try £1.12 a litre, £5.09 a gallon, $9.91 a gallon ;) but I'm sure the Uk chaps have already made this point!

The government doesn't give a fuck about anything other than their own special interests and having a job. They found their golden ticket in the Willy Wonka bar and are just happy as pigs in shit. Fuck. Them. All.


Having said that though, I'm not sure what they could do. Part of me takes great joy in seeing someone pull up in a SUV and spend $100 to fill up. Maybe we need this in order to rethink why we don't have a better public transportation system and the need to drive a tank. But, the other part of me knows that those fuel costs are being passed along to everyone and it is affecting more than just the person at the pump. You could have no car and take public transportation, but it still means you are paying $4.00 for a gallon of milk.

Hey where's jb?

It's all the unnecessary flying. People fly way too much.

The SUV rant pisses me off, I am so sick of hearing it.

The people who drive SUV's, me and my wife included, aren't the ones suffering hardships. It's the guy driving the 89 honda who if feeling the hit in his wallet.

The day I can't afford to fill my tank is the day I get a different car.

You don't think the popularity of SUV's effects national gas prices?

no

not to the extent we are seeing the increase.

Make me understand how Exxon can have a profit last year of 40 Billion last year, we pay 4 dollars a gallon and no one in the government thinks that's odd.

Lathum, that's the exact thing I ask people and I just really don't understand.

I hate these high gas prices as much as the next person but why should Exxon be penalized for making a profit? It's a free market so cant they set the price what they want? People keep coming back to buy gas.

Or is there some government regulation that I am missing?

Everyone is distracted by the Sirius/XM merger.

Everything I've read says that demand has little or nothing to do with recent gas price increases, that the increases are mostly due to a general commodity bubble. You see the same thing with gold, but people don't buy gold several times a month, and it doesn't have the same overall impact on the economy.

If this is correct, than I think we can expect the price of gas to collapse at some point.

What else are you going to buy though? It's like if they jack the water bill up on you. What you are going to cancel water at your house?

Go to the BP station instead of Exxon.

As for your water case...dig a well.

Isn't it the same price more or less?

Yeah, can't all the oil companies be in a collective monopoly? They know they can charge however high prices they want.

How about we all get horse and buggy.

Haha. That's funny.

But what I meant by island was an actual island. Wildwood is on a landmass surrounded by water :)

And all of the gas stations are before the bridges to get out, and they charge you a rediculous amount.

And the service areas on the NJ Turnpike/Garden State Parkway/AC Expressway all charge rediculous amounts....However, I've heard that for some reason, they can't change their prices until a certain date in the month. So in the second half of every month, usually about a week before the new month starts, the lines at the service areas are INSANE. Absolutely, fucking insane. Two hours to fill up during a busy time.

Even during down times, you could be on the road, and see two other cars driving with you, and you pass a service area and it's packed. Then, they raise their price by 20 cents and no ones there again.

Only if Wedge is the pilot.

Exxon is a business. Their goal is to maximize profit. Now gasoline is an inelastic good. You can raise prices in the short term and it won't effect demand very much, in the short run. In the long run, people buy more fuel efficient cars and perhaps public transportation improves, etc.

It appears that Exxon, and other gas businesses, are making the calculation that people may already be moving to these things in the future (due to concerns about greenhouse effect and giving money to foriegn countries) and therefore, might as well get more money in the short term.

Also, the oil market is a global market. They aren't really effecting too much of the price per barrel by how much they are charging at the pump (at least in the short term). Massive increases in demand by the emerging economies of China and India are doing that.

Besides, if you account for inflation (using, say, 1970 as a starting point), gas prices are not that high at all.

Thats what I would like to know.

I may be wrong, JIMG or someone probably knows, but doesn't the government hold some control over what utility companies can charge so they don't gouge us on what is a neccesaty?

I don't see how this is any different.

Its very different. Utility companies are given a government monopoly, so they have to charge a certain amount as a result. Oil companies are not given that priviledge. Unless you want to assert Exxon is a monopoly... then by all means try to file an anti-trust case against them.

well thats kind of what I meant. Gas is as much a need as heat/electric/water and the cost needs to be regulated as such.

As for the inflation example based on the 1970 cost I'm not sure thats fair considering the government hasn't done much to increase minimum wage.

Er no. Utilities aren't really required to control costs because they are dealing with necessities. They are required to control costs because the utilities are natural monopolies (can't really have competition in those areas) and thus they are regulated as a result of that status. Gasoline has many different companies competiting over selling their product to customers.

It's like saying food is as much of a need as heat/electric/water and thus should be controlled by the government.

Its the government's problem to increase minimum wage. No other good gets this much grief. I mean, once again, the price of food has followed inflation and, yet, no real outcry over that unless there is a specific crisis, and even then we don't hear much about it (people can't be as much rice these days... and that's it). Simply because we have been paying far less for gas than we should have doesn't mean its a national emergency when it actually starts costing what it should (Hell, that's not even counting all the negative externalties associated with gasoline... why I'm in favor of increasing the gas tax and using the money for alternative energy and respitory ailments).

good info isiddiqui.

are you an economist?

$3.65

Jumped up about 18 cents overnight the other day...

I was an Economics major (along with Poly Sci... Rutgers '02 baby! ;)). But I'm not an Economist (I'm far worse... I'm a lawyer... who is working as a federal investigator ;)).

While taxing the profits of the oil companies and/or setting price caps are bad ideas, we can sure as hell eliminate the host of incentives/tax breaks that are currently going to companies making record profits(and you're next farm subsidies!)

I'd also like to look at collusion at the pumps, but even though I'm sure it happens I'm not at all sure how you'd go about proving it and then coming up with a remedy.

I like your thinking for a pinko commie bastard. ;)

Filled up for a lovely $4.04 today...for the cheap stuff.

yum.

One could quite easily argue there is an oligopoly with quite a bit of collusion. But if you're an oil company, you don't even need to collude. With extreme entry barriers for anyone else who wants to play in this market, why risk real competition for lower prices when everyone in your industry is fat and happy.

Tho I think it could really easily be argued that these companies are leveraging their high market share for higher profits than the free market would otherwise dictate. Or at least it would be easy to argue until you got a giant pile of high priced oil lawyers on th other side of the bench who can easily slice and dice the person arguing much easier than the actual argument.

SI

It was $4.059 for regular at a station I drove by on the way home today. That particular station is usually the most expensive in town, but it's the first time I've seen it above $4.00.

If only you didn't have the best boosted safety...

That's the best damn boosted strong safety. :D

5/19/08 - 3.64
5/20/08 - 3.71
5/21/08 - 3.81

wow

I just filled up last night at $3.95 a gallong for regular.

On a side note, while I was filling up my tank at the gas station a few blocks from my house, I saw Michael Cera (from "Superbad", "Juno", and "Arrested Development" fame) and his girlfriend walk buy. Apparently he's in town shooting a movie.

You should have tried to start a gasoline fight!

625 mile trip tomorrow.

I am going to fill up tonight because I have a feeling the prices are going to sky rocket this weekend.

Allthough lets say they go up .20 and I have a 15 gallon tank. I am saving myself a whopping $3.00. lol

LOL

Yeah, I had a huge drive the other day and was kind of pissed that i had to pay 4 bucks per, when it was like 3.60 at home. Then I realized it was like 5 bucks difference.

I use about 6 gallons a day for work, hopefully we don't race through 4 dollar gas as fast as we did the 3 dollar stuff. At some point it's not going to be a viable opportunity anymore. The federal 52cents/ mile writeoff thing is going to have to go up.

My sister is having serious problem with this right now.

She drives around alot for work and gets a gas allowance of .42 per mile. She is a widowed single mom with 3 kids so changing jobs isn't viable because of the flexible hours, but the increase is hurting her bad. She almost had her gas cut off because she couldn't pay the bill.

I asked her if she talked to her boss about raising the per mile rate to compensate and she didn't because she is afraid she will lose her job because her company is losing buisness.

I drop off drugs at 5 different convalescent homes, and get a flat rate(with a bit of a fuel surcharge, but not much) for performing the tasks. At the end of the year since I'm an independant contractor, I'm going to have a helluva writeoff, hopefully taking me down to essentially no profit on paper.

4.03 here

$3.83

4.19 for Regular here in Visalia,CA. Although i can find it for 3.87 some places. Even Costco is 3.89!

3.99 I can't believe it, I was almost out of gas but said fuckit when I saw the prices, I will drag along tomorow.

3.81...It's been as high as 3.94. I expect it to go up for the holiday.

If we're really serious about becoming less dependent on foreign oil, Congress needs to give oil companies more latitude for domestic oil exploration and allow them to build new refineries (the last one opened over 30 years ago).

I'm sure environmentalists will have a cow, but if it comes right down to it...I'm trusting the U.S. to do a greener job drilling for and refining oil than say...Saudi Arabia. I'm not sure why the U.S. has such a bad rap environmentally, because we do a much better job cleaning up our messing than just about everyone else, especially Far Eastern nations.

The problem is that gasoline is a global market and (fortunately or unfortunately) those Third World countries are growing and deciding to keep their stocks at home. Couple that with our complete lack of conservation and you have increased demand, decreased supply + wild speculation to hedge against inflation = high gas prices.

Who knows, maybe this will finally get us off our butts and look at alternative sources of energy (ha, who's kidding who?!).

It will get to the point where people either can't or won't pay the price. They'll find other ways to get around...trade in the gas guzzlers for economy cars, mass transit, etc., etc. Demand will go down, and so will prices. I doubt we'll ever see them as low as they were before they shot up...but they'll go down.

It's all happened before. As a kid, I remember gas at 35 cents a gallon before the oil crisis in the mid 70s, and prices shooting up over $1 per gallon.

SFL: The need for more refineries is questionable at best. We almost never run at greater than 90% capacity for U.S. refineries. There's a real question why oil companies complain about refineries when they don't use the capabilities they currently have.

The comparison with the seventies likely doesn't hold water. There are some significant differences including increased global demand and more troubling, a real lack of spare pumping capacity.