for on the road gasoline in California is less than fifty cents a gallon, you might want to check your numbers. That's combined state and federal excise taxes as well as a variety of other fees added by the state.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/state-gasoline-tax-rates-january-1-2012 [taxfoundation.org]
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California, per the link you provided charges $0.48 per gallon tax PLUS 7.5% state sales tax plus 2% local tax in many areas. "May include" does not mean "does include".
http://www.caltax.org/research/calrank.html
The state tax portion adds $0.27 to the tax and the 2% another $0.07 for a total tax of between $0.75 and $0.82 in California.
Per you link which shows most States with no sales tax to be added and taxes of under $0.30 per g
Re:California Gas Prices (Score:4, Informative)
Did you even bother to read, well, anything other than your bullshit tea bagger propaganda? The link you provided is nothing but failed reading comprehension and awful scare tactics. High property taxes even with Prop. 13? Two percent of a McMansion in Malibu is still going to be a lot more than a twenty percent tax levied on a yurt in Oklahoma. Blame big government. lawl.
The link I provided broke out the taxes into excise and other taxes. So that's state+federal excise taxes plus other things like "environmental fees, storage tank taxes, other fees or taxes, and general sales tax" for a combined rate of forty-eight and six tenths cents per gallon. That's also based on the API's February 2012 prices.
If you want to look at the link that you provided, go ahead. The fear mongers come up with higher numbers that aren't directly comparable to the ones I provided. Look at the API data the tea baggers use [api.org]. California's at 69.0 cents (same #2 rank) per gallon, with an average of 49.5 cents. Per the link you posted, including DC, the only state with less than 30 cents per gallon in combined taxes is Alaska.
So, no California does not charge fifty cents more per gallon of unleaded gasoline in taxes than most states.
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You know...I couldn't actually tell you what the cost of gas is here. I just never look...gas is a necessity of my life, have to have it to drive to work, shop, etc. So, I just drive to the pump....grab the premium gas (turbo car)...fill it, and leave. I don't even look at the price really.
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Re:California Gas Prices (Score:5, Interesting)
Please mod funny not insightful. Everyone knows the packs last the life of the car, guaranteed like forever, and the cost of a pack is a bit less than your rounding error above. This is a topic near and dear to my heart as my wife's Prius is nearing the end of its aesthetic life, trashed internally, dinged out externally, its really showing signs of age, and sooner or later I'll have to replace the car. Battery failures are extremely rare, so I'm not concerned about that.
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my wife's Prius is nearing the end of its aesthetic life
Curious as to how long you think a car should last. In our household, we have a 1999 vehicle with no plans to replace in the near future (no significant mechanical issues that drive repair cost higher than its worth. While you might live in Japan or have imported on older Prius, I doubt your prius is as old as '99. Some of us amortize the cost of our vehicles over a longer period of time.
Re:California Gas Prices (Score:5, Insightful)
Good lord. Some times I wonder if humanity deserves to live. Should a species that has a concept such as a car 'nearing the end of its aesthetic life' survive?
Maybe (Score:3)
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Prices fall because of presidential elections. My super paranoid conspiracy theory is that oil and gas companies do not want to be the subject of discourse during the elections.
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My paranoid conspiracy: Incumbents have to pay exorbitant amounts to get the prices brought down. Otherwise, the prices inflate so the opposition can blame the incumbent.
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Well prices went through the roof when Bush was a lame duck and dropped when Obama got into office... Maybe there is something to that? Let's see what happens in September-October....
Prices are more to do with supply and demand and if refineries are running well prices stay down because we don't have "emergencies". Remember too, CONSUMER usage has been going down, and modern efficient cars are keeping the numbers flatter than in the past when it would go up. Thats why truck fuel (traditionally less than con
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
What on earth makes you think that any American financial firm has the clout to get OPEC, Russia and the other petroleum exporting countries to change prices at whim?
They cannot of course. The price drops have much more to do with demand destruction - less money, less gas. No speculator conspiracy, no Wall Street conspiracy, no oil company conspiracy.
Turns out the petroleum price is pretty elastic, at least in the short term.
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The price drops have much more to do with demand destruction - less money, less gas. No speculator conspiracy, no Wall Street conspiracy, no oil company conspiracy.
[Citation needed]
Even a cursory google search will give you two basic facts
1. Saudi Arabia is pumping the most oil in decades (~10 million bbl/day), [google.com] over the protests of other OPEC members, in order to keep oil prices down.
2. Some refinery shutdowns/closures from the last year have been resolved, thus increasing capacity and lowering gasoline prices.
The real chokepoint these days is refining capacity and it's nearly impossible for them to make money with oil >$100/bbl.
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The real chokepoint these days is refining capacity and it's nearly impossible for them to make money with oil >$100/bbl.
This is only of concern if you're a refining company. Few of those exist. Most refineries are positioned strategically to the retail market and it's quite acceptable they make a loss. Hell our local refinery made a loss for 14 years straight. About the only refineries that can turn a profit are newer mega refineries who don't have sky-rocketing maintenance costs, refineries in 3rd world countries where labour and compliance is cheap, and refineries which have special enough configurations that they can make
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Having the most money does indeed enable price manipulation (the guy with the widest stop-limits an deepest margin accounts wins in a game of chicken). But what on earth makes you think that trading faster allows one to "set the price"?
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The answer is because the worlds wealth is almost all based in the US.
LOL.
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Oil storage business? [laprogressive.com]. It's a staring content. The one who blinks last wins. The consumers of crude oil (such as refineries) need the supp
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it's not paranoid if it's true.
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ideally, fuel efficient cars will keep the peaks down. There for a while we were PHYSICALLY using less gas, not just using less than PROJECTED.
This is such a silly thing. We all talk about USING less gas, and now we ARE. Rather than tell everybody "good job" we have to keep up with the FUD that we're hurting their profits?
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On average, cars were more fuel efficient 30 years ago. The problem is with pollution controls.
Engines attain maximum efficiency when they run hotter, the problem with hotter running engines is that they produce more nitrogen oxides and cause more smog. So, in the 1980s, they imposed pollution controls to reduce the nitrogen oxides and therefore smog. The only way car makers could meet this was to make engines run cooler, and in so doing reduced the efficiency of the engines.
Miles per gallon hasn't changed
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On average, cars were more fuel efficient 30 years ago.
As a driver for 35yrs, I call bullshit. OTOH if you're american your idea of a 1980's family sedan is probably closer to my idea of a small truck.
Re:Maybe (Score:4, Informative)
Bigger, yes, heavier, no. Modern cars don't creak like those cars of 30 years ago, because much more steel is used to make a stiffer unibody than in the past. The modern mini, while slightly larger than the original mini is almost twice the weight. My 5-passenger car weighs the same as the 7-passenger minivan that it replaced.
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Sorry, but have to call bullshit on that one. Looking at diesel standby engine generators, the fuel consumption per MWh for a low-emissions unit over a "standard" unit is about a 9% delta. Comparing an engine from (about) 1970, you would see nominally a 30% higher number.
1970 - ~90-100gal/MWh
2012 Tier 2 - 73 gal/MWh
2012 non-tiered - 65 gal/MWh
The improved performance is mainly from tighter manufacturing tolerances and higher compression ratios and EFI.
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We're not using less gas. We have more cars.
Re:Maybe (Score:4, Informative)
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Ideally, fuel efficient cars will keep the peaks down.
They'll help, but OTOH every single person in China wants their own car now, and many of them can now afford to buy one as well, traffic and smog be damned. So the likelihood of the world ever seeing a significant gas surplus is small.
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
Demand is low because we're in a world wide recession. They'll go back up when the economy recovers, but that could be a while because we're still coming down off the 90's bubble which knocked everything out of line.
But you will have more bubble bursts and more crises. The system is just instable since neoliberal policitians removed all the safeguards that were set up after the 1929 crisis: the, Glass-Steagall Act, an higher income tax for the wealthie...
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Iraq war for oil
Please. Saddam was pumping as much oil out of the ground as he could. Nothing the US could do would add any more of Iraq's oil to the world's supply.
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
The OPEC countries are very careful about maintaining their control over the oil supply and making sure that it isn't subject to typical market forces. One interesting consequence of this, albeit unrelated to the topic at hand, is that the United States has essentially no influence over the price of gas in their country. At least not in the long term - this is interesting, I think, because people talk sometimes about drilling in the nature preserve in Alaska or offshore drilling as a way to reduce gas prices, but doing so would have, at best, a short term effect. The OPEC countries would quickly cut their supply and stabilize the price. Since oil is a global commodity there's really no difference between "foreign oil" and "American oil" unless some major war breaks out that stops international trade.
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OPEC only has so much control, and they're not united in their controls. They don't control demand, which has fluctuated wildly lately. Saudi Arabia, for instance, has been quite reticent in their controls and have been flooding the market as long as it makes them money. The anti-US contingent in OPEC would love to pull back production but the countries that actually make a profit aren't biting.
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Re:Maybe (Score:4, Interesting)
If the price of oil is falling then it's because they've decided that is no longer of primary importance. You could guess their reasons: maybe they want to squash all this talk of wind and solar power, maybe they're trying to do something about Syria, etc. It's hard to say for sure.
Saudi Arabia is pumping like crazy in order to balance the supply disruption from the embargo on Iran.
They're also pumping a bit more, which is causing the price of oil to go down because the Saudis are oversupplying the market.
Sooo... no need to guess their reasons.
It's because the Europeans are trying to squeeze Iran.
Meh! (Score:3)
I live on the west coast you inconsiderate bastard!
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The prices on the West Coast are the choice of the voters, for good or ill.
Re:Meh! (Score:4, Funny)
We voted to have the fire at the Cherry Point refinery? I missed that one.
Re:Meh! (Score:5, Funny)
We voted to have the fire at the Cherry Point refinery? I missed that one.
See what happens when you forget to vote?
In other words (Score:5, Insightful)
Experts have no clue what will happen and guess like everybody.
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Well they sure don't have any clue. I agree with that, but back a few years ago when oil was $80/BBL we were paying around $0.82/L for fuel here in Canada. It's still right up around $1.19 where I live. Of course, now that the provincial government(which is the liberal party) allowed two companies to buyout the majority of the distributors I'm sure you can figure out what's happened.
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Price per litre in Canada trended upwards with the price of oil right until about $1.20/L (at about $120/barrel) then the price of oil fell and the price of gas... well... that never really falls. And don't blame the provincial government either, it's the same in all provinces. You can't really blame the federal government either though, because they don't have much of a hand in it. Unless you count their continued refusal to investigate price fixing by the major gas station chains... (Funnily enough, every
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Saudi Arabia (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Saudi Arabia (Score:5, Funny)
Bullshit. Barrack Obama *personally* lowered gas prices though sheer fiat of will. Newt Gingrich was going to do it if he got the Republican nomination, but he lost to Romney. Barack decided to just go ahead and do it since Michelle is busy with her book tour. Note that Mitt Romney doesn't have the power to make gas prices rise and fall--only Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich have this power--Mitt's magic underwear prevents it.
Newt gets his power from sucking the souls of the babies of the poor. Barack's power source is just sheer awesomeness.
This "supply and demand" stuff is just a big pile of bullshit, just like science, economics and compassion. That's why the Republicans don't believe in any of it. They just use "common sense".
nonsense? (Score:2)
like falling demand due to anemic world economic performance?
ockham has a razor, you should use it on your crazy man beard some day
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One factor you forgot: natural gas. A *lot* of cheap natural gas is coming online right now in the United States, displacing oil in electricity, industry, and home heating needs. Oil's "competition" isn't "no oil", it's natural gas, and it has to get cheaper to compete. Combine that with China's growth slowing, Europe slowly imploding, and certain oil-producing nations needing some cash (I'd put more weight on Venezuela and their election than Saudi Arabia and their interests), and yeah, you get cheap(er
Continues to fall until... (Score:2)
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.
Gas prices peak in the late spring (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Election season (Score:2, Insightful)
Incumbent qualifies for another term... Need i say more?
We need demand destruction. (Score:5, Insightful)
Demand destruction benefits the US enormously. We now export gasoline and now care about fuel economy.
Use less fuel, keep more of your money.
Oil prices fall until after the election... (Score:2)
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
Price dropped $0.50 in 3 months? (Score:2)
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Mandatory XKCD
http://xkcd.com/605/ [xkcd.com]
what would help keep it this way (Score:2)
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No that would solve nothing, you have never speculated on anything in your life. Stop talking about things you know nothing about.
Go find the correlation between Gas price and Gold price. It is steady since the 70s, you'll find pearson's R is above .90. It is all inflation/deflation.
Re:what would help keep it this way (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry R^2 is above 0.90. Pearsons R between average gas price at the pump in the US vs Gold/oz from Jan 1976 to Feb 2012 is 0.833. And pearson's R assumes a the most simple (linear) relationship. This has likely only become stronger recently. You can look at what gold and gas prices have done recently on your own.
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Well, I messed up the math but whatever (I have my reasons for failing), there is a strong correlation.
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Because the instant he did it, he'd be hauled into court for 'overstepping his authority' and rightly so. There's a reason why the federal government was meant to be relatively weak, it was to keep the tyranny of the minority to a minimum and stop the various states from exporting their various stupidities nationwide.
Course, ol' Honest Abe said 'We'll see about that, now, wo
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"Because the instant he did it, he'd be hauled into court for 'overstepping his authority' and rightly so"
That does not seem to be slowing him or his administration so far.
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Speculation is what allows to deal with problems before they get REALLY bad. Would you have preferred gas prices to stay at $30 until the moment where demand can't be met, with a sudden jump to $200? Complete with a drop straight back when the Western economy collapses because people can't afford to drive to work?
Speculators make sure that we know of the problem while we still have some leverage to fix it. Improvements in energy efficiency get profitable earlier, and as long as a price hike is only specula
Re:what would help keep it this way (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, that's one consequence of letting the economy crash by removing all the safety barriers, then refusing to pay attention to all the warnings because he was on vacation all of the time.
I can see a trend - the extremists in the Republican party want someone far crazier than Reagan at his worst and lazier than Bush when he was asleep. I'm sure they'll do a "heck of a job".
I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the US President clearly has a whole hell of a lot of control over the price of a global commodity.
the day after election day (Score:2, Insightful)
No matter who wins, the day after election day it will go right back up again and then some.
California (Score:2)
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
Charts (Score:4, Informative)
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/ [consumerenergyreport.com]
(This is a good link because it includes an inflation-adjusted chart.)
"Experts" (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Peak demand for oil happened in 2008 (Score:3)
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.
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I'm hoping for a very slow slide down the oil production graph instead of a sudden drop to nothing
Typically production of a limited resource is approximately symmetric, so you can expect production of oil to tail off over about the same time period that it ramped up. There's no point at which we "finish" the "last" of it, but expect us to be mostly done with oil dug up out of the ground somewhere in the 22nd century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory [wikipedia.org]
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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?]
Re:Now the question is (Score:4, Funny)
What about asking some astrologers too?
Nancy Regan did. That alone should get Republicans on board with it.
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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.
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Standard operating procedure. Suddenly finding whatshisface in contempt is the most earth-shatteringly-important thing happening right now.
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See, it's already working. Heh.
Re:Fall, really? (Score:4, Informative)
that being said, he can't really be blamed for their insane increase, either. we have Egypt, Israel, Syria, Iran, Saudia Arabia, gas price speculators, BP, and a whole slew of other bad actors to blame for that
Re:Fall, really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, most of the fluctuations in prices in the US comes from speculators gambling on the commodities markets. Occasionally we get changes because of world events, but those world events in reality only drive speculators changing their speculations. OPEC, the great evil cartel, unlike in the mid to late '70's, is almost a wall flower in the day to day, week to week, changes.
Re:Fall, really? (Score:5, Interesting)
LoB
Re:Fall, really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, most of the fluctuations in prices in the US comes from speculators gambling on the commodities markets.
If you want to see a real world example of what happens when speculators are driven out of a market, look at silver.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange pumped up margin prices 8 times last year and the price of silver plummeted as speculators had to get out.
They've since cut margins twice, but silver prices have not rebounded, because the gamblers have moved on to less hostile commodities.
This is a good example of how to drive out speculations, but...
A lot of traders are more or less accusing the CME of manipulating prices by fiddling with the margins
(they increased silver margins 5 times in 2 weeks) and have been claiming the whole thing is a big scam.
Re:Fall, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama has no control or input what so ever on the price of gas. However, most people will not forget the blathering, frothing at the mouth, idiots that the republicans became when prices were going up trying to blame it on Obama.
I believe that it was Harry Truman, a Democratic president, who said, "The buck stops here." Like it or not, the sitting president always gets the blame in the minds of the voters. This is especially true with gas prices, inflation and unemployment. No president since Jimmy Carter has faced an election with such a high Misery Index [wikipedia.org] as Obama is facing now and we all know how that one ended. Reagan asked the voters if they were better off after 4 years of Carter than they were before he was elected. Unless an economic miracle arrives sometime between now and November (unlikely), Obama will be joining the ranks of the unemployed. It certainly would be a fitting punishment for his failure to fix things. Are you better off than you were four years ago? Maybe we should blame Bush in November because hey It could have been worse, right? Put that in your bong and smoke it.
Re:Fall, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully they'll be enough people with basic common sense to understand this and vote out all the lying piece of shit republicans so democrats can pull this country out of another mess the fascist republicans got us into.
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So let me get this straight - you actually think that people will vote for Mitt Romney?
The temptation for many people will be to throw Obama out as long as Romney maintains a good family man image and doesn't do or say anything too crazy. The problem for the Obama campaign is that Romney actually does meet that standard. He's a successful business man and all around American dad with an attractive wife and a clean-cut family. He will appeal to middle of the road "family values" voters who are tired of the recession and Obama's east cost ivy league "elitist" attitude and quasi-socialist polici
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he can't really be blamed for their insane increase,
- wrong. The trend in the oil prices is to go up, but it's not the oil that is getting more expensive, the opposite is true. Oil is getting cheaper, there is more supply than ever and the demand is lowest in 11 years.
It's not the prices for oil that are going up, it's the currency that is being destroyed, devalued by printing, and this is directly related to the policy of the government to spend money and monetise the debts with loans and via central bank 'credit' (money printing).
The blame for the rising
Re:Fall, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because the prices at the local gas pump are under the direct control of an international cabal of "gentlemen" who can make the prices jump like a flea circus.
*facepalm*
What's actually happening is a combination of seasonal events, international events, wars, lack of wars, uncertainty of supply, shutdown of local refineries, state of global economy and local supply prices. In other words, gas is based on a globally traded resource that is processed somewhat locally and sold very locally.
So yes, they did *fall*.
Re:Fall, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because the prices at the local gas pump are under the direct control of an international cabal of "gentlemen" who can make the prices jump like a flea circus.
You say that as if something like OPEC doesn't exist. There are relatively few petroleum exporting countries, and many of them collude. There are very few companies, all of them globally oriented, that control the supply chain all the way from exploration to refining capacity. There is also quite a lot of politics involved, from local to international, that affect the price of oil, and eventually gasoline.
So while the demand portion is a very normal market, the supply portion is in no way anything close to a free market. As such, it is quite reasonable to question whether a price change of oil or gasoline is due to typical market conditions or price manipulation.
Re:Fall, really? (Score:4, Informative)
You say that as if something like OPEC doesn't exist.
No, I say it as if OPEC doesn't have the type of price control it used to have, and not anywhere near the price control it wishes it had. Here's a nifty little link: http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch5en/appl5en/shareopec.html [hofstra.edu] OPEC currently controls about 45% of global output. The Persian Gulf sits at below 30%. Furthermore, OPEC is definitely not the single entity a lot of people make it out to be. Yes, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are pretty much in lock step. You know who else is part of OPEC? Iran, aka mortal enemy of Saudi Arabia.
So yes, they do influence the market. But they are clearly not able to control the price to the degree you intimate.
The same applies to your argument about companies, by the way. And then, as you rightly guessed, politics are also thrown in the mix. And the global economy. All in all, you make my point: while there are some entities that have more control over price than others, there are so many that it is ludicrous on the face of it to argue that there is even the possibility of a cabal. And then there's the data, which conclusively proves that individual actors have very little influence on the price of gas in the US.
While it might be reasonable for someone to question whether prices are subject to global manipulation, it implies that that person has never looked closely at either gas prices or who the players are.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Did everyone already forget our current Administration saying they'd try getting gas prices below $2.50/gal by election time?
Bullshit. Nobody in the Obama administration with any credibility with the media EVER said ANYTHING like that.
Newt Gingrich made some promises that sounded like that, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Please cite your source.
Re:This is not new, guys (Score:5, Funny)
He confusing Barack Obama with Newt Gingrich. Easy mistake. I do it all the time. Black people look alike to me.