Our GAS heading to $5 per gallon..What is the reason now? (unemployment rate, gas prices)
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So Mr Varney said this morning on Fox that" every cent the cost of gas goes upward cost the consumers one billion dollars." Oh my gosh, here we go again. This time we are getting darn near close to four dollars a gallon in SC and its nearing five dollars in California.
The Keystone pipeline is not ready as yet. So what is the problem this time around? Its not summer travel time yet.
What can they blame it on now?
Are we even paying attention this time around?
Are we getting so passive that we just let the prices ride higher and higher with no complaints?
This can't be good for home fuels either. Heating ones home is going to take a small fortune.
Just wondering how many are giving this a thought? Do we just assume that it will go up and down on a whim?
I am seriously thinking by summer travel time we will be paying five dollars a gallon. I thought that would not happen in the near future and I was certainly wrong.
I live in Florida. Gas prices here (and it's diluted with at least 10% Ethanol) go up at this time of year to save the snowbirds from injuring themselves carrying heavy wallets around.
I live in Florida. Gas prices here (and it's diluted with at least 10% Ethanol) go up at this time of year to save the snowbirds from injuring themselves carrying heavy wallets around.
Well, I guess a good laugh is what is needed. What else can we do?
In California we go from a winter mix to a summer mix and it's all about supply and demand...so they say.
I do know that there are different blends of gas based on seasonal and regional tempratures.
So I understand the change, but as for the supply, that just seems like poor planning or used as a gimmick to charge more.
The excuse I heard is that oil refineries are being shut down for maintenance. They pick this time of year because there is low demand for oil products.
It's 10% (or more) ethanol year round here - and you notice it. If you are out of state then when you return to FL and fill up your car the gas mileage will fall immediately by 3 or 4 mpg.
I suspect the prices here have more to do with 'let's rip off the tourists' than anything else.
(10% ethanol and 0% ethanol are offered side-by-side in Europe and the fuel with 10% ethanol is significantly cheaper than the unadulterated stuff - which is understandable, because ethanol has a lower heating value than gasoline, and if you add ethanol to gasoline you reduce the energy content of the fuel. You get less, so you pay less.)
In my area gasoline has gone up 42 cents in the last ten days, mid grade is around $3.60 to $3.70. This gas gauge is going to produce a double whammy to tourism in my area. The other end of that whammy is going to occur when the automatic spending cuts kick in regarding to the "sequester" that happens on March 1st.
Even for the people who can afford $4.50 to $5.00 a gallon for gas, when it comes to vacation time people are going to run into massive cuts regarding government services. I'm not going to say that they will padlock the national parks and monuments, but they damn sure will cut back on the services involving those parks, such as individual tours, lectures by NPS employees, etc.
They might even cut back somewhat on hours of operation. I've read different stories online regarding this, and I live only one mile away from the west entrance of Colorado National Monument where the guy working the west gate entrance told me that very same thing.
What's of a bigger concern to me is the cutback of money for wildfires, the last figure I heard was trimming $125 million from the budget there. My state got pummeled by fires last year; thousands of acres burned, almost a half billion dollars in property damage.
Surprisingly the gas prices in my area are the same as they are statewide, usually we are 20 to 30 cents more than everyone else. But once I hit Utah or New Mexico, that changes.
Summering's prediction of $5 a gallon for gas-can it happen? In my area it might. And our economy has been bad for some time, the unemployment rate for my county is just under 9%. Not a good situation.
How is an oil company executive going to realize the American Dream if everyone is going to bit*h about rising oil prices? Just pay for it and stick your head back in the sand!
I was reading up on this just this morning. Avoiding the political blame game as much as possible, it sounds like the truth is that there are several factors. One is that there are a few refineries that were shut down for maintenance, and at least one I read about on the east coast that shut down temporarily due to it not being profitable enough- they were apparently losing money on that refinery due to oversupply and lower demand. So that has tightened supply. Then the other end of it is that the market speculators are in a big buying rush again on oil- apparently they are at the highest or 2nd highest level ever of amount of oil currently "held" by speculators, so they are driving prices up pretty quickly as well.
To get back into the politics of this, I really, really wish we'd go back to only allowing people to buy oil futures if they were the ones who were actually going to be taking possession of that oil. So if you go and buy x number of barrel futures, that you will indeed take those barrels of oil. That way only the people using the oil will be buying it, keeping the prices more stable, with the ups and downs truly only being related to supply and demand. If it were that way, there would be no way we'd see spikes of 40 cents in just a month as we have unless there was some major crisis in the world that caused a sudden, drastic drop in supply.
We're up to $3.79 at most stations here in the Seattle area now, with a few already just pennies below $4. Sadly, it wasn't that long ago- right around Christmas- that I filled up at a discount place (a grocery store) and got it for as low as $3.10!
What puzzles me is why are people more upset about the cost of a non-renewable resource that provides such tremendous value than they are about the cost of a cup of coffee, a bottle of water, or any other product that will be around for thousands of years?
You can travel 24 miles on one gallon of gas. Try walking 24 miles having consumed nothing but $4 worth of Starbucks.
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More of your money needed
