American gasoline prices are now climbing at a rate of a penny($0.01) a day

(.. where's the cheap gas in town...)

It probably will.

1 litre @ 88p ~~ $6,095.12!!!

..6.26283 USD, actually. So quit our bitchin'.

Of course, in general we have more efficient cars.

Honda is SO dropping the ball right now. They need to go back to their 60's "bikes are fun & cute" campaign, and away from garish crotch rockets for 23 years old jocks. With gas prices soaring, motorbikes seem rational and smart again.

any info on the percentage of UKers who use public trans compared to USers?

also our policemen are not armed:

http://www.guthrie.k12.ok.us/~jcleaver/beefeaters.jpg

Interest rates be rising, too.

You're not wrong aimless, but the market does push in favour of more efficient transportation now, and also towards locally produced goods. So fewer air freighted sugar snap peas.

Aimless OTM — I get occasional emails from UPS saying, "Oh, remember those overnight packages you sent last week? Here are your revised charges for those."

well, yeah, that's what i was referring to in my original post. here in portland, bus/train fare has gone up twice(from $1.30 in late august to $1.40 on friday) just to cover fuel costs, so err'body paying the price for this.

at least they have a lot of electric ones in San Fran

http://www.film-o-holic.com/widerscreen/pictures/1999/4_1999_hullu_maailma_pic8.jpg

"we want all the gas. give us the gasoline, and you can just walk away..."

Launch one microwave relay satellite. (And then another.)

http://stellar-one.com/nuclear/images/three%20mile%20island2.jpg

http://www.alumni.ca/~chiuw3w/article%20images/Technology/Powerplant2.jpg

http://www.slowtimes.com/photos/day18/smoke.jpg

http://www.kued.org/skullvalley/images/road/maps/nuclear_reactors.gif

Sure, travel in general will be more expensive as well. But road trips costs will rise far more.

And yeah, I'm fearing for what will happen to the Northwest... we're kinda isolated from the rest of the country. I think Seattle and Portland will be seeing a lot more Canadian manufactured products soon, as they will be cheaper to get than those even in California...

There's nothing WRONG with that at all. it just means that Seattle and Portland will start to resemble Canadian markets more, what with the bilingual labels and all.

I just don't know how we're tolerating any of this crap. Bring back the May 1968 France revolts and transplant them over here so we can do it right...yeesh.

the onion weighs in, once again

come to think of it, this is the 3rd infograph on rising oil prices they've done in the last 5 years

However, if I can find a car that gets 80 M.P.G., I'm right back where I started (for now).

I do somewhat currently echo the "Baaah, you think you guys have expensive gas?" sentiments, but the way this affects daily life in North America (and Australia, come to think of it, especially if you live in Perth.) is a lot more magnified than, say, the way gas price increases will affect daily life in most of Europe. This affects very large countries with large cities/hubs spread apart, moreso, logically.

My Australian bride rolls her eyes at me and my friends complaining about two-dollar gas. I don't think that it's a terrible thing that gasoline is getting so expensive. It's taking me some getting used to whenever I pay forty bucks to fill up my tank, but I do feel smug when I see those bastard SUVs parked next to me.

As well she should, we pay around the $1 and then some mark for a LITRE of petrol here.

Thats at least $4 USD/gallon, innit? ANd we have to drive long(er) distances than many other people.

I just get the tram.

bus/train fare has gone up twice(from $1.30 in late august to $1.40 on friday)

One day travelcard in London is about £5, which is about $8 or $9.

Tell that to the truckers, Tracer

WASHINGTON - Consumers hit by higher gasoline costs cut back spending on clothes and many other items last month, raising concerns about whether the economy might be entering another "soft patch" similar to last year's slowdown.

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that retail sales rose a disappointing 0.3 percent in March, far below expectations for a 0.8 percent rise.

What strength there was came mainly from auto sales, which climbed 0.7 percent in March. Excluding autos, retail sales rose by just 0.1 percent last month, the weakest showing in nearly a year, since a 0.1 percent drop in April 2004.

That decline occurred as the U.S. economy was entering what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan termed a "soft patch" as growth slowed abruptly during the spring of last year. Consumers at that time, too, were hit by higher energy bills, and they responded by abruptly cutting back their spending in other areas.

Analysts said the same thing could be occurring again this year although more data will be needed to confirm that.

"The higher price of gasoline may just be braking the consumers' drive to spend," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pa. "There were major cutbacks in spending on clothing, furniture and appliances."

Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Services in Boston, said the economy could be entering another slowdown induced by higher energy prices, but he cautioned against reading too much into a single month's report....

This seems to have happened in Chicago.

Regular at most stations around Portland is about $2.64/gal or so, tho I did find a pump that still had it at $2.39.

Also, while I fortunately do not have that job I did back in April, I unforunately can no longer take the train to work.

Gasoline in 1999 was like, what, 99 cents?

still, who was it, Thomas Friedman?, who was on NPR a coupla weeks ago saying that it'll take crude oil hitting $100/barrel (currently at like $66 or so) before people REALLY get noisy about this...

xpost

funny you should mention that. check today's Onion

Yeesh, who here's had their income go up $720 more this year?

Heating-oil demand is often floated by energy-market analysts as a factor in driving oil prices higher in the fall, but really, most analysts just give this line to reporters out of laziness. Futures markets are built precisely to adjust for things like seasonal demand -- expectations for seasonal temperature shifts are pretty well built into most future prices. Also, a very small portion of U.S. homes are actually heated by oil these days. It just happens that most of them are in the Northeast -- along with most of the financial reporters and market analysts in the country, which is why you hear so much about it. So while the relatively small number of people who are keeping warm with oil are going to get a nasty pinch later this year, in the aggregate the impact of the price of heating oil on the broader economy is very small.

didn't some U.S. Dept just report inflation of 1% for last month alone

That's the producer-price index, which was reported today by the Labor Department. Oil played a part in that jump, but so did a bizarre jump in car prices (which shouldn't be there -- car prices, as anyone who was checking out the "employee discounts for everyone" sales these last eight weeks or so, have actually been down). While prices are running higher, that report isn't as bad as it looks, and on a trend basis economy-wide inflation is still pretty low.

Prices around here are hovering close to $3 at some spots.

really? weird. in michigan, they still offer a tax credit for home heating oil costs...

xpost

also, wasn't it reported a few months back that the Admin was wondering about what to do in a "nightmare" situation, where gas hits four bucks?

but economics are my weak side.

Also, on the home-heating oil thing: heating oil has been steadily losing share to natural gas since the 1970s. Of course, natural-gas prices are off the charts, too.

prices this morning at the Shell @ Mission & San Jose 280 entrance: 2.97 / 3.07 / 3.17

even....why are prices rising so fast? UK crew, are prices rising similarly here? (since i got rid of my car i dont notice petrol prices - although last time i saw 95p per litre)

re: prius: i cant understand why toyota dont make a version of the prius that actually looks like, y'know, someone designed it.

True! The thing that keeps astounding me though is that in poll after poll, people are saying that gasoline would have to hit upwards of $6 a gallon for them to even drive their SUV less. What would it take for them to get rid of it altogether? $20pg? $50?

August 16, 2005—Speeding from the scene of the crime, a Chinese boy tows a floating plastic bag of stolen natural gas last week. Flouting a government ban, farmers around the central Chinese town of Pucheng frequently filch gas from the local oil field.

As Chinese industry booms and automobile use spreads, the country as a whole appears to be on a feverish quest for fossil fuels. Oil consumption rose by 11 percent last year, and the number of private autos hit 14 million in 2003—and is expected to rise to 150 million by 2015. (See "China's Boom Is Bust for Global Environment, Study Warns.")

China National Offshore Oil Corporation dropped its bid for U.S. oil and natural gas company Unocal earlier this month. But the China National Petroleum Corporation, the country's biggest oil company, has now joined with an Indian company in an effort to buy PetroKazakhstan, a Canadian company with oil fields in the central Asian country of Kazakhstan.

—Ted Chamberlain

I don't understand this at all. I like the looks of it and the interior is excellent. That said, it has a reputation in LA as a celeb car, so maybe I'm giving it a boost.

big xpost

on the inside they're quite comfortable and roomy -- but from the outside, they look dinky & small compared to monster SUVs.

I've been on the fence for a while, because up until now, factoring in the extra $5000... sure the planet wuvs me, but you simply did not recover the costs in gasoline savings. prices are about to change that, I think. my next car's definitely going to be a hybrid.

The base price is just over $20K and the government gives you back $2K as an incentive (a bottom line tax credit). I'm not sure what else you're considering that costs more.

As for the conversions, they're all pretty home grown. The excitement is about the future impact of these conversions on mass produced hybrids.

O.M.G.

sorry, but for my tastes, it looks like a metal hippo. it sort of seems like they thought "hmmm we need a body for this car, lets dig out that old "generic late 90s AnyCar design" folder"

didn't know the base price had come down to $20. it's been two years since I checked into buying. good to know.

i wonder if there are many used hybrids for sale yet.

i like calling them hybrids, it makes me feel like i'm doing genetic experiments.

A one or two year old used Prius (current generation) is selling for exactly how much a new one costs! (That's another incentive to buy).

That might be a distortion because of low production levels, though. Are there still waiting lists for new Priuses? That would explain the lack of short-run depreciation for resales.

governments can lay pressure on automakers(or outright force them) to improve gas mileage. goverments can encourage mass-transit programs and urban design programs that reduce the amount of car travel. government can more adequately fund alt-energy sources that can have immediate positive effect on transportation costs, instead of one or two long-term plans which coincidentally won't cut into their campaign contributors' bottom lines for the immediate future.

And then, we have the current U.S. Govt. Guess how much of this they do.

if people are complaining

that's the thing. no enough are, yet.

Unfortunately I think it will be a while still before we see any big improvements in the mass produced cars. The batteries still need to come way down in cost and weight. $3000 worth of batteries as raw parts would add how much to the retail price of a car? $6k? $12k? Automakers are in the business of shaving 50 cents off of parts here and there to increase their profits so none of the manufacturers want to put out a compact car that gets 250mpg but costs $50k. Hopfully things will change over the next 10 years or so. The demand for the current hybrids is promising. My next car will definitely be a hybrid but I really want a fully electric car.

many people have massively unrealistic demands for their vehicles and still like big-ass cars. doesn't matter if my car will never leave pavement during its lifespan and i'm a single guy, i need the illusion of getting away to the Rockies with six of my Mountain Dew commercial buddies if i wanted to. i'm wondering exactly how much of the resistance to buying hybrids comes from mindset of "hybrids are too small".

once the hybrid SUVs come out and the big automakers start getting sufficient ad campaigns behind them--drive the new Ford MistressFucker! drive the new Lincoln IHateMyKids! drive the new Chevy EscapeFromStiflingSuburbanExistence!--then we'll see how demand will change.

xpost

I'm not so sure that SUV buyers think in practical terms like "how much is this going to cost me?"

Fuck the earth. If I can't have cheap oil, I at least want to have an animal die for my comfort.

I agree -- and I believe that investors are freaked out about this. But as interested as so many executives are in sending "signals" to the market, and the ramifications of sending the wrong signals, I can't help but wonder what's going on in Toyota's executive suite.

I'm not sure. There is some sort of market but is it big enough to justify the additional R&D? That's the sort of calculation that Toyota is presumably making and if it were feasible I assume they would do it. They have been losing money on the Prius sales as it is right?

I also don't know if the extra $5k for 180mpg is a realistic figure. The one conversion I read about was an extra $3k in batteries alone to bring the Prius up to 80mpg. $3k in parts for Toyota means at least an extra $6k on the sticker price I'm guessing.

I hate to be pessimistic about all of this because I've been longing for an electric car since I was 17. I just think there are a lot of political, psychological and financial hurdles to overcome before they really take off.

I agree. I really think the first hybrids (or electric vehicles) should have been expensive luxury cars that rich people and celebrities would buy as status symbols. That would simultaneously solve the cost problems and the psychological problems and prepare the US public for mass acceptance of electric cars.

Toyota stock has had a pretty nice run over the past few years, too, so they're unlikely to do anything that upsets their earnings applecart too much.

yeah, diesel cars can run on biodiesel for the cost of a new fuel filter, i think.

there's a local group out here that makes a point to both organize biodiesel efforts, and most importantly, to get the bumper stickers out on all the cars to raise the profile of biodiesel.

and "squeezing the dieselberries" really isn't a popular term for it, anymore. Much more fashionable is "loading up on plant farts."

I sort of agree with this. Sure, I'd like to have a good-looking car, but if it's way less practical than another similar yet ugly car, I'd go with the ugly one. You can't even see the outside when you're using it! Talk about vanity.

There's several factors in play, but the root cause isn't so much supply and demand as it is about paranoia over future supply and demand. Oilcast has good thumbnail analysis - their show is worth putting in your podcast reader.

they announced the manufacture of a hybrid corolla in america beginning 2007 (i think). not that a corolla looks designed, but it is more car-like.

Also, celebrities all over LA drive this car and it's become a status symbol of sorts. Cameron Diaz has bought over 25 of them for herself and friends. I will say that driving around LA, I will check out who's driving when I stop next to a Prius.

As for the cost of a homemade battery system versus the cost to Toyota of mass-producing something like it - I'm pretty sure they could do it for much less!

Finally, there are luxury hybrids available including the new Lexus SUV which unfortunately DOES NOT SAVE ANY FUEL, but is in fact more powerful/faster than the non-hybrid version!!!

that's the thing; until they break the current narrative about the car, it's an uphill battle against popular car desires.

i mean, roll that shit out with sweet rims & spinnaz, glorify the fuck out of it, etc. see what happens.

http://content.yieldmanager.com/2159/41407/1273370704303892fbc600.gif

"im ready to chew nails", "its outrageous"

i cant think of something else that could cause such public unrest and yet have so few easy scapegoats to blame. im interested in what happens when people get mad, and yet dont have obvious strawmen to blame.

"henh henh henh. whoa, look at it go!"

heh. wait a little while, and then you'll have a much louder noise to analyze.

i'm kinda curious what will happen if we're at like $3.50/gal or so come next summer during the mid-term elections...

Not much, I'm guessing. Upthread I noted that most people are still saying the price of gasoline would have to more than double for them to even change their driving habits. Another $1 a gallon definitely isn't going to get them to vote differently.

People always have strawmen to blame. It's so much more convenient than blaming themselves.

Which is why, were I a Democrat, I'd be hoping for higher gas prices and a worsening economy.

You know, I remember when these studies said that the price of gas would have to go over two dollars for people to think differently about their transportation. Then they said, Well, $2.50 and people will really flip out. Now it's at three dollars in California, and these studies are saying, Okay, five dollars and there's blood on the streets!

I think that people are sheep and will pay whatever the fuck the oil companies want them to pay. Long as they still have that CD player and power locks, you won't find most drivers standing out there at the bus stop with the rest of those losers.

I think you could make a credible argument that a near-term housing market bust would have a greater impact on electoral politics, since wages are stagnant and people have been treating their homes like ATMs for the past four years to fund their overconsumption. But I have a really hard time seeing how gasoline prices on their own would tip votes in a manner large enough to be meaningful in 2006.

You're not going to change 70 years of entrenched car culture in a year (or five) unless there is an unimagineable traumatic event.

That said, I think a strategy of blaming Bush and Republicans for any sort of financial misfortune is politically worthwhile.

wages aren't stagnant, most recent data has them up 4.7% year on year.

consumer reports only got 35 mpg from their prius.
toyota sells them at a loss but it's good marketing and establishes there foothold in that market although my brother, works for big 3 automaker, says they don't think hybrids have much of a future.

economy is quietly booming as evidenced by the shrinking deficit. it seems to be a big secret though.

That's the fault of the car companies. Sulfur emissions are high, but there are off the shelf technologies that can reduce them to California levels. Ford patented one. Of course, hybrids are apparently a lot easier to sell the public on, even if they're not any more efficent (gas or cost wise) or clean (those batteries have to be made somehere and disposed somewhere too). Should it be any shock that hybrid vehicles aren't making in roads in Europe?

Apart from the fact that they are more efficient, you're missing the big advantage which is reduced emissions. Maybe that's not an issue in Europe but it certainly matters in Los Angeles.

They're getting more efficient all the time, too. My Astra CDTI will do 60mpg on the open road. I've just driven 950 miles from central Britain to central France and back on about a tank and a half.

The problem is, inflation is running +3.2%. Wage growth of less than 2% per annum is stagnant by any definition I can think of.

economy is quietly booming as evidenced by the shrinking deficit

I don't want to turn this into a discussion about the federal budget, but this is only half right: budget deficit projections are shrinking. But even under the rosy new CEA forecasts we are still looking at a simply massive annual fiscal shortfall of more than $300 billion. Plus, the trade deficit is still huge and is only going to get bigger as companies replenish their inventories following the big drawdown in Q2.

We're certainly not in a "boom." Do we have relatively steady growth? Will we get a decent pop from inventory restocking in Q3? Yes. But will that hold up? I can't really see how.

How is a car that gets 37-40 MPG freeway in real life (and which uses two motors) more efficent than a car that uses one motor and get 45MPG? Emissions are already retardedly low these days. The air coming out of the exhaust is in many ways cleaner than the air surrounding it. Besides, if you're gonna be driving a hybrid on the freeway, you're going to be running on its gasoline powered motor. How does that lessen emissions any?

Hybrids are just a bandaid fix (not even a particularly good one) that costs consumers more money and forces them to go back to the dealership for maintenance, further making the car companies and their parts divisions more money (especially true given the complexity of hybrid systems). Its also being thrown around as a buzzword for vehicles that really aren't hybrids at all (see: Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid).

Yeah, but your average mechanic can't fix a hybrid. That's the problem. Only the dealerships selling the hybirds have people certified to repair them and are willing to put them through the factory based training. Its unlikely that you'll be able to have serious repairs done to a Prius at your local car repair shop of your choice for several years.

e.g. going from everybody being able to change a water pump to where I can't ever get to that part of the engine to swipe out an oil filter...

I heard a few years ago that some car mfgr was going to sell a car where you couldn't open the hood unless you were a certified mechanic with an access key of some kind.

What a ridiculous thing to say!

Besides, if you're gonna be driving a hybrid on the freeway, you're going to be running on its gasoline powered motor. How does that lessen emissions any?

AFAIK, stop-and-go traffic is much worse for air-quality than fast freeway driving and stop-and-go traffic is exactly where hybrids shine.

Reliability rating for the Prius are excellent.

(F'real though, I don't make any more trips than I would normally — I just buy a shopping cart full when I do go.)

say, what exactly WAS the (adjusted) record high for a barrel of crude? I've seen about 5 differnt totals, all wandering around the $80->$90 level...

We've had our Prius for 3 years now (2002 non-hatchback sort). The only maintenance cost has been a replacement set of tires at 35,000 miles and an oil change or two. I'm especially happy with it now as we've been driving 600 miles each weekend for the past month.

There's room in the trunk for a side of beef (10 full grocery bags). And, you can run out of gas in it, and still have enough battery power to get 10 miles to a station.

The people I work with had many misconceptions about it - had to plug it in to charge it, wouldn't go over 55, no oomph on inclines.

I was thinking of getting a Prius but decided the the extra money it wasn't worth it, as I drive only about 4K miles per year. Also I'm not convinced the battery powered aspects would be effective with as little freeway driving as I do (~2 mile surface street commute to work).

of course, we were both on our way out to Hillsboro/Beavertron, where most geeks & nerds in portland are employed.

Also, coasting downhill was inaccurate - the batteries charge whenever you take your foot off the gas and the car is in motion. They charge faster whenever you step on the brake. And, you get to watch all this on a handy tv-like screen!

The thing about all-electic cars - the power plants that produce the electricity to charge them are, in general, huge polluters and highly inefficient. This depends on where you live, whether your primary grid supply is fossil fuel or hydro or whatnot. I like the decentralized semi-autonomy of hybrid technology.

From toyota.com also epa.gov
"2005 EPA-estimated 60 city/51 highway/55 combined mpg"

A SULEV (super ultra low emission vehicle) such as the Prius generates 1 pound of smog-related emissions over 100,000 miles of driving.

Something to think about. Your mileage may vary.

George Will says it was $86.72 per barrel.

Hawaii Sets Caps on Wholesale Gas Prices

By AUDREY McAVOY
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 25, 2005; 6:23 AM

HONOLULU -- In an effort to gain some control over what motorists pay at the pump, Hawaii on Wednesday became the first state in the U.S. to set caps on the wholesale price of gasoline.

The 2004 law authorizing the caps was intended to force Hawaii's two refiners, Chevron Corp. and Tesoro Corp., to set their wholesale prices closer to mainland rates. Proponents of the law said the refiners were taking advantage of the small, isolated market to charge exorbitant prices.

...

The law does not establish a cap at the retail level. But if retailers keep their usual 12-cent-per-gallon markup, prices for regular unleaded in Honolulu could in theory rise to about $2.86 per gallon.

On Wednesday, the average retail price of regular unleaded in Honolulu was at a record $2.761, some 15 cents above the nationwide average. Statewide, prices average $2.84, the highest in the nation, according to AAA's Web site.

Prices on Maui have already topped $3 a gallon this week.

Direct comparisons between the current gas caps and wholesale prices are not possible because the oil companies do not release wholesale price data. The ceilings will be in effect through Sept. 4, with the commission releasing a new set of caps next week.

am I missing something? why would releasing more crude help if refinery capacity was already diminished?

2) New Orleans is a major incoming port for imported oil; obviously tankers headed for this port won't be able to dock here before the storm passes and infrastructure damage can be assessed.

I agree. It seems like this will be a much bigger issue for gas supply in the US that for crude oil. That's why it seems kind of thick of the newspaper reporters who write about the economic impact of this in terms of how its going to affect the price of crude oil. So oil went briefly over $70/barrel - that's still only a few percentage points move - the more relevant question is how this will affect gas price - but of course, that would take a little more thought to quantify - since there isn't a convenient nationwide statistic that a reporter can pull off of a WSJ web page.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/business/29cnd-oil.html?hp&ex=1125374400&en=14485bc398a21452&ei=5094&partner=homepage

"Crude oil for October delivery was up $2.57, or 3.8 percent, to $68.70 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange around midday, after climbing as high as $70.80 a barrel in overnight trading.

Gasoline wholesale prices were up 18 cents a gallon, to an average of $2.11."

So if you convert that wholesale gas price move to percentage terms, it's 9.3% - or more than twice the move in underlying crude prices. I'd expect it to get worse.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050901/katrina_gas_prices_hk3.html?.v=4

This is from an email I got a few minutes ago from my source on the ground in Atlanta. The question was "What am I going to be driving into tomorrow?"

a hell of a better situation than if you had drove in yesterday, or at least i
should hope so...all of the "sky is falling" talk is nonsense, but it is true
that prices are a lot higher now - on this morning's drive to work i saw the
cost of regular anywhere from $2.99 to $3.39 on the southside (which is
generally considered one of the cheaper areas)...so its expensive but not the
black hole the media was putting on yesterday...

to give you a little background - cox communications is the atlanta media
empire, owning the only atlanta daily paper (the AJC), the biggest local TV
station (WSB-TV), and by far the biggest AM radio station (WSB 750 - who knows, you may even be able to pick it up in MS) - from what i understand, the morning DJ on yesterday's radio broadcast starting all of this "better fill up while you can, the supply's going to run out soon" talk on the drivetime broadcast, and then neal boortz (oh geez, i hope you don't know who this guy is) apparently talked about it nonstop on his show yesterday, and as soon as he signed off at noon the city went into a panic...

[...] as i was driving back to
work my low fuel light came on - i thought "hmm, guess i need to fill up" but i
decided to just get back to work & head to the pumps at the end of the day - i
was a FULE - rumors started flying in the afternoon that prices were
skyrocketing, gas companies were running out of fuel, bush was going to shut
the gas stations down at 4pm, etc - i thought it quite odd that none of this
was on cnn, yahoo, or any website but it became clear that something crazy was going on outside...

so i left work at 4:45 and drove to my usual station, only to find them out
completely - the other stations on the main road were backed up with queues of
about 10 cars just trying to pull into the station! i had enough gas (i was
maybe at 1/16 of a tank) to make it to a more out-of-the-way station and sat in
a queue for about 15 minutes - i filled up, got honked at immediately because i
didn't peel out of my spot the second my ass sat down in my seat, and then got
landlocked in the parking lot as people were screaming, getting out of their
cars to argue, etc. - perhaps one of the most apocalyptic images in my
life...AM 750 was continuing to bate the public with the afternoon talk show
turning into "ATLANTA...GAS PANIC!!" (they actually created a little intro with
those words and some dundundun music to accompany it)...

now people have snapped out of it and 750/ajc/cox is apparently aware that
people, including some of their buddies in the gov't, are quite pissed off at
them and i think they're trying to atone for it - i changed my dial over from
NPR just to hear what they said this morning, and they barely touched on gas
prices...but just so you know, the lineforming at gas stations is nowhere to be
seen today thankfully...

way to go, brit hume.

*cue "Don't Fear the Reaper"*

in other news, 25K refugees headed west to San Antonio

maybe this will all result in other post-war-type population redistribution

"Gasoline customers check prices and leave at a BP station in Stockbridge, Ga., Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2005. Gasoline price soared Wednesday toward $3 a gallon in many parts of the country, surpassing that level in some places, such as this station, as key refineries and pipelines remained crippled by Hurricane Katrina, crimping supplies and leading to caps on the amount of fuel delivered to retailers. (AP Photo/Gene Blythe)"

I'm not really one to fly the flag for Chavez, but I have to admit this is great political move on his part.

insane to hear about atlanta. several people have told me about that. funny too considering we used to always gas up in GA before we left the state.

i don't like being poor or the economy sucking from this, but the green in my blood hopes this continues so maybe we can finally get some fuel efficiency and better urban planning and mass transit and end the nonsense.

if we start adjusting our lifestyles now, then maybe when oil production does decrease, we won't be so fucked.

i guess the right people haven't figured out how to make a fortune off efficiency yet.
m.

I don't think that this is an isolated occurrance.

STILL.

The best commute horror I've seen was a New York union rep who bought his family into the nearest home he could afford -- in Pennsylvania. The guy got up at like four-thirty every morning, sat through hours of Jersey and tunnel traffic to get into the city by nine, and then got home around eleven and went straight to bed. God help him if his kids ever grow up and start bitching that they hate him and he was never there for them.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050907/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_prices_46

"Oil Prices Fall; Gasoline Prices Decline"

Next media-worthy high will be $80 for christmas. February 2006 at the very latest.

....The weighted average price for all three grades surged more than 38 cents to nearly $3.04 a gallon between Aug. 26 and Sept. 9, said Trilby Lundberg, who publishes the semimonthly Lundberg Survey of 7,000 gas stations around the country.

[...]

Adjusted for inflation, the nation's previous high weighted average for all three grades was $1.38 a gallon in March 1981. That would be $3.03 in current dollars...

to the few economists in our crowd, these numbers look right to you, right?

I'm not an economist but my econ teacher in grad school (a commie from Russia, actually) always pointed us to bls.gov for inflation stuff. Which would mean that we passed historically high prices four cents ago.

September 11, 2005
Storm Stretches Refiners Past a Perilous Point
By JAD MOUAWAD

For the nation's oil refiners, Hurricane Katrina was a disaster long in the making.

Analysts and industry executives had for years feared the consequences of a storm ramming into the country's largest energy hub - a complex infrastructure that spans most of the coastline between Texas and Alabama, where nearly half of the nation's refineries are located.

Hurricane Katrina confirmed the worst predictions. Wreaking havoc along the coastal states, drowning New Orleans and leaving many dead, the storm shut down nearly all the gulf's offshore oil and gas production for over a week. Racing to restore operations, the industry has brought about 60 percent of that back.

But even more crucially, it knocked off a dozen refineries at the peak of summer demand, sending oil prices higher and gasoline prices to inflation-adjusted records.

The events of the last two weeks have demonstrated how close to the edge the country's refining system had been operating, even before the storm. Because the last American refinery was built nearly 30 years ago - with only a single new one now in the works - the problem is unlikely to disappear quickly.

As a consequence, even though crude oil prices have fallen back to pre-Katrina levels, prices for gasoline, heating oil, diesel and jet fuel are expected to remain higher than they were before the storm for a much longer period of time.

"There is now a greater realization that we don't have much extra capacity," said Edward H. Murphy, a refining specialist at the American Petroleum Institute, a trade and lobbying group. "It doesn't take a Katrina, but even a smaller event can create a dislocation in the market. Disasters like this can give you a billboard on the need to address this. We need more capacity."

The rapid run-up in oil prices over the last two years has translated into a boon for refiners after many years of meager returns. This year, the refining margin - the difference between the cost of buying crude oil and selling refined end products - has exceeded $20 a barrel, far above the long-term average of $6. That has meant record profits for oil companies and refiners and above-average stock performance on Wall Street.

With profits soaring, the nation's refiners are now being blamed by many drivers and politicians for contributing to the run-up in prices. Indeed, to critics of the industry, the higher profits are evidence of a policy to intentionally limit refining capacity to improve the bottom line.

"Oil companies have jacked up gasoline prices through a simple mechanism: reducing inventories and refining capacity," said Jamie Court, president of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, an advocacy group, whose views are widely shared by industry opponents.

"They are supposed to compete and bring the lowest price to consumers," Mr. Court said. "But the truth is that a small number of oil companies cheat by working together by artificially reducing supplies."

But that argument misses the point, said Bob Slaughter, the president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association.

"What's happened can be explained by the higher cost of crude oil, the difficulties in building new refineries and the disaster that cut right through the heart of the industry," Mr. Slaughter said.

Currently, four major refineries, owned by Chevron, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Murphy Oil, are either flooded or without power, and are likely to be out of commission for several weeks, perhaps months. Together, these refine 880,000 barrels a day, or 5 percent of domestic capacity. "It's very significant," said Colm McDermott, an oil analyst at John S. Herold Inc. The loss is equal to 1 percent of the world's refining capacity. "It's a global market and that's certainly enough to have an impact on a global level."

As many as 15 other refineries, also affected by the storm, are resuming production, but some are still operating at limited capacity.

"There's going to be a lot of pressure on these people to get things up and running and deal with the maintenance issues as they come up," said James W. Jones, a vice president at Turner, Mason & Company, a refining consultancy in Dallas.

Many parts of the industry are recovering rapidly. The most damage offshore was sustained by Royal Dutch Shell, which said Friday that its production, usually about 450,000 barrels a day, would be down by 40 percent through the end of the year.

But even as oil and gas production returns in the gulf, the time that it will take refineries to get back to full speed will be a key factor in determining how long product prices will remain elevated.

Under normal conditions, because of the close proximity of volatile materials, high pressure and fire, restarting a refinery is a dangerous process that can take anywhere between three to seven days.

In the refinery, oil is heated to around 1,110 degrees Fahrenheit, turned into vapor and then collected at various temperatures, creating products that are further refined to remove impurities, allowing for the production of gasoline, heating oil, diesel fuel and kerosene.

For the four damaged refineries - three are in the vicinity of New Orleans, and the fourth is in Pascagoula, Miss. - restarting will involve a much longer process. First, power must be restored. Once that happens, generators, pumps and other electrical equipment flooded by brackish water will need to be dried out. Removing salt sediments will add to the ordeal. Then the operators must check that none of their main systems have suffered any structural damage before firing them back up.

So far, none of the refineries have provided an estimate of how long all that will take. In its latest report, Chevron, whose 325,000 barrels-a-day refinery is the largest of the four, said "it will be days before a full estimate of damage is known or when operations can be safely brought back online."

Most Americans now pay more than $3 a gallon for gasoline - matching inflation-adjusted highs reached after the Iranian revolution in the late 1970's and early 1980's and the equivalent, on a per-barrel basis, to $126. Oil prices, which touched a high of $70.85 a barrel last week, now trade around $64 a barrel, still about $20 short of the record set in 1981.

"If we lose three or four refiners for two or three months, that shortfall is going to be very difficult to make up," said William E. Greehey, the chief executive of Valero, the nation's largest independent refiner. "I don't know how anyone can blame it on us when we've just had the worst natural disaster in the United States' history."

The refining outages prompted an international response from industrialized nations to send emergency stocks of oil and gasoline to the United States to plug the shortfall.

But that is only a temporary solution to a crisis that has been waiting to erupt for years.

Since the 1980's, the number of refiners in the United States has been cut in half. From a peak of 324 in 1981, the industry has shrunk to 149 as the smaller, less efficient and less profitable operators once protected by price controls closed, leaving mostly larger companies in place.

Refining capacity has fallen about 10 percent, to 17 million barrels a day, while oil consumption rose by 33 percent over the same 24-year period, to 20.8 million barrels a day.

Meanwhile, refiners have been increasing their skill in turning crude into useful products; efficiency improved by 27 percent between 1981 and 2004. Still, the difference must be made up by direct imports of refined products, with gasoline imports now at 1 million barrels a day.

As their numbers dwindled, most remaining refiners expanded their plants and added equipment to process more oil. Many refiners now typically run at 95 percent of capacity, a level that is dangerously high and that has led to a growing number of accidents in recent years.

In March, for example, a blast at BP's Texas City refinery, the country's third-largest, killed 15 and injured 170 people. The company was blamed by investigators with the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board for "systemic lapses."

Following the agency's recommendation, BP appointed an independent panel last month to review the "safety culture" of its American refining operations.

Only one project to build a new refinery is currently under way. For the last six years, Glenn McGinnis said he has been struggling to line up the permits, funding and oil supplies to build a refinery from scratch in a remote patch in Southwest Arizona.

"The fundamental reason why there has not been a new refinery built for years is really two reasons - economics and uncertainty," Mr. McGinnis said.

Traditionally, the profit margin for refineries has averaged about 6 percent, a rate of return too low to encourage much new investment. Added to that is the lengthy process involved in securing the permits from state and federal agencies. "If you take permits, and engineering, and building," Mr. McGinnis said, "you're talking about a 10-year horizon from the time you decide to build to the day the refinery is completed."

Another issue that has slowed expansion, refiners said, was the cost of complying with environmental regulations set in the 1990's under the Clean Air Act. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that refiners have spent $47 billion over the last decade to meet carbon-emission standards and low-sulfur regulations, with more investments needed through 2007. That, refiners say, is money not spent to raise capacity.

It has been cheaper to add refining capacity through acquisitions rather than new projects. Valero recently bought Premcor for $10,000 a barrel of capacity, a price many analysts deemed high. But that is well below the $16,000 a barrel that Arizona Clean Fuels, Mr. McGinnis' project, expects to invest.

Elsewhere in the world, some oil producers are planning to build new refineries. Saudi Arabia is one of them. "We cannot keep producing oil with no refineries," Ali Al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, told the industry newsletter Petroleum Argus a few months ago. "There is a limit."

While helpful, such moves abroad would mostly serve to shift the country's increasing reliance on foreign oil producers to a greater dependence on refiners abroad.

"We are going to be importing more products," Mr. Murphy of the American Petroleum Institute said. "That is a certainty if we don't expand our capacity. But the problem there is that you've changed one form of dependency for another."

Barnaby J. Feder contributed reporting for this article.

i didn't see it, but was the whole "ExxonMobil just claimed $10B in profit for the last quarter, highest of any company ever" thing in there?

a summation of that article in one sentence (something those eco-plundering wingnuts have been pointing out for the past few years, I might add...)

Because the last American refinery was built nearly 30 years ago - with only a single new one now in the works - the problem is unlikely to disappear quickly.

Since we're on the subject of adjusting for inflation, maybe it hasn't been a record number (excluding the fact that there's miles of gray area in determining corporate profit numbers on a balance sheet/income statement, haha Enron et al.)

What direction can I look in this country without concluding that we are totally fucked?

"We could be looking at gasoline lines and $4 gas, maybe even $5 gas, if this thing does the worst it could do," said energy analyst Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover. "This storm is in the wrong place. And it's absolutely at the wrong time," said Beutel.

shit. i still have a year before i can get a different car and go biodiesel.

And people mocked me for not driving.

Newsnight last night said that 25% of the USA's refineries are in the path of Hurrican Rita, though, so maybe moaning will be allowed in the next couple of weeks.

it's kinda cool that the prius comes with a built-in ashtray, for the environmentally conscious smoker.

http://www.toyota.com/images/vehicles/prius/accessories/ashtray_lg.jpg

yes, and the transportation infrastructure, economic infrastructure, physical landscape & relevant distances of america & england are exactly the same.

when i still held the job when i started this thread, no.

i am required to have an automobile in my current job, so i now make a daily commute of 20 miles. Fortunately, my non-commute work-related mileage is comped, but at a rate that usually lags behind changes in gasoline prices.

I have a bike now(thank God), so i can tool around on that.

Problem is that Portland mass-transit shuts down at 12:30am on some nights. You go see a show, you probably ain't taking the bus home.

contractor tech stuff. i go hither & yon for a sizable tech company in one of the suburbs.

also, my city & state have some financial troubles...

also, my city & state have some financial troubles...

no, it's called "different economic priorities."

commuting sux.

don't i know it. the stuff i do requires me physically be there. almost a facilities-type position.

no, it's called "different economic priorities."

there's that. there's also the "argumentative state legislation filled with urban liberals vs the representatives from the rural hickville of the rest of the state," but Cas can probably articulate it better than I.

seriously though, if my work gets done, who cares? ip phones cost just as much as those fancy office telephones and i could pretend like i'm just down the hall, a phone call away. high speed internet keeps me on top of most things. i'm on the wrong side of the firewall sometimes, which sucks, but lucky for me, most of the work on that side of the firewall sucks. (most, not all tho.)

things that suck are:
-kids and wife occasionally overstepping bounds and not leaving me alone.
-being too close to responsibility in my off hours.
-being too close to leisure in my on hours.
-no office social banter etc., loneliness, cabin fever.
-seeing my family too much. [i mean that in the nicest way possible.]
-being in charge of my own phone/network/computer... having to deal with this shit and PAY for this shit when it breaks or needs upgrading. (i'm a capable computer guy, but it still sucks.)
-office politics get a little more complicated cause there's no face time where you can really read the situation. paranoia can be a very bad thing.
-out of sight, out of mind. people forget you. so you constantly have to remind people that, "hey, i need something to do jackasses!" in order to keep fresh in the boss's and client's mind that, "oh yeah, msp rules, give him a raise!" or "yeah, we can't let msp go because he's the only one that knows anything about how XYZ works. we'll put him on ABC to keep him around."

m.

I don't know how much of a chain effect that problem (not even factoring in off-line refineries or anything) will have on people elsewhere.

I've never worked for a company that wasn't willing to work around my not having a car.. even if it meant coming in on the weekend to make up for it (which can be fun sometimes.. no one around, etc.) And I've been contracting/commuting over to Redmond (at M$%$%$s45454ft) from Seattle for well over two years now.

After all, gas is down to $2.09 out here!

This will improve a bit on last year's $300+ monthly bills, plus he finally listened to me and we've put up plastic window sheeting and curtains for some of the larger bay ones.

San Francisco, CA -- If the price of oil shot to $100 a barrel tomorrow, which American cities would be able to survive economically? SustainLane, the online resource for healthy, sustainable living (www.SustainLane.com), announced this week the ten U.S. cities best suited to withstand the shock of an oil crisis; those whose quality of life and economy would remain unspoiled in the face of exorbitant gas prices. According to the list, New York City would be the best place to live and work under these circumstances. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, would be the most vulnerable to such an event.

The top ten best prepared cities are, in order:

1. New York, NY
2. Boston, MA
3. San Francisco, CA
4. Chicago, IL
5. Philadelphia, PA
6. Portland, OR
7. Honolulu, HI
8. Seattle, WA
9. Baltimore, MD
10.Oakland, CA

"Your oil dollars paid for my oil armour! HAHAHAH!!"

Seriously, DC Metro is fubared if it ever comes to that, unless you live and work in the city, or maybe in Arlington or Old Town Alexandria.