Gas Price Outrage!

[dai bread]

In Japan they fill your tank, wipe ALL your windows, then, when you've paid, stop the street traffic and bow you out of the station. Wonderful, and worth the high price you pay for petrol there. Even higher than ours.

[barfle]

I don't think I paid much attention to the price of gas until I had to start paying for my own. The least I ever paid was .259 during a gas war, probably in 1963 or 1964.

Prices in Vahjinyah are running about 30¢/gal below where they were a month ago.

[Giant Communist Robot]

Gas Build has dropped 13 weeks in a row; supplies are less than same-time-last-year. Crude, however, is still growing.

[jamiebk]

Enjoy your (probably temporary) reductions...Our here in NorCal we are still above $4.25...what's wrong with this picture? They tell us that several refineries are "down" for maintenance. How long do they think that lame excuse will wash?

[Trumpetmaster]

Enjoy your (probably temporary) reductions...Our here in NorCal we are still above $4.25...what's wrong with this picture? They tell us that several refineries are "down" for maintenance. How long do they think that lame excuse will wash?

It's price manipulation...

I just paid $4.40 for premium to and Paid $46 to fill my car.
I remember filling my car for just under $10
I have a Subaru and love the handling plus safety of the vehicle.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

I remember filling my car for just under $10
I have a Subaru and love the handling plus safety of the vehicle.

I remember filling my Bug, taking the change to the Jack-in-the-Box and getting lunch. Starting with a $5 bill.

This was some time ago...

[Giant Communist Robot]

Paid $4.26 in Honolulu

[Haggis@wk]

Enjoy your (probably temporary) reductions...Our here in NorCal we are still above $4.25...what's wrong with this picture? They tell us that several refineries are "down" for maintenance. How long do they think that lame excuse will wash?

We increasingly import refined gasoline because of our own limited refinery capacity and the EPA restrictions that forces refineries to shut down and it ain't gonna get any better!!!!

Remember, this increase in imported refined gasoline comes at a time when our dependence on imported crude is falling. Our domestic output (despite the best efforts of the Obama administration) has consistently increased. Since 2005, foreign imports have dropped from 60 percent of U.S. consumption to 45 percent last year, according to U.S. Department of Energy data.

But, we can't make enough gasoline and that inability is laid directly at the feet of the current president's administration.

Jamie, the number and capacity of U.S. refineries peaked in 1981, and, since then, 171 plants have closed, although the remaining plants have increased output to offset a loss of production. Though most of this reduction has been caused by the low profit potential of refineries, others see a significant cause in “extremely tight environmental restrictions, not-in-my-backyard community opposition, and the high cost of new construction.” Refinery profit margins have played a role in recent gasoline price hikes. The EIA suggests that “The sizable jump in retail prices this year reflects not only the higher average cost of crude oil compared to previous years, but also an increase in U.S. refining margins on gasoline (the difference between refinery wholesale gasoline prices and the average cost of crude oil) from an average of $0.34 per gallon in 2010 to $0.45 per gallon in 2011 and $0.42 per gallon in 2012.”


Though EPA’s official position is that every action they take is all benefit and no cost, facts—and gas prices—are stubborn things.

We have an Energy Secretary who wants to see Europe level gas prices ($10 in London recently, I’m planning our next UK trip) I thought he meant equivalent taxes but now, I’m not so sure, just the prices alone are already half that.

We have, IMHO, a runaway EPA who has declared war on Americans. CO2 and water vapor are pollutants? Really?

[Giant Communist Robot]

There may be a demand slump resulting in the free-fall we see in the gas build. I see East Coast refineries are at only 69% utilization. Raw data available
here every Wed.

[Giant Communist Robot]

The sizable jump in retail prices

I'm not sure what's in play here. We have had a 40 cent increase since the end of last year, but at the same time we are down 18 cents from last May. This is at the same time as we have the refinery margin increase. It does look to me like demand has caused prices to drop, and the margin increase is an attempt to retain similar profits.

Here's a "crude" breakdown of the costs for gasoline:

crude--65%
refining--15%
taxes--10%

source:EIA

[Giant Communist Robot]

There may be a demand slump resulting in the free-fall we see in the gas build. I see East Coast refineries are at only 69% utilization. Raw data available
here every Wed.

Well, not this Wed because of the holiday. Tomorrow.

[Haggis@wk]

PEAK OIL? WHAT PEAK OIL?Bazhenov-Neocomian oil formation covers 80 times the land area of the Bakken in the US and Canada.

This formation has 126 trillion barrels of oil equivalent biomass

!?!?! WOW!

[Giant Communist Robot]

The Peak Oil studies I have seen lately are done by country. The use a logistics curve (as did Hubbert) and fit the data with a Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. To me they look quite good. For example, Saudi Arabia has a forecast peak of May 2017. Of course this kind of stuff can only be done with what we know--new discoveries of oil change everything. I think we all recognize that none of us alive today will see us run out of oil. But we could see some horrific prices. And some places may run out of oil.

I have been playing with logistic curves for a few months now and I love them. Cesare Marchetti--a guy who seems intensely interested in absolutely everything--has done a bunch of them. He uses a Fisher-Pry transform (Levenberg-Marquardt tends to overestimate) so the data plots as a straight line; the saturation point is the forecast end of the data. He uses the curve to show that Mozart, even though he died young, was probably finished composing; and had the British Navy used the curve in 1850 they would have seen their decline from pre-eminence by 1950. Here's a linkie to some of his papers.Check those written in the 1990's; scroll down until you see Looking Forward--Looking Backward: A Very Simple Mathematical Model for Very Complex Social Systems.

Here's a linkie to a Java based package from Rockefeller University that plots logistic curves. You can key data in directly, or upload it from older version Excel files.

[jamiebk]

PEAK OIL? WHAT PEAK OIL?Bazhenov-Neocomian oil formation covers 80 times the land area of the Bakken in the US and Canada.

This formation has 126 trillion barrels of oil equivalent biomass

!?!?! WOW!

Cool...now we can go to war against Russia too...

[Haggis@wk]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22524597 “

The IEA said it expected the US to overtake Russia as the world's biggest gas producer by 2015 and to become "all but self-sufficient" in its energy needs by about 2035.”

If, as I suspect, we will remain politically engaged in the Middle East even after we become self-sufficient in oil what reason will the Left give for our reason to be there if it is not “all about the ooooiiiiilllll”??

Jes askin’

[Shapley]

Our "slave-like devotion to Israel"?

[Haggis@wk]

Our "slave-like devotion to Israel"?

Darn, you're right, how did I miss that??? Possibly our soon to be official "outreach to Muslim countries impoverished by our oil wealth"??

[Trumpetmaster]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22524597 “

The IEA said it expected the US to overtake Russia as the world's biggest gas producer by 2015 and to become "all but self-sufficient" in its energy needs by about 2035.”

If, as I suspect, we will remain politically engaged in the Middle East even after we become self-sufficient in oil what reason will the Left give for our reason to be there if it is not “all about the ooooiiiiilllll”??

Jes askin’

I thought we import crude that is then produced into gasoline?
Wouldn't we still need to import crude oil to produce?
Please correct my ignorance here...

[Trumpetmaster]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22524597 “

The IEA said it expected the US to overtake Russia as the world's biggest gas producer by 2015 and to become "all but self-sufficient" in its energy needs by about 2035.”

If, as I suspect, we will remain politically engaged in the Middle East even after we become self-sufficient in oil what reason will the Left give for our reason to be there if it is not “all about the ooooiiiiilllll”??

Jes askin’

I thought we import crude that is then produced into gasoline?
Wouldn't we still need to import crude oil to produce?
Please correct my ignorance here...

[Shapley]

Fracing has brought a resurgence to the American oil industry, such that our crude oil output has grown markedly. That, coupled with a reduction in demand, has pushed us closer to self-sufficiency.

Keep in mind that, despite the increase in domestic production, we are far below where we stood in the 1970s. In 1979 we prohibited the export of crude oil from the United States, except to Canada and Mexico.