A "sizable number" of Americans think gas will hit $5/gallon by Labor Day
Photo by ^Riza^. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.
The seemingly relentless march of gas prices in the upward direction has become, well, not quite so relentless. For now, gas prices are hovering around the $4/gallon mark, but what's in store for the rest of 2008? A national survey has found that "a sizable number" of Americans think that the end of summer (Labor Day) will bring $5/gallon gasoline. Of course, this doesn't mean prices will hit that mark, but a similar study conducted by the same group in January found that 71 percent of Americans correctly predicted gas would hit $4/gallon by summer. So there's that.
The survey was conducted by Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) at the behest of the Civil Society Institute, a nonprofit and nonpartisan think tank, and its Citizens Lead for Energy Action Now (CLEAN) project. Full survey details will revealed tomorrow.
[Source: Civil Society Institute, Newton, Mass.]
PRESS RELEASE:
Survey: $5 Gasoline By Labor Day - Are Most Americans Now Expecting It?
Poll to Show If Voters 'Angry' About Gas Prices Now Strongly Favor Far-Reaching Energy and Climate Solutions, 'Energy Independence Day' by 2015
WASHINGTON, June 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- While Washington tinkers with the notion of expanded offshore drilling, a sizable number of Americans expects gasoline prices to hit $5 by Labor Day and favors bolder and more fundamental energy- and climate-related fixes, according to a new national opinion survey conducted by Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) for the nonprofit and nonpartisan Civil Society Institute (CSI) think tank and its Citizens Lead for Energy Action Now (CLEAN) project (www.cleanenergyaction.net). The major CSI/CLEAN survey will be released during a live, phone-based national news conference at 1:30 p.m. EDT on June 26, 2008.
In an earlier January 2008 ORC survey conducted for CSI/CLEAN, 71 percent of Americans correctly forecast that gasoline prices would hit $4 by this summer. The new CSI/CLEAN survey looks ahead to expectations about Labor Day 2008, gauges the level of anger among Americans about today's gasoline prices, and assesses how gas prices/energy policy will impact the thinking of voters this year. The survey also shows how many Americans favor the idea of a national goal of "Energy Independence Day" by 2015, taking more aggressive action to deal with energy and climate problems, and also making different personal choices, such as buying a hybrid or other fuel-efficient vehicle.
News event speakers will be:
-- Civil Society Institute President and Founder Pam Solo; and
-- Opinion Research Corporation Senior Researcher Graham Hueber.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ddub 7:01PM (6/25/2008)
I wouldn't call $4.60 hovering around $4. Not much padding left for it not to break $5.
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MikeW 7:23PM (6/25/2008)
Don't ask Jorge Boosh, because it will go right through $5.
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Ignatius 7:30PM (6/25/2008)
Hey, I hope it goes up to $10 a gallon. I hope people who are pumping their Hummers full at the pump are CRYING.
And then I will laugh as I walk to work.
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Cervus 8:07PM (6/25/2008)
Will you laugh when $10 gas costs you your job? Will you laugh when the inflation triples the cost of food? Will you laugh when people in the northeast freeze when they can't afford heating oil?
I guess watching people suffer is funny.
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stevefazek 10:14PM (6/25/2008)
If we think it will cost that much it will.
Fucking investors manipulated the market will push this as far as they can.
Commodity trading was ment to protect Farmers, Miners, oil companies from price spikes or massive drops.
Lets say Farmer bill has X amount of Crop Z. The commodity trader will guarantee he will get 5 bucks per ton of that product when it comes to harvest time.
So lets say the price crashes and the farmer would make less money then he spent growing the crop.
The commodity trader is hoping that crop Z will sell for 5 or more dollars a ton when it comes to harvest time. anything more is pure profit for doing nothing.
So the farmer may lose out on some profit, but he makes money he is happy with when it comes to harvest time he futures trader sells the crop for him
The same thing happens with oil but its for oil thats delivered 5 weeks from now not months.
They are keeping pushing more and more oil because they have so much money invested into it if it collapses its going to fuck them out of billions of dollars. The smallest delivery of oil contracts offered are 100,000 Barrels.
Now with oil when it comes to delivery time the traders pretty much tell the oil producing countries to go to hell they dont want the oil.
This creates a totally false demand.
Hense supply and demand is bs and can be manipulated.
Lets say some dumb new toy comes out on christmas season, They make 10 million of them, and the store claims 13 million want to be bought by people so they double the price of the toy.
Now you come to find out 5 million of those people never actually had any intention of buying the toy
If the store did that they would go to prison.
If a CEO did that with his Stock he would go to prison.
For commodity traders they just get a High five and a big fat paycheck.
Now that explains why countries dont want to produce anymore oil because they cant sell any more.
Would you be willing to produce more oil if you cant sell it?
Sadly many people in the goverment and media will refuse to truly cover this even our goverment is pushing supply and demand. Why?
Thats what happens when you dump hundreds of millions of dollars into lobbiest groups
The same people who do this are the ones who did the .com bubble, and the real estate market.
All they care about is a quick buck at the expense of millions peoples lively hoods.
Thats the problem with this country people didnt care about the next quarter as they did 5,10,15,20 years down the road.
Long term growth is about 2-7% annual growth. These people want to see something double in 3 months or they dump it.
Hell when i was born my grand parents bought me 500 shares in well sadly an oil company. That cost them under 10 grand. After 2 splits its now worth
around 150 grand.
Oil should be at 180 a barrel.....
in 25 years. NOT today.
The same people who create the panic that oil is going to hit 100 NO NO WAIT 120 NO NO NO 150 NO NO NO 300 a barrel in a year!!!. Are the same investment houses who push oil future contracts.
Again if this was a stock these companies would be shut down.
Sigh this isnt capitalism its corporate welfare speaking of that Cabellas and walmart are not in business of selling this for a profit but at collecting subsides.
a couple years ago cabellas sold 200 million worth of product and collected 300 million in welfare.
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Steve 11:59PM (6/25/2008)
Well said, Cervus. Some people would cut off their nose to spite their face.
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mike baz 5:45AM (6/26/2008)
Stevefazek, interesting scenario. Where did you pick up this info, and how could artificial scarcity be created with a product with such universal demand as oil, surely there can't be such mass collusion?
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brandon 11:16AM (6/26/2008)
they probably think that because IT ALREADY IS THAT MUCH AND HAS BEEN FOR MONTHS for some of us here in California...
geeze, the news is slow
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goehring 11:21AM (6/26/2008)
I guess I am one of these speculators that everyone is trying to demonize.
I saw we were at peak oil so I bought it as a hedge against higher gas prices.
Now I don't care if it goes up or down; any extra I pay at the pump comes from increases in the commodity price.
If you want to know how high gas will go, ask yourself how expensive it must get for you to stop using it, that is how high it will go.
I don't think $5 is the number, I'd guess more like $10.
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Jon 1:45PM (6/26/2008)
Speculators can't indefinitely manipulate the price of a highly fungible commodity like oil; if this is just speculation, there will be a huge collapse. Speculators may be aggravating the issue and making it perhaps more volatile. They aren't creating the issue.
The sources of this problem are:
1) The declining dollar is affecting the price of a dollar-denominated commodity. So ultimately, bad fiscal management in the U.S. is driving the value of the dollar down and causing a large increase in the price of all dollar-denominated commodities, including oil. Persistent deficits have repercussions, this is one.
2) Huge increases in demand as China, India, etc. raise their standard of living, a process that is really just starting
3) The maxing out and decline of known huge reserves of oil in the ground.
4) Best bets for new large finds are almost universally located in highly unstable or politically unfriendly areas of the world.
5) Other new supply available in more politically/friendly neutral locations are smaller, lower grade, and/or much more costly to extract.
6) Inflexibility of demand: the near-certainty that countries will be unable to quickly replace their oil demand with an alternate energy source.
Put all this together and you have sufficient reason for increasing prices without blaming speculators.
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imoore 6:19PM (6/26/2008)
$5.00 by Labor Day? Try July 31.
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stevefazek 6:20PM (6/26/2008)
Dont call chinas demand Huge nor india. They combined added an extra 3% increase of demand in the past 10 years. That is a whole bunch of BS that the same people are pushing. Yes China and india have caused and inflation has caused oil to hit 40-50.
Pretty much everything we have seen since last Summer is BS.
Countries are Cutting oil production. WHY? Because the false demand means they cant sell all the oil they had contracts for. Hense why libya is cutting oil production yet that drove the price even higher.
Oh and for the new oil discoveries. Here some things you should know. Peak oil is BS, Peak oil has been goin gon and on and on for the past 150 years and they have been saying it will happens just around the corner for the past 150 years same with coal.
Production of Light sweet crude that costs 5 bucks a barrel to extract from the ground? Yes that has peaked or in th enext few years.
Oil thats not as good nor as easy to get which costs 30 bucks a barrel to get? Oh Brazil found tons of it and so mr Hugo has tons of it.
Alternatives such as tar sands? That takes $40 bucks a barrel to make it doable.
Coal to gas? Around 60 bucks a barrel to make it profitable.
Dont let these ass hole speculators make you think for one second that its OPEC. Opec kinda sucks for cutting off the western world from oil 35 freaking years ago get over it. They did that because we supported a country that bombed them we have done the same thing to countries that attack our allies.
thats politics.
Opecs main interests is to regulate the price of oil keep it from plunging or spiking, that way they know exactly how much oil to produce and to maximize long term profits.
Yes supply and demand and the us dollar dropping calls for oil going from 20-30 a barrel up to 60 maybe 70 a barrel.
Most people who dont have anything to gain simply call the price of oil from 70-140 IN less than a year is pure speculators. They have but raped all other markets and they are moving.
I would love to see OPEC, the US and China just announce they are openeing up full production and the reserve. That would cause oil to plumit.
We need to take it off the market Iran is working on this where the Seller gets to sell it directly to the consumer leave a worthless middleman out who does nothing but make your life hard.
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Serge 7:06PM (6/26/2008)
mike baz: "the artifical scarcity" of crude oil you are wondering about is currently being created on the commodity futures market. There are many resources discussing this; I would recommend the following for further info: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/05/quantifying-commodities-speculation.html
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I dare you to watch.. 12:41AM (6/27/2008)
As I scan through the comments thus far...
Yes, speculators are helping nudge the price along.
But, in reality, the value of the dollar is being driven down [on purpose]. The Fed is not your friend, they are not here for your benefit, they are here to make money. I'm sure you're all well aware that the Federal Reserve bank system is a private bank, not the US Goverment bank. They are in it to win. The more money we spend, the more money we owe. The more money we owe, the more we [the public, and smaller banking institutions] must borrow to pay them back. Ever wonder where all the money the US Government spends comes from? The 1 BILLION dollars a day spent in Iraq and Afghanistan isn't coming from you, it's from the Federal Reserve System. And they are being charged interest. Lowering rates doesn't help you, it helps them. They are amassing tangible assets in order to have more when the dollar is converted to the Amero. Many of you wont believe that however. Take a look here. It's not propaganda. It's true. And GWB has committed treason. No congressional oversight, the Senate was not involved. You didn't even know, did you? I wouldn't be too surprised if this doesn't stay up for long. http://youtube.com/watch?v=7nD7dbkkBIA http://youtube.com/watch?v=T74VA3xU0EA
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I dare you to watch.. 12:57AM (6/27/2008)
This is necessary to add. The 1st 1/3rd of Zeitgeist is garbage, the rest is true. This is too..
http://youtube.com/watch?v=y08pJiNS8mk&feature=related
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