Gas Price Talk Radio


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Just great. Prices are dropping, but since it's the beginning of the month I fill 'er up with Premium @ $4.19.

Re: Ethanol. We've known for decades that we HAVE to wean ourselves off gasoline, yet when we finally start to do it, people complain 'cause it's expensive. Meh.

The premium is $4.04 here

3.64, 3.84, 4.04

Saw a bunch of stations these days at that price.

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I realized that my daily paper has for some time been running the list of lowest prices every day.

I had pretty much been ignoring it; but it is nice to see it in the paper even if it is just the prices from gasbuddy.

http://www.dallasnews.com/gasprices/

Looks like many $3.31 -$3.35 .

Seems to change daily but be pretty reliable at least as far as the lowest prices are concerned.

Only problem is that they do not make it clear which ones are cash only (no credit or debit cards) and that is increasingly common amongst the low price independents.

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Don't know what it is now but I think it was $3.89 for 93 Octane last I filled up and I put $32 in and got 30MPG on the previous tank. I'm hopin fresh rubber and a tune up will help with my fuel economy.

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It's still under four dollars here, but the news is filled with dire warnings of impending price increases since they shut down all the refineries on the Gulf due to H-Ivan. They said it would increase the prices locally, but we all know how it works, don't we? One of the largest refineries in the country is less than a hundred miles from me, but golly gee, somehow the hurricane will "force" them to raise prices in the MidWest too.

They showed a graphic of the Gulf with an icon for each oil well there. Whoa! There sure are a LOT of oil wells in the Gulf! Best wishes for everyone living and working there.

I did the math today and prices are STILL not bad, really. I can buy more fuel with an hours pay today than I could when I first started working (30 years ago), so I got NOTHING to complain about.

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I was watching the Post Hurricane Ike flyovers to assess damage to Galveston and the Texas coast and they showed two refineries doing flare offs which means they are firing them back up and getting production under way .

Since those were in the hardest hit area, probably the others are getting busy getting back online.

The biggest obstacles are probably electrical power (need it to run things) and personnel who left in advance of the storm and are not being allowed back in yet.

They ought to suspend futures trading at times like this to keep the speculators from driving up the price.

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3 stations I have been observing have remained at a steady $3.99 for 87 and $4.25 for 93. I'll be needing fuel soon so I hope it goes back down but it's not like I ain't used to payin that much. Really though, if I can afford a $400 LCD Monitor then I can spend a coupla extra dollars on gas if I need it.

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Only station I looked at today was at $2.99 for 87, $3.09 for 89 and I think they forgot to change the sign for the 93 cause it said $3.39. So Now I probably won't be seeing any $40 fill-ups again soon. Last time, most gas I've ever had to put in and it was $4.09 for Premium, cost me $40.25 for 9.82 gallons. I don't think I'm ever gonna let it run that low again. Although the car actually has an 11.9 gallon tank, only 9.9 is actually read on the gauge. 2 gallon reserve for idiots like me who decide to make a catering delivery in another town (or rather on the other side of said town in the country making it even further), with the needle just barely above E.

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I forget where I saw it (What? Me? Forget?) but that "reserve" thing is strictly an American thing. Apparently the rest of the world would like to know exactly how much fuel is left. No, I don't think it's because we need to idiot-proof cars for an ignorant populice, though I can understand why one might come to that conclusion (and it does help those who cannot fathom the notion of filling up BEFORE you run out).

I think it's more because in the U.S. our "average" trip by automobile is SO MUCH longer than other countries. A lot of people elsewhere have no comprehension whatsoever of the distances we travel regularly. Either the other countries are the size of just one of our states, or they tend not to NEED to travel far, or they can't AFFORD to travel as far, or they tend to use trains for longer trips, but here, a fifty mile auto trip is nothing -- a trip to the city or out to the suburbs (or to work, and then back again, every day) -- nothing to us. An auto trip of several hundred miles is a weekend outing. A thousand mile auto trip is a vacation.

Traveling so far I bet we NEED the safety of a reserve like few other countries might. Who knows where you'll be when you need gas? Gas stations are far apart in the long stretches of road that cross the country. Makes me wonder if Australia also has a "reserve" built in.

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Actually other countries have the reserve too just not as big. While my Civic has a 2 gallon reserve, some other Euro Civics of the same body style will have a half gallon reserve. But yeah I get ya though.

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It is as low as $2.59 locally, I paid $2.64 yesterday. Still plenty of scalpers charging well over $3.00 but prices are dropping.

So which theory do you believe.

1. So many people are out of work and feel the job market is hopeless that consumption has dropped so dramatically that the cost for a barrel of oil is half what it was a couple months ago and the price of gasoline has dropped by a third.

(after all, most energy usage in industry and at home is Electricity which comes primarily from coal, natural gas, and nuclear).

2. The Oil companies feel Obama will get elected and are reacting to his suggestion of a windfall profits tax to compensate for the high cost and allow a consumer rebate , and his proposal that you use it or lose it in regards to the unexploited drilling leases (he will take them back and resell them to someone who will drill on the already approved sites). They are cutting prices to decrease the risk of consequences.

3. The credit crisis means that speculators can not borrow money and buy oil futures for pennies on the dollar to drive up the price and make a profit when they resell them. Restrictions on short selling (if they could pull it off in this market) have further crippled their ability to manipulate the price of oil for their own personal profit.

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I've read it's the demand that has dropped. Schools back in and there is some problems with jobs.

I don't think the oil companies give a damn whatever we do. Windfall profit tax? Fine, they'll decrease production and prices will go up. Cancel their leases and the prices will go up. If they gave a squat, instead of pumping cash into lobbying and candidates, they would have worked harder to bring more refineries and nukes on-line. They have us by the short hairs and don't give a damn and they will eat cake until the oil is gone...

Speculators that have the fluidity will stay clear until after the election. Those that need credit to buy are scrambling for lives, with the dive in the market.

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The police issued a warning against using Pay at the Pump , especially with debit cards.

It seems that there has been a rash of cases where pumps at stations were tampered with after hours and "Skimmers" attached to the card reader / keypad so that thieves can skim the credit card info and pin / zip code info and make clones.

They advise all people to go inside to pay and preferably pay cash.

Of course it could just be the cops trying to scare people or drive up the number of gas station robberies by increasing the cash on hand; but I doubt that.

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I agree the oil companies aren't planning for anything that may occur in the future. One, why should they? They'll just do whatever they have to do to continue making a profit. Two, they're not that smart.

I think it's all about Supply & Demand. More supply, less demand.

Sure makes all the hand-wringing over off-shore and restricted area drilling seem like a waste of time for now.

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Just got gas today. $29 of 93 Octane Shell V-Power. That's 9 gallons. It was $3.19 for 93 Octane and $2.89 for 87 Octane. This fill-up was much nicer than the $40.25 for 9.8 gallons fill up last time.

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