Gas!!!

sucks2beme

Under $2 a gallon all over down here.
I saw $1.94.9 last night.

tonyb

Cool man, fill 'er up and roll some coal...lol !!

Anything that allows me to retain more spendable income is a welcome sight.

gce

We're only down to $2.75.9 here in SoCal. but still a lot better then where it was.

polrbehr

About effing time.
We're still over $2.50 here, according to LIGRA (Long Island Gasoline Retailers Assn.) it's because NY has some of the highest taxes on gas in the country. Sounds about right to me...

Any NJ people wanna throw rocks across the river, go right ahead. : )

deronb1

Filled up at $2.05 gal today.

tonyb

I wonder if people understand the bigger lesson to be learned here with falling gas prices.

Competition creates lower prices.

Opec is keeping prices low to force investors to flee the fracking industry. It's that old supply/demand thing. Flood the market with more supply than the demand and prices come down. Create competition, prices come down. Give people a variety of choices for their energy needs, prices will come down. Economics 101 really, and you'd think some of these Ivy league boneheads would get that.

Mikey081057

As I recall the predominant theory among Ivy League Boneheads (ILB's) was to raise taxes on petro to drive the price up and consumption down and that that would be better for us... forcing us to more expensive green sources of energy.

Looks like the ILB's STB again.

tonyb

Same with taxes on cigarettes. Remember when the sales pitch was if more people quit smoking healthcare costs would come down ? I think it's pretty safe to say we've seen a good 30% decrease in smokers, if not more. Any of you seen your HC costs come down as a result ?

It's all B.S., anytime you start injecting agendas into economics, prices go up. Which means you have less disposable income. Don't know about anyone else, but for me the more money I can keep in my pocket, the better off I am.

boston1450

2.56 up here in Maine. Like it

cnh

All I have to say is OPEC is going to LOSE this one! Mark my words!

2.56 that's about 20 cents lower than ours, Randy and you're not even an hour away!

Unfortunately we HEAT with oil so yeah, it's great prices are lower but that's still over $4000 a year in waste as far as I'm concerned. When I first bought a house in 2000 heating oil up here was 99 cents a gallon. lol

Oy(l) vey!

By the way boys and girls. The MAJORITY of Economics Professors are apologists for the way things ARE, i.e., competition, supply and demand, supply side and the like. It is RARE to find an actual Ph.D. in Economics who hasn't swallowed the Market Happy Pill (which, strangely enough is the BLUE pill in the Matrix?) while Rome burns. Like Nero, they love their fiddles. A Radical Economist is almost an oxymoron. lol

cnh

mhardy6647

I think Mrs. H said she paid 2.56 & 9/10 in Warner NH (on I-89, cheapest gas for miles around) on Wednesday. On Thursday it was 2 cents less.

Our son came up from VA yesterday -- we asked him how much gas was on the NJ TPK and he said he thought it was about 2.50. He usually stops at "the Vince" -- i.e., the Vince Lombardi rest area, near the GW bridge -- for gas, but I guess he didn't need any yesterday as he rolled through the Garden State.

WastelandWand'r

6.79

kevhed72

No Saudi - USA alliance here to stick it to Russia?
the supply/demand theory, or law, only accounts for about half of the volatility in oil prices anyways...

gudnoyez

Wow will have to start checking prices, its usually $25 bucks at a time so I don't usually check prices. I will put $25 in the truck tomorrow and see if the fuel guage moves past the usual 1/2 tank mark.

boston1450

WastelandWand'r wrote: »

6.79

Where is this ? Canada..... My Dodge took 140.00 @ 3.90 a gallon a couple of years ago. I about **** myself

Jstas

I'll be happy when Lightning fuel drops below $2 a gallon.

txcoastal1

la2vegas wrote: »

When the price of crude rose to $80 a barrel, the fracking industry took off. As the price surpassed $100 more and more money was pumped in for research and production.
Now that crude has fallen below $50 a barrel I'm curious to see if oil production in North America will decrease drastically. The towel heads have deep pockets and can absorb this downturn in the market.

It will decrease, and that's the bad part. As I live in a "Big Oil" state. It's a double edged sword. When oil slows, so does the economy. Since we have lost most of the industrialization here in the U.S., oil is one we can rely on here in the U.S. when prices are up.

Tho most hate "Big Oil" it is an engine of trickle down economics. It effects restaurants, housing, retail etc. through the oil belts and then starts to feed the overseas economies again.

There is always a "Catch-22" when items go cheap. Same as the Wal-Mart effect.

Dennis Gardner

I like the low prices personally, but 3 of my 5 eggs are currently employed in the O&G industry and they are nervous for sure.

Mike Reeter

Jstas wrote: »

I'll be happy when Lightning fuel drops below $2 a gallon.

We burn 93% also, was down to $2.19 here today, Reg. is $1.99 Mucho better!

BlueFox

I wonder how much longer before prices turn the corner, and start climbing again.

txcoastal1

The strangest thing is we usually never see dips during holiday travel season.

It is way to cool down many things political i.e. Keystone, Russia, even the U.S. etc

sucks2beme

The price of oil was high because big $$$ guys were
controlling the market. When they lost control, the price
plunged. This is a cycle that will repeat. We've seen it in other
commodities. I can only hope a bunch of these guys lost
their @sseses and it slows down the next wave.

[Deleted User]

The petro industry is the backbone of the economy. Just sit and think about it... There was a bust several decades ago.

Fast forward about a decade ago. Petro began to really take off again. During those several years that followed, patterns of spikes became very apparent.

- anything middle east spiked petro prices, anything.. then it died down, we need somthing new...
- any hurricane that approached the States.. spike again. This one lasted for many years.... then it died down
- a worker or two were sick (gulf coast). spiked again.. This one lasted for some time.. then it died down
- we need to upgrade our equipment. spiked again... this one last shorty, then died down

There are so many other things that contributed to the rise in petro. Statistics that show global warming, to "we will run out of natural resources" based on the Chinese growth. blah blah blah. Now they blame it on the Chinese.

Think.. Take some time, research and think... That is all that I ask. If you have problems researching, let me know.. I will help.


Let me use an example. What States experienced overnight billionaires? I could name a few in OKC alone. Devon anyone?

Petro prices do not incite fear in me. The sun will always shine, the wind will always come and the rivers will always stream... always.. Natural resources people. It will be unlimited and always long after we are gone..

Halen

BlueFox

Good post. As sure as the sun rises in the East, the price of gas will rise again. And all the people with short memories who just bought a gas guzzler will start complaining again.

TNHNDYMAN

If anyone thinks it's going to stay around 2.50 a gallon for long, then they are kidding themselves. Yes OPEC is trying to hurt the Russian oil industry as well as our own, but they can't keep absorbing these costs long term. I expect oil to be back in the 85-90 a barrel range by late January with us paying average of 3.00/gal soon. This would still allow our oil production to be profitable and still not gouge us too bad.

WastelandWand'r

6.79?
Unfortunately, that is here in Kotzebue in the oil rich state of Alaska.
We only have 8 miles of dirt road in a nice picturesque loop around town so our mileage is limited. Amazing how many times you can drive it to maintain your sanity, well at least hold off or slow down the erosion of it.
My boat has a 42 gallon tank, plus I try and carry another 20 gallons in jugs. Eye watering on the fill up!! A small price to pay to live in Paradise.
Nathan

tonyb

BlueFox wrote: »

Good post. As sure as the sun rises in the East, the price of gas will rise again. And all the people with short memories who just bought a gas guzzler will start complaining again.

Yep...true that be. However it doesn't need to cost what it did and oil companies are still making good coin at 2 bucks a gallon.

....and the people who complain ? Well, they spend just as much per gallon if not more on bottled tap water that's available for free.

treitz3

tonyb wrote: »

However it doesn't need to cost what it did and oil companies are still making good coin at 2 bucks a gallon.

Funny you should mention that, Tony. I *personally* find it funny that folks are talking about cheap gas. Before Katrina, $2 a gallon was a ripoff (at least down here) and that had been mostly the case for decades. I simply can not fathom 'till this day how one hurricane can justify a $1-$3 spike in gas for close to a decade. Keep in mind, I'm no oil man, no gas guru or someone who is a G&O watchdog. I'm simply the guy who lives down South using a little bit of common sense.

To me, gas prices are reaching where they should have been years ago. That's just my two cents.

Tom

mhardy6647

Another way to think about gas prices. I started driving in 1974. In Baltimore in 1974, regular gas was about 60 cents per gallon (inclusive, of course, of all taxes). Based on inflation, as measured by the CPI, 60 cents per gallon in 1974 would translate to $2.87 per gallon in 2014. This isn't accurate, of course, for a couple of reasons -- one being, of course, that energy costs don't figure into most indices of inflation (including, I believe, the CPI)... the other nonlinear factor (so to speak) is any change in taxes applied to gasoline in the intervening 40 years (I believe there have been some).

Generally speaking, gas prices, I believe, have lagged inflation. Health care and higher education costs, e.g., have not.

tonyb

Agreed on most accounts gents, there's simply more to gas prices than meets the eye. Regulations vary from state to state too so having to make gas 10 different ways adds to costs. Perfect example was Katrina....getting gas was easy, getting gas from other states that met the hurricane ravaged states requirements wasn't. Then you have refinery capabilities. Which I'm not aware of any new ones in a very long time.

This does not need to be.

Also, it's the oil companies made out to be the boogey man at every turn. They make roughly 7% profit on a gallon of gas. The taxes you pay to state/fed/county, they make more than the oil companies.

.....but gasoline is not the only by-product of oil either so the oil companies make lots of dough in other by-products too. You'd be surprised at what oil goes into....shocked even.

as far as lagging inflation....hard to tell as it's a market based commodity with swings. Tell ya whats more lagging as far as inflation goes.....wages. Inflation isn't necessarily a bad thing, provided everything is equal, which it isn't. When you start messing around with purposely suppressing inflation, or inflating it, everything gets thrown out of whack.

Dennis Gardner

I think that since you don't want to let yourself get too spoiled by the low prices of fuel, you should all take $1 for every gallon of fuel that you purchase and allocate the savings to the other G.A.S. account that we all wish had more $$$ in.

Who knows, if this low pricing holds out for a few months, we all could have a few new pieces in our listening rooms and once the pricing rises, who cares if we can't afford to drive, we can just enjoy the good sounds.