The days of $1/gallon of gas may be coming back in the US. Or not
It's hard to predict the future. Well, it's actually quite easy to make a prediction - it's just hard to predict what will actually happen. Take gas prices. With the recent announcement that OPEC would make a substantial production cut - 2.2 million barrels a day - to bring oil prices back up, an AP story from earlier this month already seems out of date. That story, headlined "Return to $1 gas? Energy prices evaporate," found reason to talk about how the rapid tumble in gas prices in the US (remember July?) will continue next year. This would mean we might reach the sub-$1-a-gallon level last seen in March 1999. To get to the dollar gallons, the price of a barrel would need to fall another $10, the article said. Whether that happens or not, we're already awfully close. The lowest price for a gallon of gas in America today can be found in Chester, SC: $1.12. The US government, meanwhile, predicts, "annual average retail gasoline and diesel fuel prices in 2009 are projected to be $2.03 and $2.47 per gallon, respectively."
Photo by Tony The Misfit. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.
[Source: AP, Mapquest]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jharlan 1:22PM (12/18/2008)
Are these the same guys who were predicting $200/barrel oil by December 31st? Watch out here, in the long term the market will allocate the resources reasonably, but in the short term anything can happen. Remember $147/barrel oil when there was no real oil shortage?
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gorr 12:49PM (12/18/2008)
I remember having buy gas at 79 cents/gallon in 1995 in south-caroline and it was 49.9 cents/liter in canada. Im sure that at that time honda and some others were building their fuelcell car that were finnish to build in 1998. Since then big oil impede them and still impede hydrogen. It's the fault of honda and gm and all the rest if we still need to buy gasoline. The planet is almost dead ecologically and mentaly too if we look at the education level concerning all technologies. Even gasoline technology is not known by more then one percent of the car owners and mechanical guys. It's still the dark ages for everyone except maybe me??
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UH2L 1:46PM (12/18/2008)
Why is there no outrage at (or investigation of) how the oil companies, speculators, and who knows who else drove up the price of oil so high. This clearly wasn't demand driven because our demand has not fallen far enough to warrant the price of oil to drop 70%. It has helped to screw up our economy. Conversely, I do like how it has forced people to buy more efficient products. The speed at which it all happened really hurt the auto industry though.
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GoodCheer 2:16PM (12/18/2008)
Has there ever been a better time to raise fuel taxes?
Prices are low so it wouldn't hurt much.
People now think about efficiency and reducing imports.
Highway infrastructure is in dire need of upgrading.
If only someone _anyone!_ in Washington had some balls.
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gorr 2:57PM (12/18/2008)
Don't forget that all the auto industry is monopolysed to the utmost degree with the help of gm and toyota and the usual high financial institutions, banks, goverments, big-oil, etc. It's no surprise that if petrol at the pumps goes higher then we notice that all oil compagnies make more profits because there is no competition at all and all the price or all the fuel pumps raise the price overnight without a single competitive compagny deciding to increase is market share by lowering the price to grab more customers. So the car industry work with the same model. They consult each others and decide years after years to raise the price and bury all the inventions to get rid of gasoline or diesel. They bury, green algae fuel, natural gas, hydrogen, etc. Goverment secret agency are spying new car compagnies like i think or eco-fueler and help battery car related small compagnies. They attack small entreprenors by hacking their computers, income tax, telephone and emails and even tv sets.
All that have been put in law on 11 sept 2001, and gm, toyota, big oil are on the real terrorists side. So the only thing to do is stopping car expences to the minimum and wait that a survivor put on sale a car propel by hydrogen. You can buy a natural gas car too because it's very simple to convert to free hydrogen when it will be available.
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justout 5:18PM (12/18/2008)
We need a free market! Manipulation through tax and subsidy is falsifying product value oil and alternatives.
As the value of the federal reserve note (US Dollar) falls so does oil.
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