Oil price jump wreak havoc?
 

Gonna make it tougher on some, but I do hope the repeated jumps into $4/gal (or more) territory will start waking up America in a way that the 'green movement' never did... through the pocket book!

...it works on teenagers, but I doubt it'll work on adults!

last time it happened i had no complaints for the first three months, but then my grease supplies started getting stolen as more and more people go veggie, which is a good thing as a whole bad for me haha

Only if the economy dips again because of some other reason.

High prices didn't really hamper the global economy in 2008 - it was booming, hence high demand and high prices.

At work, we're back to paying top $ for our oil-derived products.
That's good, as it drives the labor costs down into oblivion against the overall costs.

2008 destroyed my town haha It might not have hurt the global econ that much but here in the midwest by the end of summer everyone in the working class was totally broke because of 4.39/gal gasoline

Actually the economy was far from BOOMing. Much of our "sales" volume from that year that is supposedly how well we are doing was due to the sales of gasoline not of real goods.

$3.49 today, up $.35 since this morning...

isn't that price gouging?

Yes but most don't get hit by it, many stations around here raise prices 2 or 3 times a day even though it is illegal.

The whole oil pricing structure is about price gouging, only 1 or 2 entities outside the middle east fix the price, a couple of the banks that we bailed out are doing this activity of artificially constricting supply and expanding demand, especially in the east coast fuel oil market. As our demand plummetted drastically the oil prices lept up to over $4 a gallon all because of price fixing.

Its too bad we don't have the type of government officials that were around in the 40's to bust some of this garbage up.

Whlie we have more oil in storage than ever before our prices are also higher than ever. Nice

The people in charge now are in the pockets of these company's so nothing will change. I've never seen more than a 10 cent change in one day so 35 cents is awful

Well... I wouldn't call a 1 or 2% drop "drastic".

in the US that is a drop of 413,000 barrels of oil, that is a lot of oil

(that would be a 2% drop in oil consumption per day, I know not all oil goes into fuel but this was the easy number to find)

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r...cher/Fig15.gif

For '10 and projected... no minus signs for motor vehicle fuel at all...

Just like most of the GNP growth of the current "recovery" (the recession supposedly ended in June 2009) is due to inflation rather than growth in actual economic activity, hence the jobless "recovery".

And this is the 2nd jobless recovery.

I for one don't believe any of the stories about price gauging on the part of oil companies. I accept that price is set by "what the market will bear". But if I did believe in oil company price gauging I would do what most of us are already doing and reduce my demand for the product in question... fuel...
In Alberta [home of the tar sands...] we are being warned that there will be a price rise from $0.95/L to $1.50/L; a 58% price increase! For me that will amount to a $765/year increase in cost of fuel for driving, if I do nothing to improve fuel economy. However my plan for 2011 is to reduce my fleet fuel consumption by 30%. So If I succeed my cost of fuel for driving will only go up by $405/year. :cool: Is this socialist, capitalist or home economics? :confused:

The North American market cannot bear a price of 1.50$/L (5.7$/gallon) for fuel. Look no further than 2008 to see what happened.

Wheather the market can or can not bear a fuel price of $1.50/L, it may still happen. Price in the market place is a signal to all those who want/need a product to adjust however they can. Some can not adjust and will do without. Some like you and I have planed ahead and are in fact insulated from the 58% price rise by the cars we drive.

Quite honestly, I am trying to curb my oil dependence; even if the rising prices don't pose a serious financial burden, yet. We all know it will get worse and the sooner we act on it, the better off we'll be.

My spread sheet Plan is to be below 1000L/year of fuel for driving by the end of 2012 and below 700L/year by the end of 2013, and still drive 30000km/year. I doubt I'll make it that soon but I'm sure I'll make it to that level within the next 5 years. The end game is an ecomodded recumbent trike with a 50cc motor that gets better than 200mpg! which will get me to under 400L/year.

Yeah I think you'd really start seeing some modified behaviors at that cost (if not total market collapse again). It also means payback on new mods would be shorter!

What happened?

Seriously, what happened?

And why would that prevent prices from increasing?

There's so many factors in play right now it's difficult to predict just how high prices will go at the moment. The fear and uncertainty has a lot more impact than the actual disruption in production and delivery at this point. MarketWatch had a piece yesterday on one problem I hadn't considered; while the Saudi's have promised to make up for production shortfalls because of the Libyan oil production, Saudi oil is sour (high sulfur) and the European refineries are set up to handle sweet crude (low sulfur). Since Libya was a supplier of 1.9mbpd of sweet crude, the Saudi's contribution of up to 1.9mbpd of sour crude doesn't really solve anything. In fact, the European refineries are looking across the Atlantic to Texas light sweet crude rather than using the Saudi oil.

It's disconnects like that which will control and dominate this market for the foreseeable future... unless/until we get a black swan, like a revolution in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc.... which seems more likely than ever.

My hypermiling evolved out of a concern for times like these and the increasing pressures of peak oil. I just try to keep it in perspective. If I can keep my round trip commute to under one gallon and keep the number of days I need to commute to three most weeks, I'm on target to weather $10/gallon. Anything beyond this is just icing on the cake.

Local price for a litre of Diesel in Edinburgh this morning was £1.31.

Which is the same as $2.11 at today's conversion rate.

Which makes a US gallon (3.79 litres) equivalent price of $7.99.

The UK gallon (4.54 litres) price is £5.94 ($9.57).

We have been warned of a 3p (at least) a litre rise before the end of the coming week.

In rural areas some people are paying nearer £1.43 a litre.

Over here's we're about to beat the highest price I've ever paid for diesel in Belgium (1.299 euro/L - official price is already @ 1,3860 though).
I'll be filling up before the price hike on 1st March. ;)

Kind'a makes you look for ways to use less does'nt it. I wonder what Adam Smith would have us do? See chapters 4 through 10... W of N

who is Adam Smith and what is W of N? Sorry, I feel a little lost at the moment.

nevermind, I feel like an idiot now. :) looking to download it now.

Google Adam Smith then go to wikapedia and read the article. He is the grand father of economics.

Isn't inflation really really low? AFAIK the whole jobless recovery thing is due to employment likely being a lagging indicator on top of the recovery being very tepid.

But isn't 10 cents a gallon the price for gas in Iran?

So..... invading them wouldn't solve anything.... except to change that 10 cents to $4 a gallon, like here.

Maybe we should move to Iran??? Or at least do as they do.

And stop putting up with the higher ups trying to tell us what to do, how to live, how much they want us to pay, and who they want us to invade.

What did 2008 have to do with the price of gas? At most, the $4/gal spike might have triggered what would have happened anyway, thanks to an overheated market and housing bubble.

This time around, I can't see it doing more than setting off another round of complaints from the usual "but cheap gas is my Gawd-given right!" whiners, and maybe increase sales of Volts & Leafs - if they aren't already sold out months in advance of production.

Soaring gas prices will also have an impact on other goods such as clothing and food.

Thats just the start of it.

:D

Not all that much of an impact. It's a marginal increase in a cost that's a small fraction of most products, and that cost can easily be reduced by economy measures. We see the price of other commodities go up & down all the time, without much impact. Oil's no different.

And, as has been pointed out, the economies of Europe &c seem to be doing quite well with gas prices twice or more what they are in the US, while places with artificially low gas prices, such as Iran & Venezuela, survive only because their economies are propped up by oil exports.

You got to be joking, I hope...:rolleyes:

Oil is tied to almost every product we use.

Energy,food,clothing,packageing materials,electronics,building supplies,chemicals,etc,etc. The list goes on and on....

A 50% increase in the price of oil will most likely lead to a 15% increase in cost of consumer goods across the board. Since we are in a reccession, unemployment is high and workers that do have jobs are asked (forced) to take pay cuts, this then becomes a great burden to bear for most people.

The price of oil has a massive effect on the price of goods and services. It is a unseen tax that is handed down the line to the consumer by a very small group of people who profit handsomely.


>