$3.51 to $3.85 in one day, really!

[Pat Carry]

Ok this is insane. Gasoline here increased today from 3.51 to 3.85. In one day. Everything I have heard of late, oil has been going down in price. How is a 34 cent increase overnight possible?

[Cubs]

Because they can.

[JOHN MILLER]

greed

[JDK]

Current Australian average is A$1.30 per litre; with the A$ getting 96USc, it's near enough - so that's A$4.92 per US gallon, or US$ 5.16 per US gallon..

A quick look online shows the UK (who have their own oil industry, too) are paying 1.30 Stirling per litre, so funnily enough, it's 4.92 per US gallon, except I'm suddenly glad I'm not paying in pounds Stirling - 1 pound gets 1.57 US$ at the moment, so that'd be US$ 7.72 per US Gallon.

Regards,

[muddyboots]

Yeah but we have to drive more in America. We're all so fat we can't carry the weight on our legs...

[Cubs]

James,
Point taken about the cost per gallon. But, I think he's trying to say that it doesn't make sense for the overnight increase. It reminds me of the Far Side cartoon, with the two pilots of the airliner:
"Well folks, that looks like the end of the turbulence, oh... wait... I think there is some more...."
Then you see the two of them grinning and jiggling the yoke back and forth.

I can see the oil execs." Looks like a .05 cent a gallon increase tonight, oh... wait... no, it's a .35 cent a gallon increase. Yeah, yeah,.35 cents."

[JDK]

Yeah but we have to drive more in America. We're all so fat we can't carry the weight on our legs...

Well, I'm not going to throw stones - we live in the countryside and have to run two cars, though Mrs JDK's city commute is drive 8km (4 miles) to the station and V-Line train into Melbourne.

I've seen a lot of Americans walk a lot of miles at Oshkosh, so it can be done...

Every fuel price spikes gets more people to move to smarter, more fuel efficient cars (and the car companies) sooner rather than later. The general trend is that way, so if you want to beat the trend, make sure your next truck's a car with a smaller, more efficient engine. That'll be what happens, like it or not.

That said what's going to be hard for North America to wean off the car culture monopoly (currently impossible, I'd say) is that you can't walk anywhere - it's kind of funny watching Europeans and Aussies trying to walk from one shop to another in boxstorehell in N America, rather than using a three litre plus engine to drive a 1/8 of a mile.

When we're in a city in Europe or Australasia, we walk or take public transport for most of the journey; often just not possible in a lot on American cities, let alone suburbia.

Going to be interesting in 20 years...

Point taken about the cost per gallon. But, I think he's trying to say that it doesn't make sense for the overnight increase. It reminds me of the Far Side cartoon, with the two pilots of the airliner:
"Well folks, that looks like the end of the turbulence, oh... wait... I think there is some more...."
Then you see the two of them grinning and jiggling the yoke back and forth.

I can see the oil execs." Looks like a .05 cent a gallon increase tonight, oh... wait... no, it's a .35 cent a gallon increase. Yeah, yeah,.35 cents."

I'll still take your high rather than our low!

The key is actually habituation - people complain about the unusual, not the fact that it's set at what the market will (currently) bear.

How would you feel if gas went up every weekend?

When we got to Australia we discovered the petrol stations push the price up each weekend, so you get to learn to be buying petrol on Tuesday, rather than Saturday... Aussies regard this as 'normal', but it's a weekly example of what this thread started at. Anything becomes normal if it's the main thing you're used to (the interesting element is most Australians are more internationally aware and travelled than most Americans, yet the petrol price trick isn't noticed...)

We all bitch about gas/petol prices; but they're set at what the market will stand and will always be creeping up from hereon in - sometimes they'll do more than creep and there are more likely than not to be price spikes in our future than not, now. It's a finite resource we've been using at a higher rate than it's been created.

What's the bottom line? Well, ignore the noise. Petroleum companies are about shareholder return and profit - that's the deal; calling it 'greed' is just another word for what they're built to do. Does it matter? Not really. The critical lesson I've seen on my travels is everyone bitches about the price of car fuel, but no-one's economy's collapsed because of pump prices. How can each of us stop being gouged? Get a smaller vehicle with a smaller, smarter engine; there's more options now than there's ever been and they'll increase; and figure ways not to be using the stuff like water*.

Just a few thoughts,

*That's how 'most people' use water, because you wouldn't want to be so tight with water as we have to be here...

[Pat Carry]

Hold the phone. The price hit 4.15 a gallon here today. Thats up 64 cents a gallon in a week!

[JDK]

I'll still take it!

But seriously Pat, presumably that kind of rise is a news item? What the press saying?

Here every time there's a spike, there's a load of wail and threats that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will 'look into it'; and nothing happens of course... Do you have an equivalent for gas?

(Of course as we are here because we'd define nicely as addicts to obsolete high-cost high-volume fuel burners, we really can't complain if we aren't funding the aircraft!)

[Pat Carry]

It is being blamed on the shut down of a leaking pipeline. I dont care what they are saying is the cause, a 64 cent increase in a week is just plain greed and a chance to gouge the public. The oil companies in the US should get ZERO tax breaks or incentives, whatever it is called these days.

[davidbray]

It is being blamed on the shut down of a leaking pipeline. I dont care what they are saying is the cause, a 64 cent increase in a week is just plain greed and a chance to gouge the public. The oil companies in the US should get ZERO tax breaks or incentives, whatever it is called these days.

Come west a few miles Pat, we're only at 3.97... okay someone slap me please I just said "only 3.97."

[cooper9411]

Our government regulates everything else why not this? They say that doing away with oil companies tax breaks would cause it to go even higher.

[Tombstoner139]

Our government regulates everything else why not this? They say that doing away with oil companies tax breaks would cause it to go even higher.

The subsidy loss will be passed on to the consumer.

What i don't understand is why the focus on gas. doses this look ok with you.

[muddyboots]

Price.....Country.............Pain Rank
$10.12...Norway......................#52
$9.41....Turkey........................#7
$9.28....Israel..........................#31
$8.61....Hong Kong.................#35
$8.26....Netherlands...............#41
$8.20....Denmark...................#47
$8.15....Italy............................#34
$8.14....Sweden......................#48
$7.92....Greece.......................#26
$7.87....United Kingdom.........#37
$7.79....France.......................#39
$7.77....Belgium.....................#42
$7.74....Germany....................#40
$7.72....Portugal.....................#23
$7.66....Switzerland................#53
$7.59....Finland.......................#45
$7.34....Ireland........................#44
$7.15....Japan.........................#46
$7.12....South Korea..............#30
$6.93....Slovakia.....................#21
$6.92....Brazil..........................#13
$6.79....Hungary.....................#15
$6.60....Malta..........................#27
$6.57....Slovenia.....................#32
$6.55....New Zealand............#43
$6.49....Austria.......................#49
$6.47....Spain.........................#36
$6.46....Czech Republic.........#25
$6.41....Australia.....................#54
$6.38....Luxembourg..............#56
$6.32....Lithuania....................#18
$6.15....Poland.......................#19
$6.13....Chile...........................#22
$6.12....Bulgaria......................#6
$6.08....Latvia.........................#17
$6.08....Singapore...................#50
$5.96....Colombia....................#10
$5.86....Cyprus.......................#38
$5.82....Argentina....................#16
$5.80....Estonia......................#24
$5.71....Romania....................#11
$5.46....Canada......................#51
$5.44....India...........................#1
$5.30....South Africa...............#12
$4.89....China..........................#8
$4.51....Thailand.....................#9
$4.42....Philippines.................#3
$3.85....Indonesia...................#5
$3.75....Russia.......................#33
$3.75....United States.............#55
$3.55....Pakistan.......................#2
$3.24....Mexico........................#29
$3.23....Malaysia.....................#28
$2.80....Iran.............................#20
$2.32....Nigeria........................#4
$1.89....United Arab Emirates..#57
$1.73....Egypt..........................#14
$0.89....Kuwait........................#59
$0.61....Saudi Arabia..............#58
$0.09....Venezuela..................#60

[The Inspector]

Here's a large part of the root cause for escalating gasoline prices, you may read this and think 'Horse poop' but we need to get into the 'way back machine' to the late 1950's/early 1960's. As bigger oil companies started to make some excess money, they started buying or leveraging out smaller independent oil producers, who here remembers HUDSON OIL, FLYING 'A', RICHFIELD??

As those oil companies grew bigger and acquired more small producers they systematically closed and disassembled those companies refineries and let the permits expire, thereby reducing capacity to process crude into refined product, and with more convoluted environmental restrictions coming into being, those very relaxed requirements of envionment protections wouldn't be available ever again and the new regulations would be 'prohibitively expensive' to follow.

When the Government finally woke up from it's slumber in the mid to late 1970's, and realized what the big oil people were doing, they attempted to rectify the situation by offering to the oil producers for free, surplus military land from closed bases including seriously relaxed environmental rules and huge tax breaks if they would build more refining capacity on that land, the response from big oil was essentially 'now why in hell would we ever want to do that?' Because they knew they had everyone by the short and curlies with a pair of vise grips and they weren't about to relax that stranglehold on supply or processing. This is around the time point where Big Oil started buying Senators and Congresspersons to do exactly what they said needed doing and nothing else.

Here in Washington we JUST got our refinery @ Cherry Point North of me back on line after a fire that happened 6 months ago, and our gasoline prices were just starting to drop, though still higher than anywhere else in the U.S. outside of Alaska and Hawai'i just in time for this fire in California which again gave the oil companies free reign to put the clamps to the average guy or gal yet again.

The same basic technique is used to control the price you pay @ the supermarket, on your way to do grocery shopping there's a news report on the car radio of a freeze in Florida and the orange crop might be effected. You get to the store and the oranges that are already there (harvested weeks ago) are now astronomically expensive just because 'they can' and they know you can't do anything about it.