Gas prices
 

I saw gas for $2.59/gal on the way to work today, in New Jersey, where they pump it for you. Seems great, but wasn't it less than a year and a half ago that gas about $1.75/gal?

It's 2.39/gal here. One week ago it was 2.59/gal and I nearly broke my neck filling up at that price. Naturally, after I did that, it went down .20 cents. It has been 3.15/gal.

Why is gas less expensive in Ohio than in Pennsylvania ans New Jersey? Is it closer to the source, closer to processing? No. I suppose it's more expensive because that's what the market will bear.

****Conspiracy theory alert!!!!*******
Red states are being rewarded by big oil for voting in the administration that has given them subsidies when they are making historic profits.

When you say Penna do you mean the Phila area? I think probably everything is more $$$ on the Eastern seaboard...after all, who wants to be in landlocked, humid, gloomy Ohio? At least you can get to the shore!

Katkeeper reports gas is $.20 cheaper in Harrisburg area than in Philadelphia area.

Most other basic things like groceries are cheaper in Hbg.

Bastards! ;)

So why is that? Is it just lower overhead from cheaper real estate? I figure transportation has to play a huge role. Is Pittsburgh more of a hub than Philly?

Don't know exactly! For sure the RE market is FAR cheaper in Harrisburg, and the labor.

Philly is a big port city and has several refineries. But you know what, I bet pipelines serve gas depots all the way to Harrisburg.

Harrisburg is a huge trucking hub because it's halfway between a lot of places.

Same is true in Allentown--although I can't claim the differential is quite $.20/gal. When I can, I buy my gas near work rather than near home.

$2.53 here in KC area, down from $2.89 a week ago. I almost choke on my tongue when I tell the wife during the morning drive that gas is more affordable than it was just a week ago.

Did *anyone* ever think they'd live to see the day that gas would be "only" $2.53 a gallon, and they'd be grateful?

Local Gas Prices:

Unleaded : €1,49/litre = $ 7,05/US Gallon
Diesel : € 1,10/litre = $ 5,45/US Gallon

PS apx 30% of the passenger cars here have diesel engine, their market share is rising.

PPS Net profit Shell first 6 months 2006 reached a record high of $14.800.000.000 (+39%) = $ 83 Mio/day = $ 3,45 Mio/hour = $ 57.500/sec. FcukinG GROSS

Strange...diesel is higher per gallon than unleaded here in the States right now. Didn't use to be that way years ago.

Well, since I have a decent grasp of inflation, I personally expect to still be alive to see the day that gas is only $10.00/gallon, and likely consider it a fair price at the time. When adjusted for inflation, gas is still cheaper today than it was in the early 1980s.

Correct me if I am wrong but wasn't diesel considered at one time the waste byproduct more or less when gas was refined or is my thinking all wrong? I can remember as a kid diesel being WAY cheaper than gas. I guess all the F350 Super Duty owners are kicking themselves right about now as the majority I see aren't used as a work truck, but more of a status symbol.

I paid $2.95 for self serve regular early this week. I'm pretty sure my tank before that was around $3.40 from the same gas station.

Remember when self serve was the exception, not the norm, and that woman wrote a book entitled "Real Women Don't Pump Gas"? Are there any more full serves anymore, and what is the price differential?

There are still full serve stations. This is the law in New Jersey ... but gas is still cheaper than on my side of the bridge because the state taxes on the fuel aren't as high. I am not close enough to the border, nor am I willing to be disarmed to take 'advantage' of this, especially since what I might save per gallon I would lose in highway tolls and expended fuel for the round trip.

Self-Serve started at about the time I was learning to drive, so I learned that too. It's actually kind of strange to buy gas at a place where they do the work for you, and still check your oil and swab the dead bugs off your windshield (which they would do at the Shell Station up the street from me if I wanted them too). I don't know how much the surcharge for having them do the work is, though. If I remember to do so I'll walk around and check the full serve pump price, as it's not posted on the sign.

When I used to travel upstate there was a full serve station, or rather a station where they pumped the gas for you. No check the oil or wash the windshield unless you asked for it, though.

I'm no economist, but I just don't remember being outraged and near-bankrupted by fuel prices back then. I wonder if I'm just making that much less money now than I was then...when adjusted for inflation?

In the 80's, filling up my car didn't make me sick to my stomach like it does now. I have to put about $250.00 per month into my two functional cars on average for my normal use requirements...and I *really* go very few places that aren't work except for band practice once a week.

That $250.00 represents about 9% of our take-home pay, and that's just for gas. No other vehicle expenses.

Does anyone else pay that high of a percentage for fuel out of their take home wages?

Since I only buy gas on the card, It's pretty easy to keep track of what I'm spending each month ... I have a car that gets pretty crappy milage (i.e., under 18 mpg) and since the prices went up, am usually spending around $75-95/month on gas.

Last school year I was spending about 20 dollars a week getting to my day job waaay across town.

I know that gas is high but somehow it's been linked to the price of sugar and soda pop. I know you might think I am having a pheobe moment but really, Next time you go to buy a liter bottle at 1.69 plus deposit we'll have to assume it's shipped in from where? Hawaii?? It's been more painful to buy that stuff because unlike gasoline we don't really NEED it.

I was wondering the same. I don't want my oil checked but somethings would be nice to have the workers do.
I sure don't want to get my hands dirty before work if I have to use those little air pumps with the short little cord and about 2 minutes to get air into your tires before it shuts itself off. That is about as full service as it gets around here.

Hee, hee! Paid 2.32/gal yesterday! Tra-la!

Were gasoline prices high? Emotions said yes (in polls). Reality is completely different. One month this summer set a new record for gasoline consumption. Sales of GM's gas guzzlers reported this last quarter were at record high volume. Ford's F-150 sales, although down from last years record high levels, are still selling at numbers that are higher than most previous years.

Gasoline at $3+ per gallon was not expensive. SUV sales are still strong. With inflation, price of gasoline is same as gasoline prices in early and mid 1970s. That same history says gasoline must rise to somethng like $6 or $7 per gallon before consumers really consider gasoline expensive.

State gasoline tax is PA 45.1, NJ 32.9 and Ohio 40.4.

Don't be upset with Bush and Big Oil colluding to raise prices. After all, they're doing it for your own good. Their benefiting at historic levels, is just collateral damage. :right:

Southern California gas prices are finally easing below three a gallon, with most places selling regular unleaded in the 2.90 to 2.99 range.

Ah, now we can subsidise terror without the wallet pain.

Maybe if we were allowed to use our own supplies (wouldn't want to hurt a few caribou) and stopped tanking incentives for broadening ethinol production we wouldn't have to be funding terrorism. I'm sure I'm mentioned how that area of the world has no value except as an oil well, once that's no longer important they won't have the funds to maintain a TV network much less a terrorism network.

Why did the worlds largest supply of oil have be sitting under the asses of a bunch of psychotic nomads??? It's like a sick joke or something. Someone call global eminent domain on their asses and admit them to a nice psych ward, we'll tell the candy stripers to cover their arms to show we're meeting them partway.

Nurse Ratched could fix Bin Laden right fine.

Two reasons:
-1)There isn't as much oil up there that's as cheaply accessible at the same quality as shipping it from the Mideast.
-2)Ethanol isn't all that great. It takes a tremendous amount of power to produce, even if it does burn cleaner in autos. I'm pretty sure (though I can't remember where you actually have a net loss of CO2 when making and burning ehtanol fuel.

Gas is more expensive in LA than in the suburbs becasue LA adds a city tax, and a county tax.

I thought this was interesting:

http://www.losangelesgasprices.com/tax_info.aspx

It's a list of state taxes on fuel

Just got gas in New jersey for 2.47.9/gallon

$2.45 9/10 here in the KC Metro.

Here's some perspective for you.

In the UK a couple of weeks ago unleaded hit an all time high of just over £1 / litre = £3.79 / Gall(US) = $6.82 / Gall (US)

This last week, thanks to the US driving season drawing to a close, the price dropped to £0.93 / litre (whoopee do)

Diesel is around 2 to 3% more due to higher environmental taxation.

The UK government has introduced heavier road tax for less fuel efficient cars and tax breaks for low emission vehicles. There is increasing pressure to lean on them even harder as pollution and road congestion just ain't funny anymore. Things are really going to start biting soon.

Oy! That's pretty damn pricey. I just filled up yesterday for US$2.35! Woooo! MSP is in the hizzle!

I for one find it highly improbable that Americans are driving that much less to be able to explain such a precipitous drop in prices in such a short time. $2.29/gal here in KC Metro today, or a drop of 66 cents in about two weeks.

The only way it could have dropped that much, that quickly, is if it was artificially high in the first place, IMHO. I think this is doubly supported by the even more amazing UK price drop cited here. Rogues. Scum. Thieves. Robber Barons.

Theres data out there to tell us if it's true or not. We just need to hack into Jiffy Lube's computers and extract the mileage data.

Can you say, there's an election in six weeks or so? ;)

I had a wild thought about this and could be way out there regarding the recent oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico.

Who is to say that the recent gas prices falling don't have something to do with needing the cost of a barrel of oil to be the lowest in years so that Chevron pays NO monies to big government due to a contractual loophole?

We (USA) benefits anywhere from 30 cents to a dollar less a gallon so that big company benefits billions while crude oil is being pumped out of the Gulf?

It's head chowder, but a good recipe.

In a world where even Nigeria and Venezuela are on the verge of terminating oil exports, what would a small oil dealer (representative of something like 75% of America's oil industry) do? Less widely reported are small American oil dealers scrambling to find oil storage tanks capacity where ever storage could be found. They have long term contracts to protect. Hoarding - which you should be saying thank you for protecting your interests - has been widespread across the entire American oil industry. Even residential oil tanks were kept as topped as oil dealers could just to find more storage for oil.

Well, no hurricane struck the Gulf. Situation in Nigeria softened. Venezuela apparently will not stop shipping oil. Mexico's presidential election situation appears to have settled. Oil from Alaska is still flowing after quite a scare. Saudis have maintained capacity that no one was sure was possible. Kuwait has not been dragged into what looked like a mess this year. Oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea is now functioning. Libyan oil has come online this past year - is especially found in Italy. Russians are not using oil like they once were to manipulate Europe. Gulf pipelines are finally pumping enough oil and natural gas to meet consumption demands. Second half of summer was not as hot as the first half. Summer driving season ended. Fall is a time of least oil consumption. These are only some events I know of from well published sources. And so it goes. Suddenly small oil dealers no longer need maintain all this oil. Prices drop accordingly.

You knew of these so many events when oil barons were rigging the market? This summer was a scary time for the entire oil and natural gas industry.

That is a dizzying array of market influences. The only thing dizzier than that array is the again *extremely unlikely* confluence of relief of all those possibilities occuring *at the same fucking time*. Examining these market influences, kindly tell me any one of them that was anything but speculation and/or bullshit now that the "danger" has come and gone?

The only thing that changed, apparently, was how much of our money was going into the pockets of people smart enough to produce some bullshit "market forces" that never eventuated.

Event need not occur at the same time. Just the fact that so many possiblities exist is why something completely different then happened. That only some events were possible is why oil dealers were massive hoarding oil this summer. You don't care whether those events could happen. You saw only what did happen. Oil dealers were massively seeking oil storage depots, oil future contracts, etc because the market was so unstable; because they have long term contracts that they must meet. Those many threats were enough to only raise oil prices slightly. Did prices rise from $2 per gallon to over $4 per gallon? No. IOW the price rises were rather mild.

Don't forget history. When oil shipments from some sources were interrupted, then gasoline rose to $7 per gallon.

Now that dealers don't need reserves, prices have dropped from $3 per to $2.50 per gallon. Of course. Simple market economics.

Meanwhile, did you notice how market problems kept fruit and vegatable prices so high this summer? Why not? Again, market forces caused, for example, blueberries last year at $2 a box to sell for $2.50, $3 and at one point $4 per box. Clearly blueberry farmers are also greedy bastards? Welcome to the free market. Of course, you know why fruit and vegatable prices were so high? Those reasons have been widely reported by every responsible new service.

I don't have to buy blueberries twice a week to get back and forth to my job. Have I noticed increases in other commodities? Yes. I work in construction. Prices of some raw materials have gone up 40% in eighteen months.

Let's wait and see who gets elected and what new "market forces" will rear their ugly heads thereafter. Should be interesting.

What else has seen a massive price increase? Wood? I thought that price was supposed to have decreased. Where are the big price increases in construction this summer - and how much? (I suspect busterb could cite reasons why roofing material prices are higher.)

I got the bed and the meds, just as soon as someone is able to confirm whereabouts within my county.

I paid $2.69/gal reg. unleaded yesterday. There are stations that are cheaper, but this is the one that's more convenient on the way to visit momWolf/work.

I did remember to check the full serve prices ... it was 20 cents more per gallon to have the kid pump the gas and smear your windshield (if you ask nicely).

I am in insulation/fireplaces/gutters primarily. I don't know what lumber has done, but steel, insulation, sheet rock and roofing have spiraled upward at a record pace. In fact, metal prices in general have skyrocketed, including the price for scrap.

If the repubicans win, prices will go back up. If Democrats win, big oil might be concerned about reprocussions if they continue raping Americans. And if Democrats win, they had better fucking do something about the situation. maybe repeal the energy act of the Cheney administration.

I should imagine pretty much everything will continue to skyrocket (in price) until you find a way of manufacturing it without oil. It's a finite resource and in one hundred years we've managed to burn half of what took several million years to create.

Getting pissed over domestic petroleum prices is just the tip of the iceberg.

"Big oil" doesn't care either way. People buy gas, they make money. No matter what.

If your tidy, left wing conspiracy is is true, could you please explain to me when the Middle East producers stopped being the ones to set the price per barrel?

They haven't, but the producers don't set the price at the pump and the two are not directly related. Most prices at the pump are set as a result of fluctuations in the oil futures market as well as the ability of the Big Oil companies to refine crude into it's constituent parts for us to use. So, since the futures market has been trending downwards, and the backlog at refineries is decreasing, we have lower at-the-pump prices.
It isn't a conspiracy, it's the Big Oil companies trying to make as much money as they can, which is the purpose of any company. Whether it's ethical or not is another matter.

I seem to recall that 30 years ago there was massive fuel price fluctuation and all the oil people got rich

and there was great gnashing of teeth and calling for special taxes on the bad rich people

and then 15 years ago there was no fluctuation and status quo and the oil people were all going bust

and nobody called for any special taxes on them because all of Texas was in recession

and now there is fluctuation and all the oil people are making money again.

I do not advise moving to Texas.

It's also interesting to note that a large portion of the "oil people" here in Texas is the state University system. Lower oil profits means less money for public higher education. The anti-corporation folks really squirm when you bring that up. :)

I have a short memory, I guess. I don't recall a lot of struggling oil companies due to the cheap price of energy.

Does anyone here believe there is any such thing as an obscene amount of profits?

As a libertarian, Patrick, no I don't. Also as a libertarian, if I don't like their prices, I vote with my wallet for something else. Hell, I've got a bicycle. The Oxnard metro area is flat terrain.

In theory, yes. There can be.

I don't have a problem with luxury items having huge profit margins. But necessities shouldn't have obscene profit margins. If a monopoly exists that allows huge profits on necessities, then the government should break up that monopoly.

The way they avoided struggling too much was by laying people off. I remember several schoolmates' parents basically going broke for a couple of years or having to give up and switch careers because of it. None of them were executives, though.

They've made record profits lately. Something tells me it was largely due to the exhorbitant prices at the pumps.
Labor Day, the end of the vacation travel season.:mad:

Another reason for the huge profit numbers is the size of the companies. All the mergers have lessened the competition and with fewer companies come bigger market shares. :(

But that's good, right?

Didn't our government go to some rather extraordinary lengths to break up giant monopolies about twenty years ago? What the fuck has changed that it is now a good thing?

Bush. :eyebrow: