Gas prices in the United States increased by more than a dime over the past three weeks, the first increase seen since mid-October…
The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.35 as of Friday, the Lundberg Survey found. That’s an increase of 12 cents from the last survey of 2011, conducted December 16.
“The price hike comes from higher crude oil prices, which pulled up wholesale gasoline prices, but retailers have yet to pass through to motorists all the hikes they received,” publisher Trilby Lundberg said…
And then there’s this:
Gasoline prices may rise above $4 a gallon next summer as refineries along the U.S. East Coast close, reducing fuel supply, said Edward Morse, New York-based head of commodities research at Citigroup Global Markets.
Sunoco and ConocoPhillips have idled two plants and plan to shut a third that together can process more than 700,000 barrels a day of oil, or about 46 percent of the region’s refining capacity. That will increase the dependence on imports to meet fuel demand in the region that includes the delivery point for New York Mercantile Exchange futures contracts, the basis for national prices at the pump…
“We have a real supply problem ahead this summer because these refineries have not made money and they are shutting down,” Morse said yesterday in a Bloomberg TV interview with Tom Keene. “Summer gasoline is harder to make than winter gasoline, and we could see $4 as a floor price rather than a ceiling limiting demand…”
“The area could be left vulnerable to price spikes if there are ever any unplanned outages or supply disruptions,” said Tom Bentz, director with BNP Paribas Prime Brokerage…
RTFA if you have the stomach for details. The layabouts in Congress will have beaucoup rationales for why they’ve nothing to prepare for this – you know, something silly like an energy policy.
Oh boo friggin’ hoo. In Canada we’re paying the equivalent of about $5 per gallon, and in Europe it’s much more. The days of cheap gas are long gone, and we’d better get used to it.
You must have stock in gas and oil.
Oil still takes under 10$/bar. to produce. Canada and EU,… prices are huge mostly due to the taxation, not the oil cost itself.
As for US – cut regulations and release free market,… have sub-40$/bar. oil in months (price is over speculated – one hint of domestic production and there would be down-stampede).
Not disagreeing with you. Just amazes me how much Amercians bitch about the price of gas, when much of the rest of the world pays a lot more.
Less than $10 per barrel? I don’t think so. Your price is outdated.
We are forced to go after more expensive oil now.
Oil sands on year ago:
http://economist.com/node/17959688
“The cost of production has fallen: a few years ago most firms thought the break-even price was $75 per barrel, but now companies such as Shell say new developments are economical at $50.”
Fuggoff, canook.
High gas prices are SOLELY caused by speculation.
Gas is traded as a commodity, like pork bellies and FJOC.
However, unlike pork bellies and FJOC gasoline is UNREGULATED, seeing how it is so much less important. I guess. I can’t think of any other reason for speculators to be able to screw around with that market for their amusement, like that arsehole a while back who drove up the market to over $100/barrel for the first time just to see if he could do it.
But you can always grow more pigs.
Peak oil is a limiting factor.
Sorry, I guess if there was such a thing, FJOC would be “Frozen Juice Orange Concentrate”.
I suppose most people use the abbev. FOJC.
Mybad.
Ugly, what part of my post remains untrue? Regardless of how the prices are determined, do you think gas prices are going back down? And what evidence do you have for that?
You must have lots of stock in oil and gas.
Not at all, but I probably should!
Yeah. So let’s finance Fisker to build electric cars in in Iceland. Let’s throw money at solar panels nobody wants. But for heaven’s sake we must NOT encourage development of the vast oil shale fields we have or build a pipeline from Canada. That would just be stupid. But electric cars that cost tens of thousands of dollars and can travel 50 miles before catching fire, that’s wonderful!
Most electric cars are powered by coal. -cough, cough-
Animby, have you seen a map of the proposed pipeline? Any more tubes and we’ll be downloading porn at the gas pump.
http://cbc.ca/news/interactives/map-pipeline/
Yeah, I’ve seen it. So what?
I’ll take those solar panels. Just produce enough to make them affordable. This whole solar panel knocking is coming from big oil and right wingers blinded by natural gas and oil money. Frack on till you die from drinking water from tainted aquifers.
I too am Canadian, and we pay 1.20 a litre for gas, which I think is about 4.50 per US gallon. I’m not saying that $4 a gallon is a good thing, but surely, since we as individuals can’t change the price of gas, the rational response to the situation is to use as little of it as we can. If you drive a truck not because you need one for work but because you think trucks are cool; if you drive a 7 passenger van when you don’t have kids; if you drive, heaven forbid, a Hummer, etc. etc., then you are not responding rationally. The rational response, it seems to me, is not a Chevy Volt, but a small compact that gets 35 miles to the US gallon…a Hyundai Accent, for instance.
Harley…just sayin.
I’m too old, and it rains too much here, but otherwise, yes…
CARTEL AT WORK !!! They OWN ALL THE OIL and can CHARGE WHATEVER THEY WANT – THE MEGACORPS AND THE ARABS AND OTHERS WILL DRAIN ***ALL YOUR CASH*** !!! They are only a LITTLE LESS BLOODTHIRSTY THAN THE MEDICAL MEGACORPS !!! And the Govt is OWNED LOCK STOCK AND BARREL, SO DON’T EXPECT ANY RELIEF FROM WASHINGTON !!!
So, in other words, US fuel prices are still ridiculously cheap and might rise to just being silly cheap… oh dear.
@ Taxed Enough
While Gas was around $1.80 when Obama took office, you forget to mention that it was $4.12 in the summer of 2008
Check out the graphs at http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx
@Taxed (not) Enough
If you pay attention to your own facts, you see that the $1.80 price hit in December that year, a month after the election, but while Bush was still in office and his polices were still in effect. So how is that Obama at work when it is the Republican oil barons in Texas that control most of the refineries here.
Is there any policy that Bush put in place that Obama repealed?
It was just an aberration, like Taxed Enough.
This is also a pretty good Historical guide to prices, including comparison of Barrel to pump
http://www.api.org/aboutoilgas/gasoline/upload/PumpPriceUpdate.pdf
Obama said that he wants rices to go up gradually to European levels.
Gas went out of control way before Obama get real!! It’s total manipulation.
Meanwhile, here in North Dakota, we continue to pump out 500,000 barrels of oil per day from the Bakken reserve. Seems stoooopid for gas to go up because of something overseas. All politics.
I hate to say it but the problem with oil pricing is exactly America’s religious-like adherance to free-market pricing. While the US happily prices its oil products based on market spot or contract prices, other countries like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia see it in their national interest to price energy to their consumers at a price more commensurate with extraction costs or even subsidize it as India, China, Mexico and Indonesia do. (I hate the term “oil production”as nothing we are burning now has been produced for millions of years). Basically they have a Walmart pricing strategy. The US on the other hand has a precious metals pricing strategy as its basis for pricing oil products. Its plagued by speculation. Speculation can’t much effect an extraction-cost pricing basis.
Extracting oil in the US does little to effect the price to consumers when it is sold at world market prices unless we have enough production to flood the market and drive prices down. I don’t think we have this ability.
Considering that the US and thus the world economy is ultimately going to collapse due to debt load and trade imbalance, I don’t see a problem with the US keeping its oil in reserve. We will need it ourselves when OPEC finally exhausts its resources and is sitting there holding mile high skyscrapers and equally tall mountains of worthless US Dollars and Euros.
People in 200 years will need oil. Why burn it now? Americans (and I am one) seem to be convinced that it is their birthright to run around like frenetic ants on a hotplate burning fuel in their ridiculous trucks and SUVs.
I am 100% patriot. The current trend of consumerism and debt is something new in this country. It is unsustainable. Our founding fathers weren’t obsessed with money and “stuff”. Stop telling me that all this wasteful spending and squandering of resources is as American as apple pie. Its not. This is not Washington’s or Jefferson’s or Lincoln’s vision for America.
You’re the one smart guy here. The big difference is that in the last 10 years the US finally has real competition when buying oil products from other countries. While the US’s consumption continues to rise, the US’s share of the world’s oil consumption is dropping. Oil is flowing to the highest bidder. Also you can now buy oil with gold and other currencies besides American dollars.
I like you’re distinction on using the term “oil extraction”.
Prices are going up because people are using more petroleum products worldwide. Also the US started exporting last year (that’s an eye opener) mainly due to almost 300 new offshore permits in last 3 years and not enough storage capacity. Crude oil production has been on the rise in the US since 2008 reversing a 30 decline. Sorry alfie, you’re living in a right wing dream land.
The fuggin amoorican noticed that there is speculation. Shocking. It’s a commodities market. Suck it up princess. Look at overall volatility, not just one price rise and compare it to other commodities. If you think a single investor can move trillion dollar futures market on then you’re living in a left wing dream land.
Correction: reversing a 20 year trend since 1985. Thank Reagan for that Alfie.
Gotta remember to edit. 😉
exporting REFINED petroleum products. These source of the oil which we refine is still (sometimes) foreign.
Really! Americans use foreign oil? Why didn’t someone tell me. It’s shocking to hear that goods can be transported across borders.
If you are keeping score by City we are at $3.75 today in Anchorage. It was around $2.35 when Obama took office but Bush administration got to be in Whitehorse during our time high of $4.44 in 08. Thank the weather not Bush.
Oh how the Presidents wish they could control oil and gas prices they just don’t have that kind of power. Other than the occasional spike because of wars and unrest they are reacting not controlling. That said the recent up tick has more to due with Europe not buying oil from Iran because of it’s Nuke aspirations than any some pipelines out of Russia or Canada.
Adjusted to inflation prices ARE pretty high right now, Alf if you don’t like the price roller coster buy a Volt. Its an amazing little car.
Two smart guys now.
Anyone who believes one dollar per gallon or even two dollar a gallon retail gasoline is possible in the US by any means other than subsidy (or a massive disaster that kills off a significant fraction of the human population) is falling for a fairy tale. Even the current prices are possible only because of billions spent each year in what amounts to a subsidy by the government. If the libertarians and tea partiers have their way and every street, avenue, boulevard, road, highway, freeway and bridge become toll roads/bridges, the overall cost of transportation would at least double.
Face it — most of the easy oil is gone — up in smoke. Human society got rich, starting with the Industrial Revolution, on fossil fuels. Now the fuels are getting scarcer and the whole world is poorer as a result.
This is coupled with decades of movement toward more worldwide free trade, which has allowed some of the wealth of the West to be spread to some of the poorer areas of the world, which has added to the relative decline in the overall wealth of the West, especially the US, since we had such a disproportionate share of it before. This has led to widespread resentment and a search for scapegoats — Obama, Democrats, speculators, the ubiquitous “Them” — pick your favorite(s).
So forget about cheap energy, at least until we get affordable fusion, if ever.
Sorry, but those are the facts.
A rational mind analyzing facts as opposed to Taxed Enough Dude listening to partisan muckrakers looking to improve their Nielsen numbers.
Guess that big oil doesn’t like Obamy anymore
this depends on the demand curve. When you are squatting at a bank-owned place or in a tent village, you ain’t doing much driving.
This must be wrong. Why if the United States needed more oil do you think the President would block the importation of oil from Canada just to make the greens happy?
People need to get used to walking to and from work after all we got to save the planet though from what and for what isn’t clear. Well carbon emissions do make some crops grow better but is that a bad thing?
The green religion of liberals is that people should be using less gas, and they want to raise prices until it happens. They secretly applaud higher gas prices, while using them as a weapon to bash oil companies.
Supply & demand has little to do with the price of gasoline in the US, or it wouldn’t be the #1 export while refineries are closing because they can’t be run profitably.
It all goes hand in hand with high unemployment rates. It’s the world economy, get used to it. That’s what all the nutcase Republicans tell me. Then they say, quit whining and learn to compete. Get a job.