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Damn, if the sign is true it’s about $.75 cheaper than SoCal.
I have a receipt from 2002 when I filled up my 1994 Mustang GT 5.0 and the gas price was $1.34 a gallon.
After just a couple years of Bush being president I remember it was just below $4 for a while.
Yea, and I pumped Ethel for ¢.39 my senior year in high school. Point John?
Well, gas prices are a mystery we’re never meant to solve and a price from 20 months ago isn’t very relevant today.
I can’t speak for others but the price of gas is irrelevant to me – I don’t even look at it. A friend of mine will drive 20 miles out of his way to save 3 cents per gallon – and he doesn’t see why I roll my eyes at this.
For the short term we want the oil companies to make enough profit to keep the nation moving and sometimes this means that one quarter the profits are obscene and another they are thin. Eventually we want to move away from the liquid fuel fed IC engine transport model but I don’t see that really happening for at least 10-20 years.
Stop me if you’ve hear this one.
We were all sitting ’round the house, feeling Mary, when Mary got mad and left, so we all jumped for Joy, and Joy got mad and left, so we all went to the gas station and pumped Ethel.[rimshot]
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week, folks; before going onto my next gig in Gay Minneapolis, the city of … uh, no … that’s Philadelphia.
God, it sucks to be old.
I remember stopping for gas and telling the pump jockey to “Fill her up” to sort of impress my date by I was holding up one finger so the guy would put in a dollar’s worth.
A buck’s worth of gas nowadays would scarcely get me out of the garage.
Wow, wish that was near where I live.
I love how people attribute the $4 per gallon gas prices to Bush, and not to speculators using the democrat created sub-prime loans to game the oil markets to astronomical levels.
This is just as stupid as attributing the gulf oil spill to Obama.
lets ask a question..
Before 1970’s and gas was < $0.40 per gallon..and OIL was $30 per barrel??
NOW fuel is $100 per barrel(about 3 times) and is $3.00(7-10 times the price)…
Fuel tax, did go up, but NOT even 1/2 as much as other nations..max State fed tax is $0.70..
for the changes over the past…$1.20 +$0.70 per gallon is STILL UNDER $2.
What changed?
The corp OWNS all phases of the company..from shipping distribution to sales..
The profit margin is GROSSED OUT..
They dont USE the oil any more.
They bring it to the DOCK and sell it to the highest bidder, including themselves. This forces the stock prices up.
STOCK prices are on the PRICE of FUEL, not CRUDE.
The profit NOW is above the first est$1.25..which makes a Profit per gallon, about $1.75 and EACH state sells over 1 million gallons per day..including TRUCKING/delivery..
48(continental states) x 1mill x$1.75(profit) x 365(days), and Im only hitting 1/2 of their profits per year for the last 10+ years.
@#3 0.39 $/gal long time ago to 1.75$ two years ago vs. 1.75$/gal just two years ago to 3+ $/gal now. Extreme energy price increase over short time, during Pres. Obama rule and just as President Obama have promised (documented videos of his speeches that under his rule energy prices must jump severely). Proof that high energy policies indeed yield high energy costs. Followed by high business costs that result in shrinking business and high unemployment. Change…
@#8 Your observation have nice graphical representation (I lost the link but a little Googling and one can find similar graph). Seek graph of crude Oil prices and gasoline prices over several decades back. Identical pattern repeats at each peak oil condition (with a single exception of early 1980s):
As crude oil prices rise, gasoline prices rise proportionally, following closely behind. As crude oil prices drop, gasoline price drops down proportionally for a short interval. Than it remains stable/flat as crude prices continue falling. As soon as crude price reverses and goes up, gasoline follows with small delay. Total effect: each peak oil price “pumps” gasoline price vs. crude oil price ratio in favor of gasoline. With only one exception in 0+ years.
Bush and his Arab friends have successfully convinced the American Sheeple that $2.50 gas is now a pretty darn good deal.
#10 And when you were born, the Doc slapped you on the ass and said,”gas will always be cheap and plentiful.”
Right?
I think I saw it in the Constitution also, American’s right to cheap gas.
So why is it 2.85 in Oregon?
#11 Actually you miss the point (as usual).
If it were up to me, gas should cost $15 per gallon !
It probably does cost at least $10 when you take away the tax payer subsidies of using the military to protect the oil fields.
I heard that BP will give you the oil for free*, if you just go to the right beach, although you’ll have to refine it yourself.
*Limited offer. BP reserves the right to revoke free beach oil at any time without prior notice and begin charging in accordance with its normal pricing structure.
13,
In EVERY other nation the TAX on fuel is based on a % cost/price, rather then a FEE per state and fed.
In the USA max tax, is $0.70
In CANADA the tax is EQUAL to the price of gas.
Fuel cost at $2.50 is TAXED $2.50..PER GALLON/estimate.. ANd thats been going on ALONG TIME..
#16 Alfred wrote “Oil was going down in price until Obama’s presidency became a certainty… they knew he would be bad for supply.”
You’re so completely blinded by your hatred for Obama that you can’t even seem to read a simple price chart for oil. There was no certainty about Obama’s election before early July 2008 (when oil was peaking at over $145/bbl) and those high oil prices, along with the quickly souring economy, helped his campaign significantly. From July on, as Obama’s election began looking increasingly likely, the price of oil dropped fairly steadily even until well after his election.
You need to devise a new narrative that isn’t so sharply contradicted by easily researched facts.
http://nyse.tv/crude-oil-price-history.htm
Yes, because markets change instantaneously. If Obama farts, the next day oil prices change to reflect it!
I still want to know where that 9/10 of a cent comes from. Why is it on gasoline, and why haven’t they tacked it on to everything else as well? It’s the only thing worse than all prices ending in .99 just to make the dollar amount appear smaller.
THe price fluctuations around the country are dependent on state taxes, and ethanol blend requirements, as well as how close is the nearest refinery.
#17,
very good..
The only things inflated were PRICES.. And there was little reason for it, except that it made more profits.
Profits ARE/WERE supposed to goto making a better company and so forth.
Even lowering prices, because the profits were to HIGH..but then Stocks would go down, as profits went away.
So they KEPT the profits, and raised TOP WAGES.
WHICH DOES NOT RAISE CONSUMERISM.
pRICES WENT UP..
Middle and bottom wages didnt.
Prices KEEP going up, as Gov. tries to correct with higher Base wage. Cost of basic goods goes UP..
Still no help.
Gov should take OVER PROFITS. Profits PAST a certain point. and TAX them into hell.
Or..
MAX wage. NOT basic wage.
Interesting, in June 2008, I drove from Las Cruces, NM to San Jose, CA. I kept a record of my gas purchases (to track mpg of my new car). The average price for unleaded regular gas on the trip was $4.22 per gallon. My California purchases were $4.53, $4.43, $4.40, $4.50, $4.46 and $4.50. the first 4 were all in San Jose, and the last 2 were in Button Willow and Palm Desert. In fact the cheapest gas on the whole trip was $3.73 in Lordsburg, NM. I find it hard to believe that gasoline fell from an average of $4.50 a gal in June/July to $1.75 in December.
You guys need to chill out! Gas prices are still very low in the US compared to a lot of other places. Gasprice in Netherlands is Eur 1,545 at the moment, per liter. That comes to $7,42 per gallon at the current conversion rate.
Just saying.
#24
and most of that price…
IS TAX.
so at 1/2 tax…it about $3.75..with USA tax that would be about $4.50.
Gas price in Norway today: US$8/US Gal.
I grew up in a house that was built in 1853, and later on I saw a book from around that time I think was called “Building Country Villas” (by the architect A. J. Davis). It had a list of prices for various items.
A medium size villa cost $800 total, and things like lath & plastering the whole place cost $30 (no small job compared to today’s wallboard).
Wonder what kind of deflation would send gas down to a nickel a gallon. Lack of demand, I bet.
Hey ReadyKilowatt….$0.35 for a Hershey bar? When did that happen last week? I remember when they went form 7 cents to 10 cents!
And, for the record, my Jeep Cherokee died, Ides of March, 2008 and due partly to the price of gas at the time, I replaced it with a Toyota Camry. I still have the receipt for the first fillup on the Camry…$4.35 a gallon. In Van Nuys, California, first week of April, 2008, and long, long before it was clear that Obama would be #44.
But I really don’t recall gas going below $2.00 since then. I think John’s picture must have been some kind of special promotion or something.
Oh, and $2.99 for regular in West LA this morning for those who are counting.
In 2003 before the U.S. invasion, Iraq was producing 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. Production fell after the invasion.
Also, even if all the drilling you speak of was allowed in the U.S. the energy department estimates 900,000 barrels would be added to the daily global supplies. That would just make up the lost oil output from Iraq.
Obama’s new fuel economy rules that must be reached by automakers by 2016 (light vehicle fleet wide average of 34.1 mpg) will save an average driver $3,000 over the time span of owning that vehicle. But as mentioned by others on here, we have it cheap compared to other countries. I came back from Germany last year and after the currency conversion it came out to roughly $8 a gallon for gasoline. Most people take public transportation or walk.
What people seem to forget is that it was $4/gallon gasoline that precipitated the housing bubble collapse. When you are struggling to make payments on a house you shouldn’t have been allowed to buy, paying $120 to fill up your truck became the final straw. And if you owned a small business that depended upon the discretionary spending of your customers, then having that extra $30 go to the oil companies instead of your till could spell the end of your business. People living in households with incomes under six figures understand this; our privileged elected representatives and the economic masterminds at Harvard and Yale don’t.
It was the sharp drop in gas prices documented by John’s photo that convinced me that the economy would recover if Washington kept its damn nose out of it. But as Rahm Emanuel said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” I fully blame the Obama and Pelosi for the current state of our economy. I’m just glad that “We the people” put enough fear into the Democrats and backbone into the Republicans to keep Cap-and-Trade from passing.
Obama said he preferred prices to go up gradually. Yet we are told that his party supports the middle class.