So...?

Current prices are 1.50 Euro per litre. About time you caught up.

prices have only increased about 150% in the last 4 years. so if the inflation of gas continues at this rate you are looking at about 14 years for this to happen. Even assuming the price were to actually continue to climb at this unnatural rate (which it wont) in 14 years every car on the road will get at least double the current gas milage if not more.

In any case the price of oil is being manipulated by futures traders the actual price per gallon of fuel oil is really around 70 dollars a barrel.

Gas may well be $12-$15 a gallon - in about 20 years. Be careful to not swallow too much speculation, especially from media analysts.

Here's the thing people need to understand. Oil companies are not going to let their product be priced so high it becomes too expensive for consumers. Why be in the oil bidness? Why be in any bidness for that matter? If you price your product too high, nobody's gonna buy it no matter how bad they think they need it.

Don't get me wrong, gas prices are causing a hell of a strain on everything in this country and will do so for the near future. But I predict (and I am no economic expert on this by any means) that the market will eventually set itself right and oil will slowly drop down to more "affordable" prices, though maybe not to the sub-$2.00 levels.

Another prediction: Watch gas prices begin a steady decline after the election in November. Just...wait and see.

The graph is not showing, so here is te link:

WWW Link

The US People well start buying smaller cars again be sure of that but when you travel 80 yo 120 miles one way to work it not going to matter much my round trip was 196 miles i was spending almost 500 USD a month and when you bring home only 1650 a month that hurts !!

Nasty

ud be surprised how much profit the big oil gets per gallon.
something like 60-80%
its ridiculuos
i cant wait till the oil execs wither and die
  

Thank goodness I have a chance to knock Kryo so I don't look like such a fanboi around here.

You are just shy of half-right here. The full US territory is indeed an apple to the EU orange; Amtrak vs. any EU national system offers ample evidence. But that sort of argument is nowhere near as strong if you exclude hard-to-compare political boundaries and look at population centers. Region by region, many areas of the continental US are pathetically behind the Europeans in terms of reasonable transport systems.

I'm saying this as a North Central Floridian who voted for our high-speed rail "amendment" (shudder quotes b/c I want us to have a legislative referendum option tha can help us keep our constitution reasonably concise). We have several major population centers in our state (mostly on the peninsula) and I would have made several weekend social trips in the past few years if I could have avoided the horrid Interstate system. And I'd even have paid a bit more, just to be able to sit in my train seat and read a book in peace.

While supply and demand are evenly matched today - demand, mostly from the developing world, is growing much faster than supply. Like it or not, prices will continue to rise until people change their habits. In the short term the only thing that can bring prices down (or even slow the rate of increase) is demand destruction. America, with 4% of the world population currently consumes 25% of the oil and will have to make a substantial contribution to that demand destruction. Longer term, you have to wonder why Exxon and ConocoPhillips are returning most of their profits to shareholders as dividends and share buybacks instead of investing in new supply. Maybe they don't think there is a supply side solution.

Maybe they aren't because it's illegal? Drilling in ANWR is being blocked, the shale oil in the north is also being blocked, drilling off the east and west coasts are being blocked. Congress is wonderful.

The current price increase in oil is mostly fiction. The dollar has dropped, thus the price in dollars has risen. You can thank that fucktard Bernanke for the recent spike due to the falling dollar. Trying to prevent a correction in the housing market is the height of arrogance and stupidity, and counter-productive even if it could be done. The rest of it is a lack of expansion in infrastructure, much of it on our part, but that's accounting for the steady increase over the last couple decades, not the huge spike we just experienced. Regardless of the reasons, an oil company doesn't set the price of its oil. They are sold on open markets like an auction, the highest bidders get the oil. The only things oil companies can do to change prices are cut or increase capacity, the total worldwide capacity. You can't blame Exxon for the world supply when they control a drop in the proverbial bucket, thus Exxon's unfairly maligned profits are irrelevant to the price of oil. It wouldn't change the price of gas by a nickel if they made no money at all.

Also, American oil companies make peanuts for profit margins, perhaps one could try reading up first? A few hundred billion is peanuts if you invested a few hundred trillion to get it. If you want to call an industry out for obscene profit margins, and it's ludicrous to blame someone for being willingly paid by other people, go after the financial sector that regularly sees 30% profit margins from companies like Citibank. Even right now, the American oil industry is just a hair above average, 10-12% is a normal, respectable margin. They might make three bucks a gallon off the crude they're selling right now, but that's a fraction of the industry. We produce a few percent, we use a fourth of the stuff. Six to eight times as much refining is a good guess, and the profits on refining are squat with crude prices so high.

how bout our eviromentalists saying we cant drill for oil by florida but, we let the cubans do it. if gas was 15$ gallon then ethanol would be worth it. Ethanol costs 12$ a gallon to make. SOLAR ENERGY

if you are in florida ME and my dad are making a solar panel company so I will be posting a website soon.

Making really small, super efficient vehicles is easy. Hitting 75mph, navigating thick traffic, and surviving when the SUV hits you is the problem. Hybrids are also of severely limited use depending on the surroundings. When you start/stop, you can get huge fuel economy boosts over a normal combustion engine. When you don't, at the most, it does nothing. The hybrids actually lose efficiency for people that commute to work, or drive fairly uninterrupted on freeways. In the area I'm at, you're an idiot if you buy a hybrid.

However, that said, fuel economy in the American auto industry sucks, although the Europeans have been deluding themselves as well. 50mpg, full size sedans with enough juice to be useful in high traffic at speeds have been achievable for over a decade, these fuel efficient, 30 mpg toys they're making now are just jokes.

There is indeed a difference in the population density between North America and Europe. But I don't think, that it has to be ineffective because of that. And you might not be able to use the same concepts as in Europe. While I believe that high-speed mid-range intercity trains would work beautifully in NA (less stops in between, train can go high-speed all the way, you can really get some work done on your way; or do, whatever you want), some things may have to be invented or changed. A good example is car-pool lanes. They merge the positive effects of mass transit with the "affinity" of people to cars.

Hehe, during my last (bnl) visit to NA the same "affinity" resulted to the following dialogue between a clerk and me:
Me: "Excuse me, do you know where I can find the store Somebuy?"
Clerk: "Oh, it's right across the street. It's a 30 sec drive!"

It was a 10 sec walk.



Hmm, if stock charts say anything about the profitability of a company, you might get surprised when looking up e.g. the 5 year chart of Exxon. So I would'nt call that peanuts.
But I agree that the banking sector sees (or better: saw?) obscene profits.



While I don't support militant environmentalists I would rather bet that they are not the reason for oil prices being this high right now, as you suggest with you "off limits" argument. Yeah, "it's soooo easy to hate the" environmentalists for the high oil prices.

I have read and heard on alot of new reports that they predict the prices will get to around $4.35 or so then they will drop the prices to back to like $3.50 and everyone will think there getting a big break and not care about paying those prices.