US Gas Prices Fall Below $4 per Gallon; First Time Since March

https://www.gasbuddy.com/go/399-gas

by xnx • 4 years ago

111 168 4 years ago

gasbuddy.com

digdugdirk• 4 years ago

Perfect, I've been looking for a new (used) car, historically this means electric/hybrid car prices will drop quickly.

Is there a technical term for the lack of sensible long term planning in large groups?

robcohen• 4 years ago

Idiocracy?

hoelle• 4 years ago

Is there a technical term for the lack of sensible long term planning in large groups?

Civilization.

TheAdamist2• 4 years ago

There are still massive disruptions in the supply chain leading to a shortage of new, and used vehicles.

Until there's more supply than demand you aren't going to see much price movement.

Various news articles are reporting people flipping new Tesla's to used car dealers for more than they paid.

However used prices don't seem to be spiking as much as they were.

germinalphrase• 4 years ago

Have manufacturers stopped production or are they just piling up unfinished vehicles?

renewiltord• 4 years ago

About the closest phenomenon I can think of is normalcy bias.

endtime• 4 years ago

Civilizational inadequacy. See also: https://equilibriabook.com/inadequacy-and-modesty/

bfung2• 4 years ago

For those who want to see the historical data: https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts

gasbuddy has been great for collecting this data for all the time it's been around.

qbasic_forever6• 4 years ago

Enjoy it while it lasts, they're going to start refilling the strategic oil reserve in October IIRC and that's going to get interesting with prices again. If you didn't know, the US has been emptying its oil reserve at an enormous rate (I think fully 1/3 of it is gone now) to try to keep prices low.

paulpauper• 4 years ago

if we assume efficient markets, then this is priced in

qbasic_forever6• 4 years ago

We'll see what happens. The timing is terrible with Europe going into an enormous energy crunch as winter nears too. The fact that multiple countries (Germany, UK) are warning citizens and preparing them for loss of power and heating, steps to reduce power usage, etc. this winter is concerning.

simonh5• 4 years ago

If we assumed efficient markets the price of oil would never change.

maxwell_smart• 4 years ago

They'll start refilling it a month before the mid-term elections?

notyourwork• 4 years ago

I don't think strategy around managing oil reserves factors in elections with respect to when and how much they maintain in the reserve.

JumpCrisscross6• 4 years ago

the US has been emptying its oil reserve at an enormous rate (I think fully 1/3 of it is gone now) to try to keep prices low

Markets barely priced it in on the way up. I doubt they’ll react going down. What those reserves may have done is keep supply steady.

t-3• 4 years ago

Prices being sticky against increases to supply is to be expected. It's not like these are mechanical processes that happen automatically, people set those prices. Of course they won't price in information that makes the price drop.

vidanay• 4 years ago

Strategic Oil Capacitor

xapata2• 4 years ago

As if the US oil reserve has any effect on international oil prices.

shiftpgdn• 4 years ago

Yes? If I take a gallon out of one bucket and put it in another I’ve altered the total amount of gallons in the second bucket.

qbasic_forever6• 4 years ago

When the US has to start buying millions and millions of barrels to refill the reserve (as obligated by congress/the law), then yes it will definitely affect everyone's oil price.

missedthecue• 4 years ago

Relative to daily US/global petroleum demand, the stategic oil reserve really isn't that big. I don't think it will cause a noticeable impact in prices.

eloff3• 4 years ago

With an inelastic good like oil, small changes in supply can cause big price swings. The reason is people don't curtail their use much as the price rises.

rwcarlsen• 4 years ago

It's not the magnitude of demand that affects price - it's the price elasticity - the demand and supply curves matter. Demand for petroleum (e.g. gas, etc.) is very stiff - so small changes in supply can have large impacts on price.

advisedwang• 4 years ago

I think fully 1/3 of it is gone now

28% since the 2011 peak: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...

bilsbie3• 4 years ago

Why didn’t we fill the reserves in 2020 when oil prices were negative?

babypuncher• 4 years ago

Were they not already full?

TAForObvReasons• 4 years ago

Because it was near max capacity in 2020? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/US_Strat...

rglover• 4 years ago

Drillers, meanwhile, say they are balking at the government’s offer to take their oil because it is hard for them to move it from inland fields to the SPR delivery sites on the Gulf Coast, and because they worry placing it in the reserve could compromise the oil’s quality.

See: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-usa-reserves/d...

---

Oil transport barges were making bank around that time (I made a decent rip selling calls on co's in that industry) selling tank space on ships at a premium to handle the overflow.

imtringued2• 4 years ago

Because storing oil costs money.

koolba• 4 years ago

Because the Democrats filibustered to remove it from the March 2020 stimulus bill: https://rollcall.com/2020/03/25/oil-purchase-to-fill-strateg...

It wouldn’t have been negative, but closer to $25/barrel. Still quite a bit smarter than buying it $100/barrel now.

fiat_fandango2• 4 years ago

Curious where this kind of federal oil and gas strategy is shared publicly? I'm just a tech bro, but it's always interesting to talk to my friends in private equity who work on energy (although supposedly this is a lackluster division of PE). It sounds like the current presidential admin has absolutely hammered the ability for oil extractors to finance exploration / development to extract new oil?

00000111114• 4 years ago

Ya thats another misconception:

1. Most oil and gas production is on private land within the United States 2. Oil and Gas firms have leases to drill on public land that they are choosing not to produce. In short, they make more money with the price oil is high. Just look up their old profits and compare those to oil prices. 3. The Federal Government has many tax breaks and handouts for oil and gas firms. its in the billions per year : https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs...

00000111114• 4 years ago

Ya I think the there is a big misconception on this size of this reserve compared to this size of US demand.

The reserve holds about 714 million barrels.

The USA uses about 19 million barres per day.

714/19 = 36 day supply of oil the US.

Further more the oil in the reserve needs to be pumped out, refined and moved to fueling stations.

Perhaps is fair to say the the strategic oil reserve helped keep gas below $10 per gallon but not below $7

qbasic_forever6• 4 years ago

Yes that's exactly what it did, it kept us from seeing $10/gallon gas at the pump which would be immediately catastrophic to the entire American way of life. Even with $5/gallon gas like now and earlier in the summer we have seen pretty dramatic inflation in food and goods--diesel is enormously expensive and increased trucking costs just push up the prices of goods higher.

So now imagine what's going to happen when that is turned off, and even worse when the oil market sees pressure from the US buying millions and millions of barrels to take them off the market and throw them back into the reserve...

gnicholas2• 4 years ago

I understand they will stop depleting the strategic oil reserve this fall. Have they announced that they're going to start refilling it at that time, or will they do so strategically over some period of time?

JumpCrisscross6• 4 years ago

If Powell pulls this off, as in we’re below 5% CPI YoY by Halloweeen, without jobless numbers spiking, I’d be inclined to believe we actually know something about monetary policy. (We’re currently seeing 2.5% over 5 [1] and 10 [2] years.)

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T5YIE

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10YIE

jmyeet5• 4 years ago

This has almost nothing to do with Powell. The demand spike began easing months ago as gasoline inventories began to go up.

The thing about the Fed and both parties is their only tool for tackling inflation is to suppress worker wages by spiking unemployment. That's what monetary policy is designed to do. But it's not the only way to tackle demand.

But you can do the same thing with taxation (eg Spain's windfall tax [1]). Why is it no one in US politics talking about that? The answer should be obvious: both parties exist to protect the capital-owning class and won't do anything that migh thurt profits.

[1] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/spa...

JumpCrisscross6• 4 years ago

their only tool for tackling inflation is to suppress worker wages by spiking unemployment

This is nonsense. Unemployment is down.

Raising rates reduces aggregate demand in fairly direct ways, e.g. through home construction and renovation. To the degree workers are getting screwed it’s by real incomes being squeezed by inflation.

kube-system• 4 years ago

Given the magnitude of the disruption that caused the current economic situation, it's amazing that we've done as well as we have.

Server6• 4 years ago

Maybe, but I think some of it is just luck. Supply chain issues are starting to soften, finally. It all feels to me like we're still dealing with COVID bullwhip issues/echoes. The Fed has just been trying to manage the wave.

jeromegv• 4 years ago

Alot of people have been predicting that this inflation was driven by supply chain problems and not by printing money.

I don't have enough information to give my opinion either way, but if indeed inflation is going back down, this wasn't luck, this was what they many were banking on.

curiousllama• 4 years ago

Yes, and - “managing the wave” that well is really hard. I didn’t think we’d be able to do it. If we do, it suggests we know something, at least, about monetary policy.

hervature4• 4 years ago

I think you are being very semiconductor focused if you describe it as "starting to soften". Lumber, copper, and meats are all at pre-pandemic prices and key drivers of inflation. Even some electronics categories (cameras) are dropping significantly which is why I think you said "starting". In my opinion, gas/oil/petroleum is the last thing keeping inflation up. If gas drops by 20-30%, things like plastics, cement, and anything that requires transport (food) will return to pre-pandemic levels as well. Some people will blame the war but the clear driver of all of this is Biden signalling to domestic producers that they will face hostility. The stopping of new oil production didn't move the needle itself but rather that CAPEX definitely was reduced which meant recovering production levels has taken longer than it should have.

TaylorAlexander• 4 years ago

This is a tangent (not directly related to your comment) but I find it funny that whoever is in office, their political opponents will blame a poor economy on them (even if the issue is global), but if things do improve, whether the administration is responsible or not, those blaming the problems on them will suddenly have to change course and say it didn't have anything to do with the administration!

tablespoon2• 4 years ago

Maybe, but I think some of it is just luck. Supply chain issues are starting to soften, finally. It all feels to me like we're still dealing with COVID bullwhip issues/echoes. The Fed has just been trying to manage the wave.

Weren't the high gas prices specifically fallout from the Ukraine-war? Is this an indication that the sanctions against Russia aren't working (e.g. they've had enough time to adjust to exporting to China/India, and their previous customers have had time to start importing more from the places China/India stopped importing from).

Is inflation falling in other areas?

OrangeMonkey• 4 years ago

You almost certainly know more than me on this topic. I am freely admitting ignorance, compared to you, before I comment.

That said, I cannot see any circumstance that exists that would result in bringing inflation to our target rates without a recession and much higher rates. From what I have read on fintwit, we have never brought inflation down without raising our interbank lending rate above the inflation rate.

What is worst is that wages are increasing too - "wage-price spiral". Except due to war, the only way we have broken a wage price spiral before is via a deep recession.

So in our future, we have either a large increase in the interbank lending that would result in zombie companies going out of business, and investment liquidity drying up leading to a recession - or we accept high inflation and the wage->price spiral which will naturally (at extremes) lead to a recession.

Look, I'm asking for your insight here - I can't see a soft landing because its historically not happened. I can't see a path without recession due to the choices we have to make. How is a soft landing here possible?

gregw134• 4 years ago

You forgot to mention governments going out of business too. Half of US debt (15 trillion) needs to refinanced in less than two years, which is unaffordable if interest is above inflation.

lumost• 4 years ago

If you assume that productivity is fixed, and that relative shares of profits, wages, and taxes are fixed. Then the above is true. The reality is that the above have complex non-stationary relationships. Labor can get more expensive and more efficient. Speculative investment can be reduced, and capital/government can reduce/increase their share of the economy.

A soft-landing was possible post-WW2 US economy, where the US both inflated away large debts and maintained high GDP growth rates. We'll see how things shake out.

mjevans2• 4 years ago

I am NOT an expert, and this is just my OPINION.

From my perspective the root cause of inflation is a lack of housing (near where people need / really want it). Compared to my parents it is a herculean task for someone younger than 40-50 to get a starter house, near a stable job, that actually has a career path where settling down makes sense. Particularly where I grew up / currently live (near Seattle, WA).

Maybe houses are cheap in some places in the country, but those places are not where I am or need to be.

We need an overhaul on building policies. I'd like to see tougher building CODE (better built houses) and much simpler zoning with less red tape. Sustainable, tax base vs maintenance expenditure positive, already environmentally impact ready interface packages on the shelf for areas that can be built to provide the features an area needs. More like simulated city planner games.

As a deflationary measure, tax the rich for real. Instead of handing out more stimulus that will be priced into the inflation of goods; a hidden tax on the non land-owning middle class; increase buying power and quality of live for all by decreasing the wealthy's advantage and increasing the commons and public works.

deathanatos• 4 years ago

I'm also not an expert, but heck that's what the comments section is for.

Hitting the Fed's target would require deflation. We would need to average -0.5% month over month inflation for every month from now until the end of the year. (N.b., that's for the Fed's target, not the 5% mark in the comment you are responding to. 5% would be significantly easier, at the obvious cost of it being 5% YoY inflation.)

What is worst is that wages are increasing too

My understanding from what I have read is that this is largely on the lower end. E.g., Amazon offering $15/h is driving those earning minimum wage up … but this is just pushing real minimum wage closer to its historic highs — which it is well beneath, so I don't think this should necessarily drive inflation. Price would go up not so much because labor costs, but because corporate greed wouldn't want labor capturing their fair share of the profit.

Tech in particular has been article after article about layoffs, or how the VC money is stopping. (And this matches my experience as an "normal" IC eng: I've lost >10% of my salary since the start of the pandemic.)

Even should inflation recover, then there is the problem of the higher interest rates for anyone in my age bracket who might like a mortgage some day. Housing market when.

tempsy• 4 years ago

Now rents need to come down.

paganel2• 4 years ago

Most probably the employment figures only tell half of the story. As long as one has to get two jobs in order to have a decent living in many parts of the US then I don’t think said employment rate tells the whole story.

lbotos• 4 years ago

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=SCT1 - We've just crossed pre-covid employment levels

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=SCT4 - Across the same time period there are less people with multiple jobs (as reported to the FED)

You can see more specific data breakdowns here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?rid=50&eid=2698#s...

I think your point is "many poor people still need two jobs to make a living" and while that's probably true, we have many people who are now back to work, and many of them are not working two jobs. Is it because their second job went out of business? Unclear.

paulmd2• 4 years ago

having two jobs doesn't affect the employment rate, you are still either employed or not. And if you work five minutes a month doing some dishes for your neighbor for pay, you are still technically employed, too.

it could affect the job hires rate, of course, but, the measure hasn't changed, people are just looking for reasons to nitpick it

ren_engineer2• 4 years ago

we are still negative GDP growth which is a disaster even if unemployment stays where it is, because it means our economy is becoming less productive and less efficient. Which isn't really that shocking when you consider money is being printed and handed out rather than allocated efficiently. Bunch of debt accumulated with not much to show for it

The US is becoming the equivalent of the startup meme of losing money on every sale and making it up with volume

UncleOxidant• 4 years ago

How is falling productivity (and it has been tanking the last couple of quarters) caused by easy money policies? Seems like it's more related to the large number of folks who have gotten covid over the last six months or so. That and supply chain disruptions (at least partly due to China's 0-covid policies shutting down a lot of factories there - so that can be blamed on covid as well).

cjsplat• 4 years ago

Except gross domestic income continues to grow, so either it or GDP is wrong.

Maybe the people with a vested interest in making things look bad are driving the dialog.

adam_arthur• 4 years ago

Core PCE has been accelerating MoM the last few months. Wage inflation has been accelerating

There is no slowing of inflation in measured data, aside from leading indicators, like commodities, but speculation and US reserve releases have been a big driver in the downward move in oil prices. Structural oil price equilibrium is likely to be over $100/barrel once US reserve releases stop on November 1st

All market moves have just been anticipation at this point. Wage trends imply that core inflation is likely to average 4%+ as a steady state, even if headline CPI has peaked. If this bears out, the 10y treasury could easily run to 4-5%

There is almost certainly a coming whiplash effect from consumers reaching max tapping out of credit, that's the only thing that could realistically solve inflation at this point, aside from stronger Fed action.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCLACBW027SBOG

Keep in mind markets greatly overestimated forward inflation through the 80s-90s, it's equally likely they may perpetually underestimate inflation in the 2020's. Market forward measures are not a strong source of accuracy if you reference history. Just look at what the market expectations of inflation were for most of 2021 (far below realized inflation in 2022)

lamontcg• 4 years ago

Oil/gasoline is just commodities inflation, which is cyclical and probably bullwhip effects.

Core CPI is also running over 5% and wages are increasing at over 5%. The only way to really change the labor market is by destroying jobs and making people who lose their jobs desperate enough to take whatever they can find. That'll only happen through increasing unemployment via a recession.

The Fed is going to have its eyes focused on Core CPI which won't change until employment numbers change. We haven't seen wage inflation like this before, but this time there actually are some important differences. Boomers are retiring, immigration was reduced by Trump and those low levels maintained by Biden, COVID killed and disabled quite a lot of people, and a good chunk of people are just fed up with the way employees get treated and unionization is rising. That isn't gong to go away because oil prices drop.

And oil is dropping due to fears of a recession and demand destruction, so the markets are displaying "backwardation" where the further you go out the more the futures prices drop.

The 5-year and 10-year inflation expecations are likely pricing in a recession which will cause the demand destruction to cap inflation (and note that the effect of these policies to cap inflation also lower long term interest rates).

It is interesting how many Millennials are about to get an economics lesson. Surprisingly there's more to economics than just the "money printer go brrrr...." meme.

jmyeet5• 4 years ago

The politics around this have been really interesting to watch as different people cherrypick (or just manufacture) evidence to push a particular agenda.

I stumbled across a creator on Tiktok who knows a lot about the oil and gas industry [1] who has been illuminating (to me at least) about what's been going on here.

Here's my summary: we haven't had a shortage of oil production although that was off its peak. The real problem was a lack of refining capacity that was caught off-guard by this year's massive increase in demand. There are a bunch of reasons for this. Some capacity was lost due to a hurricane. Other capacity was offline as certain plants were being transitioned to a renewables future when the demand was lower and it wasn't anticipated it would return so strongly and quickly.

Have Exxon, Chevron, etc made bank with the spike in prices? Absolutely. If you want to propose something like what Spain has done with a windfall tax to fight inflation (something no politician in the US talks about) then I'm on board.

But you can't just turn on an oil well or a refining plant. It takes time. Oil companies, for all the heinous crap they have done, antiticpated this demand spike was temporary better than any politican has.

On the political side you see Democrats desperate for prices to go down so they get slaughtered less in the midterms and Republicans desperate for this not to happen for the inverse reason (eg Republicans wanted to stop selling oil from the SPR).

But the warning signs of this price drop coming were evident months ago as inventory levels of gasoline started to go up.

[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@mrglobaltoo

bena2• 4 years ago

If you want to propose something like what Spain has done with a windfall tax to fight inflation (something no politician in the US talks about) then I'm on board.

There were absolutely talks about a windfall tax.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/7061

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3527261-biden...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-15/progressi...

ceeplusplus• 4 years ago

There were talks. It would've never passed the Senate.

throw0101a3• 4 years ago

The Odd Lots podcast had two episodes on this a few weeks ago.

"Why It's So Hard to Get the Oil Taps Turned Back On"

* https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/e1ad7bcd-9c53-4ebc-b0fa-aeb...

* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-its-so-hard-to-get...

"A Concrete Plan to Bring the Price of Oil Down Right Now"

* https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/896a08ad-4cbc-4041-8c01-aeb...

* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-concrete-plan-to-bri...

mgfist2• 4 years ago

for all the heinous crap they have done, antiticpated this demand spike was temporary better than any politican has.

It's not that they necessarily anticipated the spike and subsequent fall; it's more to do with investor dynamics. Oil is a traditionally huge boom and bust field and is incredibly capital intensive. After the bust in the mid 2010s, coupled with huge investor outflows due to ESG reasons, the message that oil companies got from investors was to minimize capital spending (because they had little) and focus on profitability. So when this cycle came around, few were looking to do commit the capital to lift supply up. And now that demand is swinging back down, I suspect the bust cycle will look less dramatic then it has in the past.

jmyeet5• 4 years ago

And now that demand is swinging back down, I suspect the bust cycle will look less dramatic then it has in the past.

I've seen people who seem to know a lot about this industry make this point. We probably won't see $1.50-2/g prices but next year we'll probably see ~$2.50/g and that's probably a good thing, better than a more extreme boom and bust cycle.

rank02• 4 years ago

How on earth is a windfall tax supposed to reduce inflation? Adding taxes makes goods/services more expensive.

You would be removing the incentive to produce more oil. Why would an energy company invest enormous amounts of time and capital to increase production and refining capacity if the government seizes their profits?

Nobody enjoys producing oil. Profit is the only motivation to perform such a difficult/unpleasant task.

jmyeet5• 4 years ago

How on earth is a windfall tax supposed to reduce inflation? Adding taxes makes goods/services more expensive.

Because a lot of price hikes haven't been because of inflation. They've exceeded inflation. Another word for that is "profiteering" (or "price gouging"). It's the reason why it's typically iellgal to profiteer off of a natural disaster, for example.

Put another way: Exxon, Chevron, etc are raising prices not because costs have increased but because they can. The record profits they've all recently announce bear that out.

So a windfall tax does a similar thing to increasing interest rates: it's a form of wealth redistribution. Raising interest rates diverts money to banks and investors. Taxation diverts money from corporate profits to the government who can then use that money for the people who are most vulnerable because of, say, the skyrocketing cost of gas and rent.

simonh5• 4 years ago

We were celebrating yesterday because we found petrol (ok, gas) for less that £1.80 a litre. For context that's about $10 a gallon. Thank you Costco!

_benedict• 4 years ago

It's about $8. The US gallon is smaller than the UK gallon.

Miraste2• 4 years ago

I didn't know that, that's deranged. Like US and UK tons.

throw0101a3• 4 years ago

Because of course it is…

Regardless, this site has prices in various countries in various volumetric units and currencies:

* https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/

bfung2• 4 years ago

Costco gas also the cheapest in its geographical area in the US. The only (first world) problem is that the queue time is usually 8 or 9 cars back (at least in California).

gnicholas2• 4 years ago

The Redwood City (CA) Costco is about the same price as the cheapest station on Woodside Road (2 miles away, and closer to many neighborhoods). I have a Costco card but never go there for gas anymore due to the wait.

ace2358• 4 years ago

In Australia it finally fell back down below $2/L (from $2.20 -> $1.75). Which is a crazy swing in price in such a short amount of time.

olig15• 4 years ago

I filled up today at a Tesco for £1.74, it’s definitely starting to come down in the UK (some places more than others/not at all).

Someone1234• 4 years ago

The UK price includes 57.95p per litre duty and then 20% VAT on the total.

In my opinion the UK is extremely well positioned geographically for renewables. The main problem right now isn't the technology or the theoretical capacity, it is government policy wherein the UK subsidies fossil fuels heavily, while actually slowing renewable projects and or electric transport[0].

What I find frustrating is that renewables are often only framed around climate change, whereas they are really a national security imperative (as is climate change too, by the way). The UK is too reliant on foreign countries for fossil fuels. The UK could very easily manufacturer wind turbines, but choose not to, then are surprised when international fuel instability and unstable demand wrecks havoc on the country.

You'd think they would have learned something from the current chaos, but the messaging coming out of Whitehall suggests that they're just waiting for the current storm to blow over while not looking over the horizon at how to stop the next time.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2020/10/29/uk-spen...

nerdawson• 4 years ago

You'd think they would have learned something from the current chaos, but the messaging coming out of Whitehall suggests that they're just waiting for the current storm to blow over while not looking over the horizon at how to stop the next time.

The civil service are utterly incapable of responding to any crisis. In fact, I’d argue that “Yes, Minister” was more documentary than satire.

Dominic Cummings’s breakdowns of COVID behind the scenes paint the picture of chaotic dysfunction back then. Hard to believe anything will have changed since.

benj1113• 4 years ago

I saw it for £1.71 today. at a Texaco no less.

slingnow• 4 years ago

This is exactly the kind of content I have always come to Hacker News for -- a snippet of information that I can already see with my own eyes.

Next up to the front page: a weather report from your favorite major city.

kraftman• 4 years ago

Some people don't live in the US or keep track of fuel prices: for them it's interesting to know that they are dropping again. It's also spun up a few interesting threads. I don't think it's entirely useless information.

nawgz• 4 years ago

Yes, local trends are notoriously generalizable, and there are no failures to anecdata powering your world view

xnx2• 4 years ago

I posted because there were many articles about the increase, but suspected a lot of people hadn't noticed that prices were dropping almost as fast.

JustSomeNobody2• 4 years ago

Summer driving season is over.

teeray• 4 years ago

Far from it. The first few weeks of August are routinely the busiest in the vacation town I frequent.

ryanmercer• 4 years ago

It is in my neck of the woods, this is my wife's 3rd week of teaching here in Indiana.

JustSomeNobody2• 4 years ago

Is here. School starts tomorrow.

AnimalMuppet• 4 years ago

Not until Labor Day, it's not.

sleepdreamy• 4 years ago

This is correct. After Labor Day is when it really dies down

Source: Lived in a Vacation Shore town for a few years

antonymy• 4 years ago

Still over $4.70/G here. I dread going to the pump.

heywire• 4 years ago

Saw anywhere from $3.39 to $4.39 on a recent trip from Ohio to South Carolina.

*$4.39 was on the turnpike. Everywhere else was below $4

qbasic_forever6• 4 years ago

Yeah on the west coast it jumped from ~$3.80 to $5.80/gallon in the winter/spring and has only gotten back down to $5.20/gallon now.

mrep• 4 years ago

$6.23 at the harbor for me and my boats got a 130 gallon fuel tank...

bilsbie3• 4 years ago

GOOD Point by my wife. Has anyone considered building enormous oil reserves and using it to smooth out prices? It seems like the wild swings in prices bring costs of their own.

blhack• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(U...

JumpCrisscross6• 4 years ago

You can buy gasoline futures if volatility is a concern.

yostrovs• 4 years ago

I feel you should have the option to buy gasoline futures at the gasoline station. Imagine buying X number of gallons at current prices and loading that onto a card. You can then pump those gallons from the same brand of gasoline at any time without worrying about the current price.

xnxn• 4 years ago

We make our own at home by crushing olives with a rolling pin

Finnucane3• 4 years ago

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/oil-storage

dghlsakjg2• 4 years ago

The US has already done this, and has been using it to combat oil price rises.

Look into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

It would seem that part of the problem is that we use such massive quantities of oil that it isn't easy enough to store enough to make much of a difference.

Aachen• 4 years ago

First time since March, wow think of the poor drivers. Meanwhile second hottest July not since March, or since last year, or since last decade, but in recorded history—but that's not something you feel in the pocket just yet so too few people care to connect one topic with the other.

bullen2• 4 years ago

Dead trees (coal, oil and gas) are the master resource, and we have peaked globally.

Electricity is the only energy that removes quality from the equation (electrons are all the same).

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU000072610

Electricity is not an energy source, so you have to burn dead trees to get it.

Solar, wind, nuclear and hydro are NOT going to solve anything.

Stop driving and flying now.

Work from home.

Bicycle and train for the rest.

unethical_ban• 4 years ago

Solar, wind, nuclear and hydro are NOT going to solve anything.

Without a qualifier for time, I can't take this seriously.

dghlsakjg2• 4 years ago

Right?

I live in BC Canada. The province is at about 95% non-fossil fuels for electricity (a large part of that remaining 5% is remote communities where hooking into the grid is prohibitive.) We have also cut our CO2 per KWH by 65% since 2010.

Perhaps tis just coincidence that our carbon tax was introduced in 2008, and has increased yearly.

fiat_fandango2• 4 years ago

The kicker is that we're currently only paying the price of extraction, not the true price of the energy itself. Electrification only accounts for a very small part of the solution since fossil fuels are still immensely important for many other industrial processes that can't simply be electrified.

Interestingly, total net extraction of available oil peaked around 2019 - I'm not sure we'll ever see numbers like that again.

Highly recommend looking into the academic work / podcasts of Nate Hagens. His social theory is flawed in my opinion, but his reasoning on energy is impeccable.

osrec• 4 years ago

Why will renewables not solve anything? What about nuclear?

bullen2• 4 years ago

Wind, solar, nuclear and hydro can not be built with electricity at scale, you need coal, oil and gas to mine and melt steel (1500C) and burn lime stone (1500C for 3 hours) for concrete.

Also you cannot make food with electricity at scale; tractors, trucks and fertilizers (500C + 200 Bar) need hydrocarbons.

eloff3• 4 years ago

Buried hydrocarbons are mostly not dead trees. It's usually from long buried microscopic sea life (plankton, algae).

Electricity is not an energy source, so you have to burn dead trees to get it.

Or from nuclear, renewables, etc. They definately can solve the problem when it comes to electricity. The problem is not everything is electrified. There's also a question of how long it would take at an investment rate we're willing to make.

legulere2• 4 years ago

How do you have burn dead trees with renewables or nuclear? I mean I agree that they probably won’t be enough without reducing our consumption but they are far from not solving anything

jollyllama• 4 years ago

Still up ~ $1.50 over 2019, which is > 1/3 of the current price. Not counting 2020 because there was of course less driving.

dcist• 4 years ago

The increase since 2020 is still mind boggling. It was below $2.20 in 2020.

jcranmer• 4 years ago

The price in 2020 was artificially low because oil demand dropped off a cliff due to the lockdowns.

Finnucane3• 4 years ago

If people went back to driving like they did in 2020, the price would likely drop.

anigbrowl2• 4 years ago

I wish they would. The air quality noticeably improved where I live.

tzs• 4 years ago

The US position back then was that that was too low, and used the threat of cutting off military aid to get the Saudis and OPEC to cut production for two years to raise prices.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-trump-saudi-sp...

yakshaving_jgt• 4 years ago

According to one analyst, the price of Brent Crude coming back to down to ~USD$60 per barrel would bankrupt russia and stop their illegal war in Ukraine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO2485yFor4

Overtonwindow• 4 years ago

But let’s be clear, if gas prices have fallen, they are still much higher than what they were before, and the fallen gas prices had absolutely nothing to do with president, or congress, no matter how much credit they try to take for it.

xnx2• 4 years ago

I posted this to bring some since of balance to all the high gas price stories that were previously on Hacker News. Gas prices are still plenty higher than during the period when driving was down significantly, and there was no war involving a major oil supplier. Gas prices will soon not be significantly different than they were for, say, 2011-2014: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GASREGW . You're right that, because petroleum is a global market, there's not a lot that the president or congress can do to do to bring prices down, but they also shouldn't be blamed for recent increases.

US Gas Prices Fall Below $4 per Gallon; First Time Since March

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