Gasoline could drop 50 cents/gallon by spring

Doing impersonations of Casper the Friendly Ghost?

 

Refineries are running at 87% capacity lately. Gasoline inventories were actually above Feb. levels of recent years (see the OP). So they're keeping up, just passing along the high price of oil for the most part (generally with a lag of several weeks). A couple months ago oil was going for $90/barrel, now it's $105. That's 16%, gas prices by me have only gone up 10% in the same time frame. Add seasonal swings in demand and prices are pretty likely to continue to increase.

The Cobasys control of NiMH batteries that dogfriend pointed out also meant that those batteries couldn't be used for pure EVs, although they had been used for the RAV4-EV, EV-1 (updated model), and others I believe. So that set back the electric car movement considerably (along with CARB forced to give up the EV mandate). Otherwise we could much farther along with market penetration of cars ready for a post-oil economy.
If they were smart, they would be all for extending the present-oil economy by slowly mixing in post-oil components, but it looks like that won't happen.

 

Yes, I guess I was too obtuse, but I was pointing out that the prices can be manipulated and other options are have been purposely delayed. The oil companies are also trying to make sure they are the major traders in alternative energies.

The 6 year chart of gas prices vs. crude oil prices shows that they generally track each other with a short time lag. So we should expect that gas prices will continue to rise if history repeats.

 

The bottom line.

We're all bent over the proverbial barrel and the oil industry knows it. If gas costs $10/gl tomorrow the pumps would still be full of people crying and pumping. Pumping none the less. If no one bought gas for a month, sure the industry would lose, but they'd make it up on the back end and you'l get 1 or 2 days of $1 gas MAYBE and it'd shoot right back up where it was before and even higher. The only thing that keeps the industry from raising the price as high as they want is the fact that ALOT of us in these here States own guns. But that may be getting harder to do in the near future.

 

Gas Prices up, Production Down: $5.19 for Regular


"GORDA, Calif.- Gas prices in California are at an all-time high. The statewide average price for a gallon of regular is now 58 cents more per gallon, than the same time last year."

Up 60 cents.

HEY, WHERE'S MALORN!?

 

Changing his name to NROLAM?

 

Don't kid yourself. You think they're afraid of your guns? Wave that pea-shooter of yours at an oil executive and they'll drop a 500-pound bomb on your house.

He's under the bed, hiding from all those people who bought SUVs from him on his promise that gas would be 50 cents cheaper by now.

 

Actually in another thread, Malorn was arguing that Prius owners are destroying America because we bought a Toyota instead of a GM or Ford.

I pointed out that GM and Ford don't have any vehicles that can compete with the Prius w/r/t mpg or emissions.

I told him that he should go harass the Tundra and Titan owners instead because at least GM has some vehicles that can compete with the Tundra and Titan trucks.

I said that he should go away and come back when GM has a vehicle that can compete with the Prius.

Maybe he took me seriously. :hurt:

 

Not mine they're worried about, it's the collective. If prices go high enough to "actually" piss the people off and they're tired of telling the government to do something about it then something ugly would happen. It's the big bully giving you a little push every day, then you bark and they back off for a few days, then they push a little each day again. Eventually you get tired of getting pushed and push back. The erl industry doesn't want to get pushed back, they want to make money. Therefore they don't push all at once, just little at a time.

Funny how prices go up fast and down slow.

 

If by "pushing back" you mean riots, the government will come down with a steel boot on that.

I think what keeps the price rises gradual is not their fear of "collective" gun-waving, but their fear that people will start driving less, or driving smaller cars. And they know that the public memory is so short, and the public intellect is so weak, that if they raise the prices gradually, with a 50 cent drop every once in a while, people will accept the prices and keep driving. Just as climbers on Everest have to carefully calculate how high they will climb each day, and how low to come back down to sleep at night, to acclimatize themselves to the rarefied atmosphere, so too the oil industry carefully calculates how high to raise the prices, and then how low to let them fall, to acclimatize the public to the rarefied buying power of their dollars, as concerns gasoline. Done right, you can make it to the summit of Everest. Done right, the oil industry will have us paying $12 a gallon for gas, and relieved that the price has gone down from $12.50 the month before. And then $15... and $25... all the way to the... well, in the case of gas prices, there is no summit. It can keep going up forever.

 

I doubt it, people have been telling him that for years and he keeps coming back with the same old arguments. Guess GM's troubles give him a lot of time on his hands.

 

Gas prices near records, following oil

Hey Malooooorrrrrrnnn!!!

 

touche

 

Has anyone mentioned how gas has risen from around $1.40 when Bush went into office, and now it's more then doubled? And he and Dicky have ties to the oil companies? And that it seems more then a coincidence?

 

Jon Stewart mentioned it:

Jon Stewart Ponders Bush's Ignorance About $4 Gas - Business on The Huffington Post

 

If anyone cares to do a search. I predicted the slow rollercoaster increase in gas prices in....2004?

I predicted $4.00 this year and $5.00 by 2010. Although it looks like we might hit $5.00 earlier.

Big Oil did a study. It showed that people won't start to rebel until gas hits $5.00 on a regular basis. So that's their target.

 

I predicted it as well, on another car site I go to. Said once we crossed over the then unheard of $3 a gal, there would be no turning back. That the days of $2 a gal would never return, at least here in the states. Three years ago, I said it. I was ridiculed, for thinking that gas would ever get over $3 a gal without people being upset and foregoing their gas hogging behemoths. I wish I had been wrong.

 

My cousin mentioned it as well on his show last Friday.

 

Actually I posted this in another thread, but it applies here also.

Last Summer, political humorist Will Durst wrote a column that I think sums it up:

http://www.willdurst.com/DurstCaseSc...ksWorth06.html

(Bold added by me for extra emphasis)

 

Bull shit!!
You would not be able to prove a connection between gun ownership and the price of "gas".
I'll try to help you, here is a chart of "gas" prices around the world back in June 2007