FINALLY! Paying $80 to fill up my Tahoe is killing me. I'm looking forward to more nice weather so I can commute to work on my bike more and more.
Falling oil prices aren't exactly great news, because it's not supply driven. The reason gas prices are falling slightly is that demand is decreasing, which is an indicator that we may be entering another recession. Good times. Good times.
So when oil prices go up, it's bad, and Obama is awful, and when they go down, it's bad and Obama is awful? I know you just said a recession. But how doesit work that way, but not used as a good sign that people are driving more?
The problem is that we're not using fossil fuels to give ourselves energy independence. President Obama's regulations pretty much shut down the Gulf after the BP spill. Sure, he's offering leases now, after the platforms have left. That's why there are now 12,000 fewer oil workers in the Gulf than before the spill. Fuck, Exxon just found a 700M barrel oil field in the Gulf, but they're concerned they won't receive a lease to go get it. He's fighting the reopening of the pipeline from Canada to Texas, supposedly because of concerns for the possibility of "leaks", even though the pipeline has been certified twice by independent panels. When you look deeper, you find that the Obama Administration doesn't want to encourage the pipeline being extended to the Alberta Tar Sands. They've fought against fracking, even though the vast majority of geologists say its safe. They shut down water rights to the Colorado River for shale oil fields on the West Slope and in Wyoming. Everywhere you look, domestic oil production is being discouraged, even as we find new and vast fields. Meanwhile we go down to Brazil and give them billions to pump oil off their coast [video=youtube;Q7FrK8tNKqA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7FrK8tNKqA[/video] Luckily it's not a plan or anything... [video=youtube;CNSZ62xiD4M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNSZ62xiD4M[/video] The bottom line is that this country is hurting economically and lowering energy costs would help a lot. Remember, oil just isn't used for gasoline, so the answer just isn't driving less. It's used for power generation, lubricants and all sorts of industrial and consumer goods. High oil prices ripple through the economy.
If prices were falling because supply was increasing, I'd agree with you. But prices are falling because we aren't demanding as much because our economy is slowing. I don't think a slowing economy is good news by any measure.
I would take higher gas prices with a strong / growing economy over lower gas prices as a hurting economy.
My thinking is that gas/oil prices are so tied into inflation. The cost of making, transporting and selling goods are almost all somehow tied in one way or another to that. Therefore, the lower the gas/oil, t6e more it checks inflation- and that's good for the economy and can even help to create jobs in a round about way.
Too bad OPEC wasn't going to increase production yesterday. they're still the man behind the curtain.
prices have been inflating largely because of Wall Street speculations on oil futures. This only became a legal in 2000, so clearly it's Obama's fault http://money.howstuffworks.com/oil-speculation-raise-gas-price.htm STOMP
while most focus on one piece of the jigsaw, Maxiep has a great grasp of the whole picture. The other factor that has not been mentioned is that the value of our dollar drops as we print more and more, reflecting a higher "cost".
Notice that the slowing economy is really a slowing recovery - the economy is still growing - just at a slower pace. This does not bode well for the theory that we are consuming less because our economy is shrinking. It is a lot more reasonable that what we are seeing is the continued success of the efficiency drive - our new cars are on average 3 MPG better in 2011 than they were in 2007 (a little better for light trucks). Let's look at the numbers. The US Market is around 11-12m cars a year, let's make it a round 1m cars per month. The average yearly mileage per car is 15000 - for the sake of simplicity, let's make it 1000 miles per month. On average, we are saving 333 million gallons a month by replacing these older vehicles with newer ones. Of course, what is really happening is that we are having a cascading effect - because these 2007 cars are bought as used cars and replace older cars - usually bigger/more polluting vehicles that were all the rage in the mid and early 2000s - add the fact that the average is by model - not actually by sales - and one is to suspect that a lot of people are downsizing their cars - so the average mileage indicated is probably bigger than this for the newer vehicles sold (vs. offered for sale) - which are the vehicles that usually see the big mileage as daily drivers. Of course, next month we will add another 333 million gallons reduction and the same the month after and the same the month after. This adds up quite a bit. I think that what you are seeing here is more efficient vehicles combined with better educated consumers combined with the initial oil market panic over the Libya situation going away bringing oil prices down.
The global demand for oil is increasing. The Saudi's plan to increase production to fill the void from Libya & Syria. Oil prices are determined solely by the Nymex (oil speculators.)
