The U.S. average price for a gallon of regular gasoline topped $4 for the first time, a survey issued today by the travel group AAA showed.
AAA’s survey showed a national average price of $4.005 per gallon, up from $3.67 a month ago and $3.10 a year ago.
Average national gasoline prices had stabilized last week before Thursday and Friday’s spike of U.S. crude oil futures by $16 to a record above $139 a barrel. Friday’s one-day gain of $10.75 for crude oil was the biggest daily gain in history, and Thursday’s gain was the second biggest.
Kinda makes the weekend, doesn’t it?
#58 – bobbo – I did not say conservation was not a good thing, it is. It is just not a solution and as I posted, conservation of oil while staying on oil, only delays all the same problems for all the same reasons.
And we should use oil for more useful things than burning it as gasoline in engines.
#56 jbellies & #59 Ron Larson — good points.
It would be too easy to say “The Rich are Evil.” I’ll be one step removed and ask: “How can one be rich and avoid being evil?”
-or- “How can one come from the oil industry, be in politics, hold secret meetings about oil policy, and not be evil?”
I’m sure there are a few more levels we could go?
#62–Jag==I agree completely. I don’t know exactly what those other purposes are====like poisoning us with plastic food containers or poisoning us with non-biodegradable consumer products, but plastic and poisoning go together like spam and spam.
I am happy to see for those special uses of oil that we can make it from smoke stack waste emissions. Gives me a warm feeling all over.
#7, Jeff,
The only ones screwing people here in the US is the Congress. They won’t let the oil companies access the resources available in this country or build new refineries. Yet they have the gall to complain about the high cost of gas.
The oil in Anwar would last a couple of months at current usage. The damage it would do is unimaginable and probably irreparable.
There has been no new refineries built simply because the oil companies don’t want any. They have closed several over the past 25 years BUT have enlarged several existing facilities.
The Federal government offered several closed military installations to the oil companies for new sites, but none were close enough to existing pipelines. This was to answer your pointed argument about not allowing new refinery construction. Yup. Not one taker.
So if I am wrong (and you are right) would you point out ONE planned refinery that was stopped because of the government? Just one. I don’t need to see several. Just one. If you can’t point out one then you are the idiot here.
#66–Gawd==you make me want to google the issue just for the challenge.
I hope you aren’t being overly formal here? As in a final license request has never been denied by the government?====they simply have so much red tape that no one can submit an acceptable request for a license–that sort of thing? I thought most refinery want-to-be’s simply looked at the environmental filing requirements and concluded they couldn’t do it?
Or are you in fact simply saying no one in America wants to build another refinery?
Please confirm.
#65 – bobbo – I don’t know exactly what those other purposes are
Is this enough? Until there are viable alternatives, oil could be used for those.
The high price of oil is bad for the environment.
Discuss.
#4 – “Just for comparison, gas price in Germany: 1.50 Euro/Liter = 8.95 Dollar/Gallon”
Bite me.
(1) Much of that is taxes, which you have no-one but your government to blame for.
(2) Did the price of gas in your area double in the last year? No? Then shut the Hell up.
(3) Did your money lose half its value at the same time? No? Then shut the Hell up.
#68–Jag==excellent. good to be reminded where all the non-gas uses of petroleum is used. With the cost of oil going up, no wonder we have stopped making “LP records”.
So, in a well regulated energy program==oil would be used for aviation gas and all the plastic products we have come to rely on? And in the alternative, as we run out of oil, all the plastic is denied us.
Hey!! This peak oil issue is important!! and I thought it was just scaremongering.
Thanks as always.
Bobbo, researchers (… or was it a voodoo doctor) have developed a way to turn chicken feathers into plastic. LP’s may not be a thing of the past after all!
feather plastic link
#72–JimR==yes, at a very basic level, I think “stuff is stuff” and can be transmutted from one thing to any other thing. Only thing required is knowledge and energy?
There are many oil substitutes but they cost 3-4 times more.
I’m thinking that before the cost of oil crosses the cost of alternatives is ever reached, we will have crossed the tipping point of carbon pollution. I don’t think it will be the typical global warming scenario as that is the first identified. No, it will come from left field==a methane gas burp, atlantic conveyor shutdown, ocean species collapse==all related to carbon pollution so stuff is stuff and we should be curbing reliance on fossilized carbon – – But India and China both came out last week saying they weren’t going to do it.
Our future is writ large.
#67, Troll,
I hope you aren’t being overly formal here? As in a final license request has never been denied by the government?
… Snip…
Please confirm
Confirm what? No government has refused a refinery in the past 25 years. You ask me to prove a negative. Fuck you. Prove to me a oil company wanted to build a refinery and was turned down.
#74–Gawd==you got the form of the argument correct, but you have misapplied it.
This thread is about the cost of gas. YOU introduced the notion that the government has never denied an application. I asked you NOT to prove a negative but to clarify your point. No further discussion needed until you define what you claim has never happened.
Stop your whining. Norwegians pay $9.8 a gallon, despite having an oil reserve that’s worth over a million dollars for every living Norwegian man, woman and child if it could all be sold at today’s price.
Man the ignorance displayed just amazes me.
For example, #7 Jeff continues to demand building more refineries will solve the oil supply problem.
The refineries we have right now are running BELOW capacity, especially those on the gulf coast where imports from Mexico and Venezuela are way down. Why would new refineries help?
The US uses 23% of the world’s oil supply, and only 5% is produced domestically. There are no proven reserves off the California coast. ANWR reserves would last 3 years, but would take between 5 and 10 years to access it if we allowed it now.
Don’t get me started on the global warming denialist, they are a lost cause.
Repeat after me:
There is NO connection between oil supply and oil prices.
There is NO connection between oil supply and oil prices.
There is NO connection between oil supply and oil prices.
There is NO connection between oil supply and oil prices.
There is NO connection between oil supply and oil prices.
Oil price is purely speculative, and whether there is a shortage or a surplus doesn’t matter. Oil is worth what the traders think its worth.
Blame the Saudis, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Putin, some Chinese guy, Clinton, Carter, Roosevelt….doesn’t matter.
Drill Alaska dry and you still won’t get cheap gasoline. The market just found out that we will all take it up the butt at $4 a gallon and not complain. A precedent has been set, expect $7 by Christmas.
You want cheaper gas?
a) Get a more economical car.
b) Drive less, and more smartly. Take it easy on the acceleration, coast to the stoplights, etc.
c) Drive less. Combine your trips, skip the trip that you don’t really need.
d) Walk a little more. Don’t get in the car just to travel a couple of blocks.
e) If possible, take mass transit. Going downtown? There is certainly a more comfortable and cheaper way to do so than taking your own car all the way.
You can probably cut your gas consumption by 50% without too much effort, which effectively means a 50% reduction in the price of gas.
And as a side note… it’s amazing how ignorant people are as to the causes of the price of gas. We have more than enough refining capacity and taxes as ridiculously low in the USA. OPEC is limiting supply of crude,plain and simple. The USA is tapped out in production capacity, and adding things like ANWAR will add virtually nothing to the supply equation. Want to blame it on something? Blame it on IRAQ and he failed occupation and failed IRAQ government. Iraq used to be a top 5 exporter… now it doesn’t make it to the top 20.
No doubt gas will climb to $6 per gallon in the next year.
Instead of wanting $1 gallon gas, I want a 100 MPG car.
MS I know of two environmentalists who have made a living for at least 20 years by being environmentalists. They have no formal education in science one is a photographer the other no body knows what she does to earn a living but anytime the press need an “expert” environmentalist these two are trotted out.
#78 and#60 are the only ones here who seem to understand how fake this crisis is. I live in an oil producing area and at least half the pumps are turned off. We are not evan pumping the oil we have alreaddy drilled for. You been lied to again and people like Misanthropic Scott are doing most of their work for them. Wonder if he is on the oil companys payroll. If not; he should apply
Don’t forget the role of devaluation of the dollar.
The USA can’t outsource all of it’s debt for free lunch mortage defaults, export next to nothing and buy everything from China and expect the dollar to hold its value.
The world isn’t gonna to provide special pricing support to obese, SUV driving Americans that defaulted on their interest-only mortages.
>>MS I know of two environmentalists who have
>>made a living for at least 20 years by being
>>environmentalists. They have no formal
>>education in science one is a photographer the
>>other no body knows what she does to earn a
>>living
Hmm. They “made a living by being environmentalists“, yet one is a photographer, and the other one makes her living through unknown means? Sounds a little contradictory to me.
In any case, I wasn’t talking about environment buffs who pick up a little pin money going on the local 5 o’clock news offering opinion.
On the other hand, you have people like the CEOs of oil companies, who average almost THIRTY THREE MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR for pimping their petro-fuel products. http://tinyurl.com/s6n99
Care to hazard a guess as to which group is more likely to be bullshitting us in exchange for their thirty pieces of silver?
Hmmm?
#55 MS
“Nor will it help us in the long term since our SUVs will burn the entire ANWR’s worth of oil in a year.”
#66 Mr GA
“The oil in Anwar would last a couple of months at current usage. The damage it would do is unimaginable and probably irreparable.”
Now this is a prime example of what gives environmentalist a bad name. The 3 month to one year window is laughable. Neither of you can possible know if there is 3 months or 30 years worth of oil in ANWR.
Just toss a figure out there and see if it sticks, right?
#84 – Doc
Even if you don’t like His Holiness’s estimates of the ANWR oil booty, it’s hard to disagree with his statement that “The damage it would do is unimaginable and probably irreparable.”
And are you really nãive enough to think that further despoiling the Alaskan wilderness is going to provide a sustainable source of “cheap gas”?
Sheesh. Where’d you get your license to practice medicine, Sears & Roebuck?
# 85 MM
Mister Mustard my old friend – good morning!
“The damage it would do is unimaginable and probably irreparable.” The only thing true about this statement is that it’s overly dramatic for effect.
>>The only thing true about this statement is
>>that it’s overly dramatic for effect.
Tell that to the salmon, sea otters, seals, and seabirds, Doc.
http://tinyurl.com/5b3xgy
Almost 20 years after the Exxon Valdez debacle, the oil magnates are going to the Supreme Court to try and shirk financial responsibility for their greed.
Tsk.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, eh?
[Fixed. – ed.]
Although the president promised Americans cheaper gas, the obvious reason for going to war was to take Iraq’a production off line so the prices would be higher for big oil to reap record profits. It looks like it’s working. Thanks President Bush…
#35,
first, gas stations make very little money off the gas they sell. Most of their money is made off the convenience store items you purchase.
second, the profit margin of these large oil companies has been falling in somewhere between 8 and 10%, which is inline with a lot of industries, and much lower than others. The reason why their profits seem so obscene (at least to those who have an interest in demagoguing the point) is simply because of the enormous volume of product they sell.
#75, troll,
#74–Gawd==you got the form of the argument correct, but you have misapplied it.
This thread is about the cost of gas. YOU introduced the notion that the government has never denied an application. I asked you NOT to prove a negative but to clarify your point.
You do this repeatedly with others. I did NOT introduce the “notion” that the government has never denied an application. If you had of read my post (#66) it was a reply to #4, Jeff, WHO MADE THE ALLEGATION !!! His argument is that the government is to blame for the high cost of gasoline because they have refused to allow any new refineries.
You asked me to verify that the government has not done something. That is “proving a negative”.
Read the fucking posts you are commenting on instead of trying to suggest what is actually in those posts, isn’t there. And lay off the booze, it shows.
FYI, currently a refinery in Northwest Indiana, serving the Chicago market, has come under fire because they want to dump more pollution into Lake Michigan. The refinery has been there for decades but has been rebuilt and expanded so many times I doubt if there is anything original. Denying their application to dump more pollution is not the same as denying a company a permit to build. They already have their building permit.
I live on the East Coast, where gas prices tend to be lower than the national average. Even so, I just checked the prices at the gas station we always pass by, indeed the price was $4.06 for regular. That wouldn’t be so surprising if just a couple days ago it wasn’t $3.80 something. Gas prices are rising so quickly that I’m appalled that even with all this negative press that no one is doing anything about it, and Congress continues to screw us with oil. With these sharp rises in gas prices, these extremely high predictions for gas prices in the upcoming year might have some value to them.