Just for the fun comparison, we haven't budged at all from the 20.00rubles/L for 98(Euro) octane from back in September. Which at today's rates is $2.88/gallon (damn falling dollar! My salary is denominated in you)

Today regular gas jumped up to $2.799... twenty cents higher than it was last week! Perhaps I should have bought that Accord 4-banger after all.

Nah... just kidding. I look too cool in a Mustang . And at least it does burn regular gas... the Bimmer took premium, which is already at $3 per gallon again.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Just for the fun comparison, we haven't budged at all from the 20.00rubles/L for 98(Euro) octane from back in September. Which at today's rates is $2.88/gallon (damn falling dollar! My salary is denominated in you)

On the other hand, Justin, you're in a net producer state. Slightly different economics there...

Originally Posted by catfishncod

Originally Posted by me

Just for the fun comparison, we haven't budged at all from the 20.00rubles/L for 98(Euro) octane from back in September. Which at today's rates is $2.88/gallon (damn falling dollar! My salary is denominated in you)

On the other hand, Justin, you're in a net producer state. Slightly different economics there...

On the gripping hand, there was no federal election here back in November. Massively different politics...

Another 2.5M barrel drop in gasoline inventories. Imports will have to pick up as production is capped.

Regular gas is at $2.89 per gallon now in Vancouver. Premium is well above the $3 mark.

Out in my neck of the woods, driving around South Arlington, I saw gas prices at the $2.54/$2.55 range for regular unleaded.

That's up by about a quarter over the past month.

Another sharp drop in supply.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/gtstusm.gif

Originally Posted by mattzs

Another sharp drop in supply.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/gtstusm.gif

That's weird. What caused the steep peak and equally steep drop? Where's all that oil disappearing to, anyway -- the SPR?

In other news, gas now $2.55 in the People's Republic of Cambridge.

Originally Posted by catfishncod

That's weird. What caused the steep peak and equally steep drop? Where's all that oil disappearing to, anyway -- the SPR?

In other news, gas now $2.55 in the People's Republic of Cambridge.

Demand did not drop as much as last year, plus imports are less than a year ago. Production will pick up as refineries wrap up turn around maintenance. As far as the peak, look at the production chart, it mirrors the inventory chart.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/tw...tml#production

P.R. Cambridge gas price check: $2.69 and rising one or two cents every day. As long as Iran can keep dragging this "crisis" out without letting it blow up, it's very profitable.

The longer we wait, the worse we're going to be. We need massive R&D, especially on deployment, and we need it the day before yesterday. Home solar power, higher efficiency plug-in hybrids, electric grid stabilization, the Farnsworth-Bussard fusion reactor, biofuels. The energy project will be a major aspect of the regeneracy... but right now Gore seems like the only person who is willing to act, not just say that energy issues are nice.

Regular gas at my corner pump is up to $2.959, nearly fifty cents higher than it was at Christmas time. The way things are going, we're probably looking at $4.00 per gallon by the peak of the summer travel season.

In south Arlington, Virginia, gas was $2.65 on Thursday, last time I checked.

Here in San Diego, I saw a gas station near the airport selling gas at $3.65! Yow!

According to my hosts, gas isn't quite so bad in the burbs -- a mere $3.25 or so. Yikes! I miss my Prius (I'm renting a Ford Focus).

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

In south Arlington, Virginia, gas was $2.65 on Thursday, last time I checked.

Here in San Diego, I saw a gas station near the airport selling gas at $3.65! Yow!

According to my hosts, gas isn't quite so bad in the burbs -- a mere $3.25 or so. Yikes! I miss my Prius (I'm renting a Ford Focus).

Gasoline inventories down another 5M barrels, demand didn't drop as much as last year. Should see $3 by summer for most of the u.s., $3.5 on the west coast. (Airport stations are notorious gougers)

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/gtstusm.gif

Originally Posted by mattzs

Gasoline inventories down another 5M barrels, demand didn't drop as much as last year.

OTOH, Ahmco just released the British sailors after getting surprisingly little quid pro quo, so crude should drop some. This may not stop the rise in prices but may slow it.

PRCambridge gas quote: $2.71 and rising.

And, as of this morning, regular gasoline is up another dime in my neighborhood, to $3.059.

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

And, as of this morning, regular gasoline is up another dime in my neighborhood, to $3.059.

It's the Bush-era paradigm of business: gouge the customer for as much as you can, especially if you are exempt from competition.

The Bush economic policy has as its core the idea that the key to economic growth is the maximal profit of "privileged industries"... resource extraction, Big Pharma, consumer lending, war industries.... supposedly it is capitalism at its most generous to capitalists, but if one is the wrong sort of capitalist one has more to lose than to gain.

It's the same folly that the European Community effectively abolished after WWII -- the idea that cartels that maximized profits or blank-check profiteers feeding at the public trough were most capable of getting the capital with which to invest for 'growth'. The cartels invested, all right -- in fascism in some countries.

Real growth of course comes from people investing in skills that make them better workers and in small businesses that do real good without gouging, and in public investments in necessary (if unglamorous) infrastructure like schools, sewers, and streets.

Unless a nation is practically an economic monoculture (an oil sheikhdom or a "banana republic"), no nation has a 'natural' industry that is so critical to progress that it must restrain trade to fleece the customer so that it can foster 'growth'.

The oil industry, once somewhat competitive, is a cartel.

Despite certain feeling of gouging, we are quite obviously the oil cartel's best friends, as gasoline demand continues to rise along with the prices. Where do you all feel the breaking point will be? Something I heard this morning made a prediction that it could be as high as $6.27 a gallon before you would start to see an appreciable drop in consumption, especiall among RV and SUV owners. No wonder prices keep rising, we accept it and keep on paying it!

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

Despite certain feeling of gouging, we are quite obviously the oil cartel's best friends, as gasoline demand continues to rise along with the prices. Where do you all feel the breaking point will be? Something I heard this morning made a prediction that it could be as high as $6.27 a gallon before you would start to see an appreciable drop in consumption, especiall among RV and SUV owners. No wonder prices keep rising, we accept it and keep on paying it!

I'm thinking closer to $4. What do you think of Federated buying the Cubs? Macys field anyone?

Originally Posted by mattzs

I'm thinking closer to $4. What do you think of Federated buying the Cubs? Macy's field anyone?

Of course not! It will certainly be ... Marshall Fields.

From what I understand, the equivalent of a gallon of gas costs about $5.50 in Brazil. Assuming similar cost factors in the US, ethonol may become cost competitive in the US within the next five years.

Originally Posted by Brian Beecher

Despite certain feeling of gouging, we are quite obviously the oil cartel's best friends, as gasoline demand continues to rise along with the prices. Where do you all feel the breaking point will be? Something I heard this morning made a prediction that it could be as high as $6.27 a gallon before you would start to see an appreciable drop in consumption, especiall among RV and SUV owners. No wonder prices keep rising, we accept it and keep on paying it!

In the short term the demand curve for gasoline is very inelastic. People aren't going to quit their jobs because the cost of gasoline goes from $2 to even $10 a gallon. Some people with low-paid jobs might start looking closer to home or if they are really close to their homes start commuting on bicycles in favorable weather. People aren't going to cancel appointments with doctors or dentists just because getting to them costs four times as much. No method is as good as the private auto for getting to and from the grocery store with food and other needful things.

Governments are heavy users of fuel, and they will continue to be heavy users of it. Largely-rural districts aren't going to curtail school bus use, and no community is likely to tell the police to patrol less by police cruiser or to not chase speeders or other scofflaws because driving a cop car at high speed consumes 'too much gasoline'.

Use the public buses? I've seen the people who must rely upon them, and those people look, almost to a person, like broken souls, people that the System has consigned to despair. Waiting an hour for a crowded bus twice a day and having a commute that takes twice as long as one by car takes something out of people. Most employers insist that employees have positive attitudes while on the job, so using city buses is likely out of the question. Organizing car pools? That takes time.

The measures that most people have are to take fewer unnecessary trips by car. Thus, one goes less often to the mall and shops with reduced income by the Internet. People can cancel vacation plans if they haven't committed to them with large deposits. Instead of going to an amusement park out of state they put in a garden or paint a room in the house, doing something 'practical' this year in the hope that gas prices will be lower after the Bush White House is a bad memory instead of a current reality.

In the long term, the demand tends to flatten. People take long-term measures. They don't replace the RV or SUV, and when the old station wagon no longer runs, they replace it with some subcompact. People can choose high-density housing instead of unattached single-family houses. Family members might be less willing to move away from their elders for what look like better job opportunities. At the extreme, workers might have to settle to live in employer-supplied barracks so that they can live close to their employment (and of course be under tighter control). At high-enough prices, old-fashioned train travel becomes profitable enough to justify huge private investments on rails. There may yet be exotic vehicles that offer far better fuel consumption than conventional automobiles. At a high-enough price, horse transportation becomes attractive. We must recall that automobiles supplanted horses and buggies when mechanical horsepower became more economical than equine horsepower.

In the mean time, all that most of us can do is pay the price that the oil cartel sets to determine who is most willing to pay the highest price. We can choose to believe that by fleecing us the oil companies are getting the profits necessary for investing in new sources of vital energy -- or using vile language and sardonic humor when filling up the gas tank. The gouge is the norm in a plutocracy... like America in the current decade.

... High oil prices may or may not be culpability of the oil cartel, but about all that the vast majority of us have been able to do since G W Bush became President has been to tread water economically while selling off assets or going deeply into debt. Those tendencies are likely to hit a brick wall as the 3T becomes a 4T.

My corner station just popped up to $3.43/gallon of self-serve regular unleaded. That's as high as it's last peak. From here on out it's new territory.

Originally Posted by Zarathustra

My corner station just popped up to $3.43/gallon of self-serve regular unleaded. That's as high as it's last peak. From here on out it's new territory.

We just filled up with 95Ай at 19.30r/L; with the falling dollar (it fell below the 26 ruble mark early last week. Curse you! my salary is denominated in you!) at 25.83r, that comes to $2.83 a gallon.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

We just filled up with 95Ай at 19.30r/L; with the falling dollar (it fell below the 26 ruble mark early last week. Curse you! my salary is denominated in you!) at 25.83r, that comes to $2.83 a gallon.

Curse me/us? Why, you're not American?