Gas prices to much

[Davdeb1]

Originally Posted by Wayne MD

Have we forgotten that every inch of price increase also raises the price of campgrounds, food, insurance on cars, electric rates, roads, and all this greed that goes with it. Some prices will never go down if the gas does ever come down again. It seems to me that when I paid 11 cents a gal back then, the price didn't change much from winter and summer blends. Did we ever deal in blends then? Gas was gas and we could depend on the average price. Now-two stations on the same block can have extreme disagreeing prices per gal. How come if this price today is such a good deal, my wallet is more empty than when I was paying less with less earning?

Back when gas was 11 cents a gallon, the car you were driving did not have a/c, power equipment, government mandated safety and pollution equipment, sat radio nav system. You did not have a cell phone, cable tv, and probably only had one tv in your house. I would venture to say that you probably did not have an RV either. These are just a few examples of stuff we have now that we didnt then. All this money we spend on this stuff every day is the reason we have so little left in our wallets.
Do you really want to go back?

[mrblanche]

Originally Posted by Bruce C

Different times now. Bread and milk were cheaper then as well.

But not when compared to an hour's work. When I earned $1.60 per hour, milk was 80 $1.07 per gallon, or just over 2/3 of the minimum wage. Today it's less than $3.00 here, and the minimum wage is $7.25, so a gallon of milk now costs less than 50% (41%, in fact) of an hour's work.

Gas has gone up more than that. Had it stayed the same percentage, gas today would be about $1.54...or about 30 cents less than it actually was when President Obama took office.

But gasoline exploration has gotten much more expensive than it was in the 60's, too.

[mrblanche]

Originally Posted by Tyler6357

Wow, the price in my town this week was $4.29 per gallon. That's $.83 more per gallon or almost 24% higher. I guess things are better in Texas than California but that throws your numbers way off for people who live in CA (a huge RV state).

The first thing that would help gas prices is to mandate one national gasoline mix.

The second would be to up the permitting. Drill permitting is down almost 50% under the current administration.

Re-opening off-shore drilling would be a big help. If you believe the flow numbers from the BP blowout in the Gulf (they say almost 68,000 barrels per day), then that well might have been the most productive oil well ever drilled, producing almost 7 times the average well in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait.

Requiring higher risk on speculation would be a big help, and it's something the current administration promised, but has done nothing about. As it is, there is little risk in a speculator bidding high.

[Fred1609]

Or you could get oil from Canada. There are larger deposits in Canada then Saudi Arabia. US actually gets more oil from Canada then Saudi Arabia. Then theres the Keystone XL pipeline. Jobs and oil for North America. Anybody else seeing a pattern of stupidity here?

[CLIFFTALL]

Originally Posted by Fred1609

Or you could get oil from Canada. There are larger deposits in Canada then Saudi Arabia. US actually gets more oil from Canada then Saudi Arabia. Then theres the Keystone XL pipeline. Jobs and oil for North America. Anybody else seeing a pattern of stupidity here?

The Keystone Pipeline was just meant to transport the oil to the Gulf and then exported out of the US. It would have created jobs though.

[jspande]

I find it a bit frustrating to hear the arguments that vast reserves of oil mean we could have cheap gas (oil) if we just exploited them. Much of these reserves (especially the oil sands) are espensive to process, that is, they are only available if oil prices are high.

If you want to argue oil sands, etc., then be honest and acknowledge you're OK with high prices. If you're against the high prices, then acknowledge that these reserves, in effect, don't really exist!

Many hit renewable fuels for only being practical with high energy prices but give these fossil fuels a pass.

[Fred1609]

India and China, especially China, are huge importers of oil. Its demand that drives price largely. That oil that was heading to the Gulf through the proposed keystone pipeline was heading straight to American refinerys and then too market. Thinking ahead it would be cheaper then too sell any product locally (North American market). For the forseeable future we will depend on fossill fuels. Theres no magic bullet in terms of "green" "renewable" energy. After we are gone, our grandkids might have something solid. That doesnt mean we dont keep looking. But we don't tear down our economy, or give it all away thru carbon taxes. We look after ourselves the best way we can. We as a North American society need maybe to get our resources from friendly partners. No matter what you wish, your vehicle/furnace/industry isnt gonna primarily run on "green technology" or pixie dust and fairy tears. Its a basic question. For the future do we buy oil from a friendly country with huge reserves or do we keep buyin from countries that are less then friendly and look at us as the unwashed.

[PapaBear1]

Electric motors are most "efficient" for transferring input/output energy. I keep wondering how we will build infrastructure to deliver the power to charge batteries (if that's the route we take), when we Canadians can't seem to produce enough power to meet demands - resulting in brown/black outs, etc.

When fossil fuels run out, and water ways dry up, what power source will be available, reliably? Solar? Will autos soon have solar panels built into rooftops and hoods, like RV's? Will they ever be "quick, efficient enough", or are we the last of the RV type who can "get away from it all", taking it all with us?
Complications do arise, and it seems never more so, than at the "reflective" stage of our lives, when we have more times to forget, than time to recover from mistakes while learning new things!! ;-P
Cheers!

[wa8yxm]

Yes, I can remember when gas was like a quarter a gallon, and some can remember even cheeper... say 10¢ a gallon.... Movies, also cost a dime , and a paperback book likewise. The wages paid a stock boy at A&P back then (By the way a loaf of bread was a nickle,... six for a quarter) also 10¢ per hour.

So as you sit there looking at say 30.000 a year in pension (Equal to 15.00/hr) how expensive is that 4.00 gallon of gas? (Compared to that ten cent gallon that is)

[Davdeb1]

Back in 1966 gas was 29 a gallon for regular, and 35 for premium. Minimum wage was $1.25 today, gas is 1/2 minimum wage. We were using almost all the gas in the world, no one but Europe used any gas. China and India didn't use 1% of what we did the.

Along comes the early 90s, the biggest recession ever to hit Asia, drove down oil to $12 a barrel. We were coming into the biggest decade of prosperity ever, with the cheapest fuel relative to earning ever. This lasted for over a decade.

Now along comes China, And India. They now use more gas than we do, in fact I believe China just over took us in oil use. Asia has come out of the recession, especially South Korea.

Everyone has such a hard time accepting this but now that the Chinese and Indians like to eat more than one meal a day,( because now they can afford to) what do you think is going to happen to the price of food? Every resource is going to go the way of oil, they will be commodities to be bid on. There is nothing we can do but conserve, conserve fuel, and food. How many of us eat way too much? A lot more than we would like to admit.

We have had it all for a long time, now other people want it and are willing to pay.

[Fred1609]

Originally Posted by PapaBear1

Electric motors are most "efficient" for transferring input/output energy. I keep wondering how we will build infrastructure to deliver the power to charge batteries (if that's the route we take), when we Canadians can't seem to produce enough power to meet demands - resulting in brown/black outs, etc.

When fossil fuels run out, and water ways dry up, what power source will be available, reliably? Solar? Will autos soon have solar panels built into rooftops and hoods, like RV's? Will they ever be "quick, efficient enough", or are we the last of the RV type who can "get away from it all", taking it all with us?
Complications do arise, and it seems never more so, than at the "reflective" stage of our lives, when we have more times to forget, than time to recover from mistakes while learning new things!! ;-P
Cheers!

I live in Canada, Western Canada. What brown outs are you referring too? I havent experienced one "brown out". And electric engines receive power from somewhere, huge hydro dams or diesel powered turbines.
We are hundreds of years away from running out of fossil fuels so take that out of the equation. As for green house gases, folks should be looking at China which is opening a coal fired power plant every two weeks. It just strikes me that in our neck of the woods (North America) we are so eager to beat ourselves up over our energy use that our economy suffers as a result.

[Dixieray53]

There was plenty of gasoline available in Jan 2012 about the same as in Jan 2011. To me this means prices are being drive up by traders not because of supply and demand.

Heres the report:

http://205.254.135.7/pub/oil_gas/pet.../appendixa.pdf

[Davdeb1]

That shows supply, not demand. Demand is growing exponentially. The difference in the world economy is bigger than one might suspect. We need LOTS MORE supply. If there were no environmental concerns, we would have all the oil we needed, for a while anyway.

[Ramblin]

Again, there is no domestic oil market, so to say "If there were no environmental concerns, we would have all the oil we needed..." does not make sense. For this to make sense, there would have to be domestic production for use exclusively by domestic refiners and sold only to domestic consumers, at prices determined by domestic supply/demand and domestic competition.

The American people do not own domestic oil. Private individuals and companies do. Their interest is in profits, not energy independence or low fuel prices. In order to drive gas prices down through increased production, a non-profit business would have to be formed that could produce domestic oil, refine it locally, and sell it at reduced cost for domestic consumption. A separate domestic market, unaffected by world supply/demand.