If you think that gas prices are high at over $3.50 per gallon (I just paid $3.95 for mid-grade for my wife’s Acura TSX), wait until summer. There are reports that the refineries are absorbing the cost of high oil prices right now (and some of them have hedging contracts in place to mitigate this high price), but within a few months they’ll be passing this burden on to the consumers. Oil prices at the pump could very well hit $5 and if this trend continues, it could hit $8/gallon.
Due of course to the outrageous oil costs, which are more than double what it was going for this time last year.
Oil recently hit an all-time high of nearly $120 a barrel, more than double its early 2007 price of about $50 a barrel. It closed Friday at $118.52.
The forecasts calling for a jump to between $7 and $10 a gallon are based on the view that the price of crude is on its way to $200 in two to three years.
Translating this price into dollars and cents at the gas pump, one of our forecasters, the chairman of Houston-based Dune Energy, Alan Gaines, sees gas rising to $7-$8 a gallon. The other, a commodities tracker at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Fla., Sean Brodrick, projects a range of $8 to $10 a gallon.
Of course, that’s what they’re paying now in Europe. Fortunately for many Europeans, the choice of easy public transportation is available as well, unlike much of our country.
No Trackbacks To “$8 a gallon gasoline? Don’t scoff, it may be coming sooner than you think.“
So this is what they meant when they said the Iraq war would be paid for by the increased oil revenues.
The Golden Screw is always imminent.
Anyone wanna buy a used Hummer?
/snark
Those high prices in Europe also pay for health care, etc.
Could be the straw that sends the US to 3rd World nation status or could push innovation to get us off the petro teat. Certainly will be an interesting next few years.
It’s called conditioning people to servitude.
Y’know, this is going to send your typical Dubya-loving, NASCAR nation type through the roof. We need to hand the moron and his whole party around McCain’s neck from here on in.
Barbara Key @ 4:
Not to mention that the income is far more evenly distributed among people, and that about half the gasoline price is taxes, that go to all sorts of public benefits, including roads and pblic healthcare, yup.
its NOK 12,50-12,80 here now though, so about 9 USD a gallon, though we have maybe double your income, so the conversion is not entirely simple.
We are currently paying over 5$ a gallon for gas. Good thing they sell it by the liter here. I guess my lack of a working car is actually a blessing these days. Not like I’d be able to afford to drive it if it was working any way.
So long as people are willing to pay $8, they will be happy to sell at that price. $8 gas could be the best thing to happen to the enviroment in ages
MargeAggedon @ 9:
Soon enough they’ll be selling it by the quart here in the US.
2.00 a quart doesn’t sound so bad, does it?
That’s it, I am riding my bicycle.
Well it’s time to break out the bicycles. Thankfully my business is only a twenty minute ride from home and I could use the exercise.
I live in NoCal, where half the vehicles on the road are pick-up trucks.
I blame them for this mess. They drive up demand, then they complain.
Stupid fucking idiots.
If you own airline stocks sell quick.
The airlines are going to get hammered.
If you own a cottage sell quick.
That market will tank.
Public transportation in the U.S. is a nightmare - where it exits at all.
People should google a story I read about a French inventor who is test marketing a car he created
that runs on compressed air. It has good mileage. It is easy to fill up. It works.
Nobody in or out of the environmental movement cares anything about it.
http://www.gizmag.com/compress.....2010/8896/
We need an energy revolution in this country. Enough of this control by the oil industries. They’ve screwed us out of public transportation developments, fuel efficiency standards, and tax money that could have gone to researching alternatives. I hope we take this seriously. Oil needs to be used as little as possible.
No. 44 @ 14:
If they are anything like those here in CO there is usually one driver, the truck is “lifted”, they’ve punched holes in the exhaust system, drive too fast and have a decal of Calvin pissing on something. Morons.
This sucks and I know it’s driving up the price on everything, but I still enjoy a little schadenfreude at the expense of the Southern states, the vast majority of whom never saw fit to create adaquate public transit systems in and around their major metro areas. I remember living in NC and VA and hearing on several occasions how much the ‘local folk’ looked down on public transporation! Well, Cletus and Nadine, when gas goes to $8.00, ya’ll gonna be wishing you could take the bus to that NASCAR race, because now y’all can’t afford to juice up the old pick-up truck! Yeeee-haaaaw! Maybe you can just blame it all on the gays, like y’all do everything else that’s wrong in America!
Diesel fuel produced here in the U.S. is being shipped to Mexico, where it costs $2.00 per gallon, and yet it costs $4.00 per gallon and up, plus, here in the good ol’ U.S.A.
Last January U.S. refineries shipped over 41 million gallons of diesel to Mexico. So the diesel fuel was refined in the United States, and shipped all the way to Mexico, and yet it sells for half ($2.00/per gal.) of what it does here.
It really bothers me that we can have an article about the high price of gas in Europe and “scandalous” taxes they have on gas without mentioning that in some of these countries the gas tax pays for their FREE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, HELLOOOOOOO!
There is no equivalence here. $8 gas in the US would come with no healthcare.
If you think this will only affect the cost of driving you’re being pretty short sighted. We do a lot of our farming with a minimum of petroleum inputs but our neighbors are still hooked into petroleum based agriculture. Consider the cost of tractor hours, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and the number of miles that have to be traveled in rural America as you imagine the increase in your food bill.
If this comes to pass, things could get very, very dicey for the overwhelming majority of citizens in this country.
Harry Reid and Bernie Sanders both identified one of the major culprits. In separate radio interviews, both of them pointed out that speculators can buy oil on 7% margin, compared to 50% on stocks. We are experiencing an oil bubble, as strange as that may seem.
Oh! If we’d only listened years ago to environmentalists who advocated raising the gas taxes to dissuade excess consumption and finance public mass transit.
But of course we’re ‘merkins who hate taxes and would prefer to drive our own cars ..
Even if that road goes off an economic cliff ..
Clinton. (Oil Per Barrel) 1998 11.61
I think it’s time to start campaigning for an “obscene profits” tax. Say, raise the corporate tax rate to 50% for ever dollar over a certain amount in profits. How about a billion?
And can we please stop subsidizing these assholes and giving them tax breaks?
Old Billy Hussein @ 23:
We’re all Grandma Millies now.
goat hussein sage @ 18:
I’m in San Francisco. We’re well above $4 per gallon already, for the low-grade gas.
Our streets are narrow, but people keep buying SUVs. They take up the whole damned street sometimes, are often filled with just one person, and make it hard to see around corners when they park. And their drivers jam themselves into compact parking spaces, taking up two or three of them.
On the upside, I see all sorts of people buying little Smart Cars, hybrids and other smaller models on the roads these days too.
you can be sure that when and if gas hits $8/gal
our politicians will still be debating what to do,
they will still not have pushed for alternative energy
and they will still bitch that the change is not possible.
Cap’n Phealy @ 26:
This stuff is unregulated. Thats the biggest reason we’re seeing these run ups.
Ralthhing @ 16:
I want one!
“Grandma Millies”. You’ve got that right. I know where that one comes from and that’s EXACTLY what’s going here.
How about we remind the Republicans that the ol’ peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter created a huge amount of funding for research into alternative energy sources. All that research and funding were tossed out the window within 6 months of Ronnie Raygun taking over the WH. It boggles the mind to think where we might be if that work had been allowed to bear fruit. Instead we are getting to deal with this mess.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
No. 44 @ 14:
seems you are in the same boat with the pickup trucks,
they are not forcing you to drive……now are they?
Old Billy Hussein @ 31:
Americans aren’t going to give up cars easily thats for sure.
I suppose an attack on Iran could be pitched as. . . gas will go back to $1.63 a gal when we’re victorious and get a Pro American Regime installed there.
L.A. Confidential @ 20:
Oil jumps over $123 on drop in diesel, heating oil supplies.
Follow the Diesel! What a freaking scam.
Look on the bright side: our cars will last over 20 years because we won’t be driving them anymore.
Let it go to $20 a gallon. I will happily drive an electric car and laugh at everyone at the gas station.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday unveiled a new energy package that would revoke $17 billion in tax breaks extended to big oil companies like Exxon Mobil Corp and slap a 25 percent windfall profits tax on firms that don’t invest in new energy sources.
The Consumer-First Energy Act — assembled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other key Democrats — would also stop the Energy Department from filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve until crude oil prices average $75 a barrel or less for 90 days.
The bill would have to pass the Senate and be approved by the U.S. House of Representatives and White House before becoming law.
Oh yeah bet Bush is going sign that in a jiffy!
Karen @ 28:
Americans need to sell their SUVs and mega-pickups. Unless people are hauling steel, logs, picking up containers at the port, or hauling heavy machinery, these vehicles are WAY oversized and ridiculously inefficient. And if gas does go to 8$ a gallon, these land barges aren’t going to be selling very quickly.
We’ve been paying around $5 a US gallon here in Ontario for awhile now - they sell it by the litre (roughly 35 oz) and it’s around $1.22 - $1.29 a litre.
And the funny thing is, Canada is the number three oil-producing country according to a recent documentary I watched.
Time for hydrogen I guess.
No. 44 @ 14:
Good point which none of the candidates and current pretender to the throne take on. Economics 101 says you need to play with supply as well as demand, the former being the only thing talked and acted on these days. There needs to be serious infrastructure and lifestyle adjustments made away from individual gasoline powered transportation. Sorry General Motors.
OPEC to earn more than $1 trillion
May 07
Because of ever increasing fuel costs, the AMTRAK Downeaster between Bostoin and Maine requires a subsidy. The federal subsidy is being axed by the moron in Chief and his band of thieves so it’s up to Maine to do it. This evening a Maine legislator, squinty little pig eyes glinting with greed said the familiar, “”We can’t afford everything.” and I knew they’d found another half witted Republican to interview.
Of course, they’re going to spend 140 mil on the states share of road maintenance, BUT 8-10 mil to keep a whole bunch of cars off the road is too much. I wonder if these people are capable of thought beyond the fatness of their wallets.
yellow dog @ 45:
Nope. They think everyone is rich like them here in the Homeland and can’t figure out why everyone is complaining.
Watching a Hummer driver spend $130 on a tank of gas last Wednesday was the highlight of my week.
I was reading an article about this about a week ago
and it said gas could possibly rise to $10 a gallon within
the next 3 years.
What is it about these rich fucks that think they’re
going to be able to take their oil profits with them
when they die? When is it enough for these cretins?
Just how much fucking money does a person need?
When is billions and billions going to be enough for
these grubbing pigs?
Healthcare specifically paid out of gas taxes is a myth. I would know, I’m Euro-trash. Mostly, healthcare isn’t free, but of course a hell of a lot cheaper. Paid from (high) income taxes, by employers/employee programs and such. Biggest chunk of gas taxes goes to infrastructure, public transportation, etc.
Let it be settled now.
*biking my way to retirement*
[Deleted. Off topic-Sitemonitor]
Chuck U @ 47:
Wouldn’t be surprised if the hummer driver was thinking. “Look at me. I just spent $130 bucks for gas and I could care less! Get a job losers!”