Gas Prices Soaring

http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-main-forum/61379-gas-creeping-up-again.html

 

This is the time, when the prices are climbing, that I am glad I took the plunge and bought a Prius

 

Having paid a high of about $4.29/gal last year, I think it's a little premature to characterize what we're seeing now as "soaring." It's mostly the summer formulation bump that happens every year nowadays.

 

At a rate of 10 cents every 6 days, gas price will go back to the peak in less than 3 months...

 

And can someone help answer this question?

reformulated gas for summer, so higher cost
reformalated gas for winter, so higher cost.

"higher cost" compare to what blend of gas at what time?

 

Where I live it's always relatively less in winter.

 

oh oh...not good...first we get post "gas CREEPING up again" ...now we have "soaring"...

not good, UNLESS you have a 2010 getting 60 mpg!!

hehehe

 

Or unless you have an EV (Zenn, Xebra, Rav4EV, conversion car, Sparrow, etc.) burning electrons instead of gasoline.

 

Or unless you walk, take public transit, or bike in which case you burn calories.

Sorry, just had to get into the self-congratulation here.

 

Relatively good news - crude just took a 5% hit wiping out most of the last two days' gains. However, I've seen it fluctuate down and up more than 5% in a day before, so we'll have to see if this is finally the end of a dead-cat-bounce or just a brief blip before returning to insane inflation. I'm afraid my guess is on option b) based on the idea that it's rising due to investment banks pushing it as a hedge against general inflation. The irony being that high crude prices will be a major cause of general inflation.

Less good news - I filled up tonight at 98.9p/litre when I could have waited a couple of days. That's about $6.10 per US gallon using today's rates. (GBP is worth a bit more today relative to the dollar.)

The very high road fuel tax here insulates us a bit from market fluctuations - the market may be $25 up, 62.5%, on January's $40, but price at the pump back then was 84.9p/litre, and there's been a 2p increase in tax since then, so only (only!) a 14.1% rise.

This damping has two results. The first is that economically, there isn't such a vast change in outgoings when the crude price spikes. The other side of that, though, is that increased crude prices don't shock drivers into radically changing their behaviour. I think there should be a floor component and a proportional component to keep prices at a high level - to discourage overconsumption even with low oil prices, but to also react with the market.

 

Don't forget:

High demand, so higher cost
Low demand, so higher cost

Time to get out the bicycle.