Record High Gas Prices?
 

I was just wondering I anyone has been seeing any record gas prices in your area? Pittsburgh is at $3.19/gal that is 2 cents short of the record high hurricane Katrina spike in 2005 of $3.21 (it only lasted a few days).

Just about everyone will be seeing records this summer it is just a matter of time.

I know darin told me he just spent the most ever for gas, *shrug*

I filled up about 2 hours ago, and 3.19 was the gas price, but I got it at Buy Low and my mom works there. She found and got 5 coupons off 15 gallons of gas and I ended up saving 65 cents per gallon, making the gas price like $2.56 a gallon.

So basically I've figured it out, go there to buy stuff, save more money on gas, and pay significantly less for gas than I would normally. It's a brilliant plan :thumbup:

I am usually pretty conservative with my gas price forecasts. Here it goes:

USA average will be consistently in the $3.40 to $3.60 range from May to September. Possible near $4.00 spike (that won't last too long). Oil will continue to be $100+ a barrel.

I cant predict 2009, but it doesn't look good. I don't know if the election will keep gas prices artificially low this summer either (it may be a possibility).

The price in Regina SK this weekend was $1.139 a litre ($4.328 a gallon), still a ways away from our record of $1.279 a litre ($4.860 a gallon) last summer. More incentive to ditch my cars and live car-free soon! :) I filled my tank 7.459 gallons today for $32.

Let's see... 23 gallon fuel tank in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. That would be a $99 fill for a vehicle like that, yikes!

A fair few Canadian drivers I've spoken to lately are mentally preparing themselves for $1.50 - $2.00 a litre ($5.70 - $7.60 a gallon) gas this summer. We're sure optimistic aren't we?

The recent spike, for the US, is a result of a refinery explosion about a week ago - that on top of the normal cycles of bad oil news etc. I believe the explosion was Feb 18.

$3.15 Gas $3.70 Diesel

on the drive in today - Atlanta was $3.05 for Regular

Prices jumping a dime today, from $3.39 to $3.49. Decided they're only going to go up for a while (but I could be wrong) so filled up car, pickup, and a few gas cans. Spent $140. :( Good thing I won $40 at the casino! :)

free money! free lunch! diesel is at 3.899 here :mad:

HA! I found out that a local bar serves $1 hamburgers on Wednesdays too!

Two for me, one for the G.F., tax and tip comes to $4.21 and all the popcorn one can stand. :thumbup:

I had an 8 cent/gallon coupon too.

I was just looking at Gasbuddy.com and I see a definite trend up, so I doubt I'll be stuck with more expensive gas in the vehicles than will be available in the next month or so.

Yesterday's prices in Warsaw:
$6.39-$6.63 for 95 octane gas
$6.50-$7.04 for 98 octane gas
$5.99-$6.63 for diesel
$3.30-$3.57 for LPG

Is the typical wage in Warsaw more than $8-$20/hour?

The average wage in Warsaw is $7-$10/hour, which is at least 30% more than the rest of Poland. Gas prices are only 5%-10% higher in Warsaw (and other large cities) than in rural areas.

Whoa- if that's U.S.$, you guys really have an energy premium of the sort we've never even tasted.

Official diesel price : 7.42 USD / gal - bound to go up on friday and on monday.
Regular petrol : 8.35 USD / gal - bound to go up on monday and tuesday.

Interesting how that 2008 thread petered out before prices spiked in July. Also interesting how it segues seamlessly into 2011's escalating prices. I paid $4.65/gallon in July 2008 in Colorado. Yesterday I paid $3.65/gallon. If I'd visited the casino beforehand, it would have cost me well over $5/gallon.

Gambling is a tax for people who don't understand math ;).

3.75 for regular 4.00 for diesel here. I figure even at 5 a gallon my fuel costs are still about 10 cents per mile.

Fuel taxes. That's the reason my government doesn't even try to improve fuel economy. In fact, it's doing its best to increase fuel consumption:
While the rest of Europe is lowering speed limits on highways to 120km/h (Spain recently lowered to 110km/h), Poland increased the speed limit on highways (130 to 140km/h) and expressways (110 to 120km/h).
But wait, that's not all! The same new law states that the error margin of police radars is 10km/h, so anyone can go that much faster without getting a ticket. In other words, 150km/h on the highway, instead of Europe's 120.

:thumbup: Gotta add that to my repertoire.

minimum price in Toulouse, France in $/g (converted from € at 1.3949$/€) and number of minutes of work (at French minimum salary - 12.555$/h) for 1 gallon :
Denis.

$9+ us gal. today here in blighty (£1.32 for Diesel, £1.52+ in the highlands for a litre)

So glad I use one tank per month (£70 last fill up) and anything above that is usually on company business.

It has hit our company though. We do on-site maintenance for 1000+ sites in Scotland some of them quite remote and each visit is being double-triple checked for software fixes (remote access from Edinburgh) before we send an engineer.

And they drive 45MPG+ 1.4 HDi vans.

9$ holy cow! Americans officially have no right complaining about 4$/gal

I filled up on Tuesday for $3.459/gal. That's not too bad compared to Europe.

The hell we don't...!!!

Most of what they pay is tax.:eek:

And if some of our elected officials here have it their way, they'll stick it in our ass too, just like our friends across the pond got stuck.:mad:

>

We really don't have a right to complain. It's a finite resource and our consumption rate is astronomical, thus leading to a supply crisis at some point. Sure there are "artificial" manipulations of supply and price along the way, but sooner or later the piper must be paid. If you have designed your life around using lots of fuel and using it inefficiently, you had better not let out a peep about fuel prices. Another favorite pastime for fuel price whiners is to project the blame onto anyone but themselves: govt, oil companies, speculators, etc.. The bottom line is if you sit around and wait for science or govt or whatever to bring back 99 cent gas, you are wasting your time. Only you can take control of your fuel expenditures.

Frank -

The sad part is that if we had artificially high gas prices, then we would have more small fuel-efficient cars to choose from. The Japanese didn't storm into the USA with ground-up car designs to solve our gas crisis problems in the 1970's, they just sold us what they were already building.

CarloSW2

...give me another 1984 Honda Civic CVCC 1.6L getting 40-42 mpg (with A/C) please!

Or Generation one Insight/CRX. :rolleyes:

I read somewhere about a bill a couple years back they attempted to put a cap on gasoline and diesel at 2.50/gal The main argument that shot it down was prices will never get that high. Though now that i am posting this i can't find the info anywhere

still rationing fuel for non commercial uses might work out amazing in the long run

If you REALLY want to have fun with taxes, take up smoking as a hobby.

Or own a house, or pay utilities, or have an income, or have a phone, or....

Yeah, plenty of taxes there too, Frank. But in the case of cigarettes, the taxes are far above the price of the product- not so with your examples.

True, but even someone who lives in a passive house and rides a bike will feel the higher oil prices through more expensive food and services. Oil is in every single part of our (global) economy, from fertilzers, to transport, to heating, to plastics production. You'd have to have your own self-sufficient farm and make your own stuff, ie be 100% independent, to not really care.

The Wife and I ride our bikes to the farmer's market every saturday year round, but the stuff we buy (or at least a sizeable part of it) used oil in one form or another. We use our own shopping bags, but some things always come in disposable packaging, either when we buy them (cheese and milk), or before they are sold (packaging during transport).

Here, cigarettes and alcohol have lots of taxes, just like fuel. About 2-3 years ago one of our ministers lowered alcohol taxes and, to the surprise of many, alcohol tax income increased. Some claimed that this was because the price fell, so people would drink more (nothing like good anti-alcohol programs:rolleyes:), but the real reason was that when legal alcohol became cheaper, it became more competitive with alcohol of illegal and unsafe origin. The number of people with methanol poisoning slightly decreased.

Taxes in the UK for each litre - not even a gallon.

http://www.petrolprices.com/images/P...ces-060111.jpg

and diesel

http://www.petrolprices.com/images/D...ces-060111.jpg

Slightly out of date though. The downside of tax is the cost. The upside of it is that it insulates us to some extent from world oil price spikes - the cost of a barrell has more than doubled since last summer but uk petrol has risen about 25%.

So did we - the Europeans. The Japanese advantage was that what they built was better engineered, better designed and up to date. I read a book written by a tech executive from the 1970s fuel squeeze when he parked his Cadillac and bought a Nissan (or Toyota or Subaru, can't recall exactly).

What amazed him was that the Nissan never failed, everything worked every time and apart from servicing he never had to visit the dealer for anything compared to the Caddy which rattled, smoked and would regularly go out of tune or wear some service part out very quickly and was requiring constant attention. He sold the Caddy and kept the Nissan.

Same over here - as soon as people got used to Honda, Nissan (Datsun) and Toyota reliability they never went back to British cars which by that time were so badly built that the rear windows would fall out when they were jacked up.

Mind you even Honda cock up sometimes. I was reading about the Civic Hondamatic last night - 2 speed MANUAL gearbox and torque converter. Or maybe it was a joke.

PS - This part of the wikipedia entry on Nissan describes the relationship they had with Austin of the UK to make cars under licence. What it doesn't mention is that the agreement also said that Austin engineers had a quality veto on parts being made by Nissan before they could be used in production models.

Unfortunately for the Japanese the British engineers still had bad feelings from the war and would make them jump through extra hoops - for example the Austin side would regularly reject parts the quality of which was way above what was going into UK made models at the same time.

A side theory, in additional to Toyota TQM, is that this pressure meant Japanese Nissan/Austins were much better made than the original UK ones. Which kind of worked against the UK industry when they came back with their own models later on.

Mmmm....
p = .001 Pound?
"58.95p" = 58 Pounds + 95 pence?
Just so I understand what you`re telling us- I`ve never been clear on all the different English monetary units.

France, for 1 liter of diesel (2011/01 average) :
(errors in % are mine ;) )
And taxes for gasoline is 60%, to keep diesel price lower.

Denis.

Here is the breakdown in Poland for 2010, also in liters. In 2011 the taxes will be even higher because of VAT increase. (1 zł = 1 PLN = 0.35 USD = 0.25 EUR at today's rates):


A comparison of taxes in Poland and USA (2008):


A comparison of european countries' petrol (not diesel or fuel in general) taxes, again 2008 (I gave up on translating country names and trying to edit them into the image):


And European fuel duty (only a part of taxes), 2009:


And just for fun, again 2009,

p = 1 pence, 1/100 (0.01) of a pound. Think p = cents, £ = $ in terms of units. Obviously exchange rates mean they are worth different monetary amounts.

So each litre has duty of 58.95 pence, and then VAT (sales tax) is added to that + the production cost + the retailer portion (5p).

If you look at it from a cost/mile perspective, though, I DO have 99 cent gas. In fact, I do even better. I average 71.2 mpg in the Insight, a typical SUV gets say 15 mpg. So at $4/gal, it costs him $4 to go those 15 miles, but it costs me only 84 cents :-)

Even for a smaller American car getting 25 mpg, I'm still paying only $1.40 for what costs them $4.