Gas Prices: $12-$15/gallon

So...?

Current prices are 1.50 Euro per litre. About time you caught up.

The difference is that the bulk of the costs in Europe are taxes which then go to mass transit. Things are a lot more spread out in the US, making mass transit ineffective in all but the bigger cities, and biking/walking often infeasible. As such, gas prices have a much greater impact here--cheap travel is a necessity.

prices have only increased about 150% in the last 4 years. so if the inflation of gas continues at this rate you are looking at about 14 years for this to happen. Even assuming the price were to actually continue to climb at this unnatural rate (which it wont) in 14 years every car on the road will get at least double the current gas milage if not more.

In any case the price of oil is being manipulated by futures traders the actual price per gallon of fuel oil is really around 70 dollars a barrel.

You guys have public transportation alternatives that are actually worth something. Most places in the US it's functionally impossible to live and work without a car. If gas cost $15/gallon it'd cost me $20-$30 to go to work every day.

Gas may well be $12-$15 a gallon - in about 20 years. Be careful to not swallow too much speculation, especially from media analysts.

Here's the thing people need to understand. Oil companies are not going to let their product be priced so high it becomes too expensive for consumers. Why be in the oil bidness? Why be in any bidness for that matter? If you price your product too high, nobody's gonna buy it no matter how bad they think they need it.

Don't get me wrong, gas prices are causing a hell of a strain on everything in this country and will do so for the near future. But I predict (and I am no economic expert on this by any means) that the market will eventually set itself right and oil will slowly drop down to more "affordable" prices, though maybe not to the sub-$2.00 levels.

Another prediction: Watch gas prices begin a steady decline after the election in November. Just...wait and see.

Really?

4 years ago (2004) the price was under $40 a barrel, and today they hit $135.
That is well over 300%.

The graph is not showing, so here is te link:

WWW Link

Here in the UK public transport is often overcrowded and unreliable, but that isn't to say it's not better than the US, I've no experience of life over the pond!

However....Cars in the US aren't renown for their efficiency, again I don't have any real facts, but I can imagine there's some truth in that. Get yourself a small efficient car, and you can save a fortune if the prices go up more!

The US People well start buying smaller cars again be sure of that but when you travel 80 yo 120 miles one way to work it not going to matter much my round trip was 196 miles i was spending almost 500 USD a month and when you bring home only 1650 a month that hurts !!

Nasty

Ouchy! Here in blighty that commute would be enough to make most people move! Especially if you live/work in a city, that would be a good 2 hours each way. And the fuel costs would be, as you point out, immense!

ud be surprised how much profit the big oil gets per gallon.
something like 60-80%
its ridiculuos
i cant wait till the oil execs wither and die
  

AFAIK petrol prices in the US have always been ridiculously cheap. Now that the oil companies are upping their prices, the outrage seems to be far more prominent in the US than in Europe. Mind you, I pity those who bought a diesel thinking they might save some - diesel is at 1.45 Euros as well.

The petrol prices also seem to have had an impact on the car industry from the very beginning. You won't find any huge pickups driving around in Germany. Even luxury cars seldom use more than 12, 13 litres per 100 km, normal cars average 8, with small commuter-type cars down to 4 or 5.

And the public transport isn't what it's made up to be. Most of the time it's actually both cheaper and faster to travel by car than per train. Long distance buses (like Greyhound) are virtually non-existent.

If you need to travel 80 - 120 miles just to get to the office, simply put, you either need to rent an apartment (or have the company rent one for you - standard practice in Germany) or find work closer to home. I know nobody who would accept driving further than 30 or 40 km, exactly because of the petrol prices.


Don't take this the wrong way... but us Europeans sit back and watch with some amusement how US citizens moan about possible future petrol prices we have already been enduring for years. The same reason why we usually find the US car industry hilarious.

Thank goodness I have a chance to knock Kryo so I don't look like such a fanboi around here.

You are just shy of half-right here. The full US territory is indeed an apple to the EU orange; Amtrak vs. any EU national system offers ample evidence. But that sort of argument is nowhere near as strong if you exclude hard-to-compare political boundaries and look at population centers. Region by region, many areas of the continental US are pathetically behind the Europeans in terms of reasonable transport systems.

I'm saying this as a North Central Floridian who voted for our high-speed rail "amendment" (shudder quotes b/c I want us to have a legislative referendum option tha can help us keep our constitution reasonably concise). We have several major population centers in our state (mostly on the peninsula) and I would have made several weekend social trips in the past few years if I could have avoided the horrid Interstate system. And I'd even have paid a bit more, just to be able to sit in my train seat and read a book in peace.

I guess it's time to start asking for a raise . Though I do drive at times 120 miles a day to work and back, my truck happily gets 25+ miles per gallon.

Inevitably these oil bearing countries will continue to squeeze every dime they can out of people while staying just on this side of pushing people into finding true alternatives. No country, No politicians, No one will stand up and try to push them to hard for fear of them cutting off the taps. That may be just what is needed to get people truly motivated for change. Sure it will be painful, but it's not like we aren't made to adapt. Otherwise this tactic will just continue on for years while we go on polluting the earth.

While supply and demand are evenly matched today - demand, mostly from the developing world, is growing much faster than supply. Like it or not, prices will continue to rise until people change their habits. In the short term the only thing that can bring prices down (or even slow the rate of increase) is demand destruction. America, with 4% of the world population currently consumes 25% of the oil and will have to make a substantial contribution to that demand destruction. Longer term, you have to wonder why Exxon and ConocoPhillips are returning most of their profits to shareholders as dividends and share buybacks instead of investing in new supply. Maybe they don't think there is a supply side solution.

First let's put some perspective on some numbers that maybe we all are not aware of that I looked up on the Dept. of Energies website (http://www.eia.doe.gov/). Did you know that in America we use close to 388 million gallons of gasoline a day. The average price of gas in America on 5/19/08 was $3.95/gallon. That means we spend around $1.53 billion dollars a day on gasoline and around $10.7 billion dollars in one week. Now the breakdown in the price of gas is also very important. According to California Energy Commission: 77% goes towards crude oil cost, 2% towards distribution, marketing and profits, 5% for refinery and profits, 7% state & local taxes, 4.5% state excise tax, 4.5% federal excise tax. Keep in mind that we all don't buy our gas at the same time so these numbers will very some what. Once you start playing with the numbers you'll see that this is not something that our government should mess with but we the people can fix as we are the ones using the gas, the ones creating the demand.
What I would suggest is that nationally we pick a time frame and just not buy gas for a week and see what affect that has. Also, I would suggest that everyone start sending e-mails and letters to their congressmen, senators and state officials and ask them why government vehicles have not been converted to hybrids or other alternative powered vehicles. There are a number of different solutions to resolve the problem face. We just need to start making the changes and stop crying to our government to do something about it.

Maybe they aren't because it's illegal? Drilling in ANWR is being blocked, the shale oil in the north is also being blocked, drilling off the east and west coasts are being blocked. Congress is wonderful.

The current price increase in oil is mostly fiction. The dollar has dropped, thus the price in dollars has risen. You can thank that fucktard Bernanke for the recent spike due to the falling dollar. Trying to prevent a correction in the housing market is the height of arrogance and stupidity, and counter-productive even if it could be done. The rest of it is a lack of expansion in infrastructure, much of it on our part, but that's accounting for the steady increase over the last couple decades, not the huge spike we just experienced. Regardless of the reasons, an oil company doesn't set the price of its oil. They are sold on open markets like an auction, the highest bidders get the oil. The only things oil companies can do to change prices are cut or increase capacity, the total worldwide capacity. You can't blame Exxon for the world supply when they control a drop in the proverbial bucket, thus Exxon's unfairly maligned profits are irrelevant to the price of oil. It wouldn't change the price of gas by a nickel if they made no money at all.

Also, American oil companies make peanuts for profit margins, perhaps one could try reading up first? A few hundred billion is peanuts if you invested a few hundred trillion to get it. If you want to call an industry out for obscene profit margins, and it's ludicrous to blame someone for being willingly paid by other people, go after the financial sector that regularly sees 30% profit margins from companies like Citibank. Even right now, the American oil industry is just a hair above average, 10-12% is a normal, respectable margin. They might make three bucks a gallon off the crude they're selling right now, but that's a fraction of the industry. We produce a few percent, we use a fourth of the stuff. Six to eight times as much refining is a good guess, and the profits on refining are squat with crude prices so high.

psychoak, in my opinion, pretty much hit it dead on. Militant environmentalists may be in for a rude awakening in the short term if gas goes too high to quick. The same 'ol song-and-dance of "the oil companies are evil" won't fly when Joe-schmo realizes there is a ton of oil out there but environmental lobbyists have made it off limits. It's soooo easy to hate the oil companies for their profits but no one ever talsk about how much they have to invest in exploration, technologies that do as little damage to the environment as possible, and a myriad of other things that cost a crap-load of money.

And subsidizing bio-fuels are about the stupidest thing our goverment has ever done. Seriously...burning FOOD for make fuel? The farm lobbyists in Washington are high fiving themselves everyday, I bet. How about subsidizing oil refinereies, or lessesning the draconian laws that restrict them a bit? Same for nuclear, the cleanest burning soorce of energy? No, they won't because that makes some sense!

But, at the same time, I also believe this is a powerful motivator for the U.S. to really delve into alternative fuel sources, though I think we've waited a bit too long with the pains we are feeling at the pump right now only prolonged because of complacency. There is a lot of oil out there. Don't let anyone tell you guys otherwise. Yeah, it may be harder to get to but it's there.

Anyway, Americans will adjust regardless...we always do. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.

how bout our eviromentalists saying we cant drill for oil by florida but, we let the cubans do it. if gas was 15$ gallon then ethanol would be worth it. Ethanol costs 12$ a gallon to make. SOLAR ENERGY

if you are in florida ME and my dad are making a solar panel company so I will be posting a website soon.

A slight side note, but I read about a group that set out to build an extremely gas-efficient car and met with great success, a small hybrid that reaches something like 200 miles per gallon. This car handles so different from all the fat-a$$3d cars on the market that you actually need a motorcycle license to legally drive it, but from what I understand they plan to commercially release a limited number in California as a sort of vehicle beta-test.

Unfortunately, I have no idea where I read this, as I browse through several magazines and other sources weekly, so I have no directions for anyone to find information about this car. Sorry.

Making really small, super efficient vehicles is easy. Hitting 75mph, navigating thick traffic, and surviving when the SUV hits you is the problem. Hybrids are also of severely limited use depending on the surroundings. When you start/stop, you can get huge fuel economy boosts over a normal combustion engine. When you don't, at the most, it does nothing. The hybrids actually lose efficiency for people that commute to work, or drive fairly uninterrupted on freeways. In the area I'm at, you're an idiot if you buy a hybrid.

However, that said, fuel economy in the American auto industry sucks, although the Europeans have been deluding themselves as well. 50mpg, full size sedans with enough juice to be useful in high traffic at speeds have been achievable for over a decade, these fuel efficient, 30 mpg toys they're making now are just jokes.

I wish I still had my Honda CR-X HF.
It averaged 50mpg with a carbureted engine.
No fancy fuel injection or electronics, no variable valve timing, no shutting down of cylinders, and no hybrid.

Just a simple and efficient stratified charged 1.3L four banger.

And that was way back in 1986 - 22 years ago!

Why couldn't that technology have been advanced to larger engines and vehicles, and coupled with the fuel injection, variable valve timing and other fuel saving techs?

There is indeed a difference in the population density between North America and Europe. But I don't think, that it has to be ineffective because of that. And you might not be able to use the same concepts as in Europe. While I believe that high-speed mid-range intercity trains would work beautifully in NA (less stops in between, train can go high-speed all the way, you can really get some work done on your way; or do, whatever you want), some things may have to be invented or changed. A good example is car-pool lanes. They merge the positive effects of mass transit with the "affinity" of people to cars.

Hehe, during my last (bnl) visit to NA the same "affinity" resulted to the following dialogue between a clerk and me:
Me: "Excuse me, do you know where I can find the store Somebuy?"
Clerk: "Oh, it's right across the street. It's a 30 sec drive!"

It was a 10 sec walk.



Hmm, if stock charts say anything about the profitability of a company, you might get surprised when looking up e.g. the 5 year chart of Exxon. So I would'nt call that peanuts.
But I agree that the banking sector sees (or better: saw?) obscene profits.



While I don't support militant environmentalists I would rather bet that they are not the reason for oil prices being this high right now, as you suggest with you "off limits" argument. Yeah, "it's soooo easy to hate the" environmentalists for the high oil prices.

i said overseas make outrages profits...middleeast
not american

I have read and heard on alot of new reports that they predict the prices will get to around $4.35 or so then they will drop the prices to back to like $3.50 and everyone will think there getting a big break and not care about paying those prices.