All the news from an energy market info provider on post-Katrina developments in this market- access may only work for a short time, but good while it lasts (one of the bonuses of working in the bulk liquids/petroleum freight markets)

Thanks for the linky. Anything in particular we should look at?

I'm gonna try to ride the bike to work at least once this week to save fuel, but things are gonna be complicated with school starting.

87 octane in the Collegeville area is 3.24 (Wawa), 3.25 (Getty) to 3.35 for the majors. No shortages, though, I presume because there's a lot of refining capacity reasonably local. Finally, a reason to be thankful for Southwest Philadelphia.

Be nice if I could ride my bike to work, but I think 13+ miles across the Mt. Misery area would probably result in medical bills (knee, hip) higher than the gas savings.

I’m in China for a few weeks here gas is 4 RMB or 50 cents a litre or $1.89 a gallon.

They have many ways of trying to save. Not all make sense to foreigners, things like coasting down hills on the freeway, having wipers on intermittent even in a down pour.

Some shut the engine off at traffic lights but VW toyed with that some years ago with the engine shutting off if at standstill and idle for more than 6 secs, I believe, and the starter linked to the gas pedal so restarts were done automatically. So that is not new.

I was thinking about the coasting bit and some European cars in the 50’s and 60’s had a selectable coasting feature built in Rover and Saab come to mind. So it follows that Chinese cars should have that feature. But of course they have copied later American, Japanese or European designs and not added that feature.

Where I am there are not many cars and mostly I see people on 50 to 90cc scooters and of course on bicycles.

Buick is big here apparently because at some time in the past and Emperor or someone in a similar position had his picture taken next to his favourite car which was a Buick.
Mostly I see lots of Audi’s , VW Passats and little Suzuki Karimuns (spelling)

That’s the gas report from China.

The main thing about the market info providers is that they take a lot of the hype out of news and just concentrate on facts that have the power to affect or are actually affecting the oil price. They are therefore a bit cold as reading material (you won't find information here about the human aspect of this terrible disaster), but if you follow the latest stories you will get a feel as to how the situation is progressing purely from an oil and energy perspective, nothing more, hence the reason for putting it here rather than any other thread. If something either positive or negative happens regarding supply and its ability to move the price one way or another, you will get the lowdown here first.

As the providers make their money from giving this service to the market I don't expect it to last that long. With the markets shut at weekends, news tends to slow down then and pick up during the working days.

I'll repeat the news link from time to time for ease of reference, and in case not bookmarked.

Katrina: oil market news link

good news for Georgians.......excerpted from www.gov.state.ga.us
We should see a 15 cents/gal decrease in prices at the pump this morning, which will make our average price in my town $2.85 - $2.89 per gallon.

Maybe other states' governors will follow suit. If he runs for re-election he's probably got his ground work done for a shoo-in. But that's another thread. :)

Thought a comparison might be interesting

Vehicle: VW Passat 1.9 GT estate - 1989 - approx 184,000 miles on clock
Trip this morning (12 miles): mainly country roads but some commuter traffic
UK MPG as per on board computer: 44.8
UK gallons/USGallon: 0.83267
Equivalent miles/per USG:37.3
Price of UK fuel today:£0.91 per litre
Litres/USGallon:3.786
Equivalent price £ per USG:£3.45
$/£ exchange rate (interbank):1.8344
Equivalent $/US Gallon:$6.32
Equivalent $/mile:$0.17 (17 cents/mile)

How does that compare with $/mile for US vehicles given higher consumption and relatively lower fuel cost?

Fuel at $3.00. USGallon and consumption of 18 MPG (US) gives 17 cents/mile - no difference(!) but think what you could be saving if you paid US price but achieved 37.3 MPG (US) - i.e. 8 cents/mile!

Katrina news link

I just paid $3.19 yesterday - $40 to fill my tank. :eek:

It does make me glad I drive a four-banger sedan -- though we still pay California prices for gasoline. In its wisdom, Sacramento has banned the sale, in-state, of diesel passenger cars, seeking to forestall pollution. I keep looking harder at hybrids...

Prices starting to ease:

Transportation and distribution issues will keep this from lowering pump prices very much. Result? More profit for the oil companies.

This will be the result of pretty much anything that happens, in fact. Laws of supply and demand do not apply to energy prices anymore. That is to say, things that push prices *downward* for everything else affected by Supply and Demand don't apply to energy. Anything that pushes prices upward does, however.

even with the state tax lifted our gas hasn't went down but maybe 5-6 cents per gal. The other 10 cents is going somewhere... my guess is the oil companies. Oh well.

The word for that situation is "bubble". However, I don't expect this one to burst until 2008.

$4.50/gal by this weekend. Here we go!

if you can find it here. places are selling out left and right. i filled up last night and today i took my g/f's car to work to top it off but couldn't find a station with fuel.

I don't think the most insane evil overlord could have designed a more disastrous one/two punch for energy prices in this country.

Yes, gas prices are affecting me. I'm much more aware of each and every trip. I really spend some time organizing my time, my errands and my appointments. Before such high gas prices, I didn't think anything of running from one side of town to the other or driving a couple of hours to see family and friends.

We are also considering purchasing a hybrid this winter.

Find out what kind of mileage they're getting first. I bought a used Toyota Echo for like $5300 and it gets 44mpg. I'd be really pisssed if I paid a premium price for something fancy that can't do what primitive tech can. just a thought g

guess we'll all wind up driving a computer. Sometimes I have to leave home to go to work. Hopefully soon I'll just work here. Several of my friends do now.
Even at that stage, you still HAVE to get out sometimes. The "let's take a ride" for pleasure days are over. Transportation is quickly becoming a need to only deal and not a recreation issue. I'm sure lots of us remember the go cruisin' days. They're prolly not coming back. Of couse my 70 & 1/2 Rat ain't comin back either.

I filled up today at Kroger for $ 2.68. What a difference in price as opposed to the distance geographically.

Of course we DO have a great Governor, but that doesn't account for that variation. I will prolly see that in the near future here...... why?

It sure as hell ain't right for them to charge that much 'cause the supply is short. That ain't gouging, thats forcable anal intrusion. Pisses me right the F off.

Could be $4 or $5 after Rita. :(

? why are you here reading this instead of being out filling up your tank? Time is short, we are getting ready to see the largest major disaster the US has ever seen.

Getting ready? It all started in November 2001 and has been episode after episode ever since. Don't you get it? Every time fundamentalist religion's chosen leader is brought to power, then god sends wrath upon the people. In normal times, we don't have Tsunamis, skyscraper collapses, and chains of hurricanes year after year.

Did I mention that the nation's largest earthquake in New Madrid MO that occurs about every 100 years is long overdue? If you are truly religious, then you have long recognized an MBA in power who decrees everything from his religious beliefs actually has horns and a tail. Another irony: when a person, who never did anything successful, somehow rises to power anyway, well, we have Hitler as a previous example. Did not Hitler also invade other nations without any provocation or legitimate reason? When did the largest major disaster the US has even seen really start?

Ok, tw. You just jumped the shark. Any invocation of Hitler in a serious tone of voice is an instant shark-jump.

Jump the shark, the dolphine, and the whale. TW, TW, TW. What the hell are you talking about? We're talking about gas prices and all of a sudden you onto religous chosen leaders? I'm not ever sure I understand what your point to this comment is. That when we elect a non-religious leader that God leaves us alone as opposed to a religious leader? That doesn't make sense. Purhaps I am just misreading your intent, purhaps not. I have read many of your past posts. What is your point, what is your position. I never took you as a religious zelot type TW, so this is a strange angle you've taken. And I have to agree, the Hitler reference, although this point is probly the only one that I get (sort of), was off base.


Side note: The largest major disaster? Could that be Mt. St. Helen, back in 1980? Or how about the earthquake in san Francisco back in 1901? Okalahoma bombing? 9/11? Earthquake in Alaska 1964? Colombine shootings in Colorado? Plenty of disasters to go around.

Side note: The largest major disaster? Could that be Mt. St. Helen, back in 1980? Or how about the earthquake in san Francisco back in 1901? Okalahoma bombing? 9/11? Earthquake in Alaska 1964? Colombine shootings in Colorado? Plenty of disasters to go around.

I'd like to add the Galveston hurricane of 1900.
High gas prices? Terrorist attacks? Please.

In normal times, we don't have Tsunamis, skyscraper collapses, and chains of hurricanes year after year.

Hate to tell you this, but those are very "normal" events. The peace and quiet we experienced for some years was the exception, not the rule.

You wait until mother earth gets seriously pissed off at us. With the dense population centers we have these days, stuff could be much, much worse.

Seems like many intelligent people are currently predicting a few hundred million will be killed worldwide by the coming bird flu epidemic. We'll see. The little nasties are usually the ones that do the most damage. It happened to the densely planted elm trees when dutch elm disease came along. It can happen to us. Hurricanes are nothing compared to a major epidemic. Of course, epidemics don't cause any property damage, so we've got that going for us, which is nice. :worried:

Well, 35,000 people died two years ago during the extreme heat wave in Europe. I'd call that major.

Al Kay Hall maybe said it.

However is you want to identify the source of many large disaster - as determined by the number of lives lost - religion repeatedly is a cause of so many disasterous deaths. The devil made us do it.

Gasoline? Only a trivial symptom. Notice that virtually no one has changed their driving habits.

If you don't understand where my post came from, then go back and read a post from shoot and a chapter in a well published book called Revelations. I mock thee who proclaimed for the mental midget president and brought god's wrath down upon us.

Sincerely in fire and brimstone-
TW

The point tw is making is that if religious nuts can invoke an angry God whenever something bad happens, he can do the same invoking a more rational God's reaction to heretics like Bush.

TW, you're still a dingdong (and a bigger ass than Dogberry), though occasionally you aspire to Ho Ho. Though you seldom reach it, being generally unfunny as well as a crank.

It's a questionable habit of the more stupid among the Left to tell us right-of-center Presidents are all dumb. Thus they salve their bruised egos, egos singularly prone to easy bruising -- or they hope to. But their hope is dashed: the people the Left tells us are stupid are the people to whom the Left loses elections, and repeatedly. It's chronic. It happened again in 2004. This does not demonstrate leftist intellectual superiority, but instead the inferior quality of leftist thinking, which produces the typically inferior Leftist candidate. If you are Left, you are made perennially stupid by your lousy ideology. Seems to me you could stand to wake the hell up and commence a program of adult thinking. Funny that you won't, if you're really so brilliant as all that.

Instead of dropping my children off at day care 3 days per week, I know drop them off on Monday and pick them up Thursday.

Yes, the price of gas has affected me, but possibly not in a bad way.

Darn. I was hoping no one would explain it so that Urbane Guerrilla would not understand. Sooner or later, someone was going to leak the code.

Sleepover daycare. Great idea!!

Gas, schmas ...

It's under $3 today. At the expensive, but more convenient, station on my way to work. $2.87 at the pain-in-the-ass station.

You may recall a previous post where our governor removed all tax from gas. It lowered our prices about 15 cents per gal. Yesterday he decided he is closing all county and city schools Mon. and Tues. to save gas. I'm not sure yet what my opinion is on this issue, but I must say he is definately a doer and not a talker.
I wonder if the school closing will actually save any fuel. Hell, it may make people use more.......

He said it would save half a million gallons of diesel fuel plus some on the operation of the physical plants themselves. I thought he said he was using two of the alloted snow days early. Snow days? Georgia? :mg:

As we all know, Georgia is as subject to the wrath of God as anywhere else. I'm sure we'll be reading about the blizzards soon.

Frankly, I feel for the folks in the small, isolated communities like the ones on Colorado's West Slope or in Eastern Utah. I had the misfortune to be low on gas in Bluff, Utah a couple of days ago. $3.32/gallon, thank you very much.

Does anyone know how far Bluff is from ANYWHERE? Probably not. I can't imagine what this will do for the mentality of some folks in those isolated little Mormon towns. Wrath of God, indeed! I thought I was going to puke if I had to drive through one more teensy little town with the Bank of Zion prominently situated across the street from the local gas station with its $3.30/gallon plus prices.

Well, it did snow in Idaho today. :mg:

Scenic, but not exactly noteworthy in terms of meterological oddities. Now, if they'd had a *hurricane* in Idaho... :lol:

Although it seldom accumulates, yes it "snows" here almost every year. If you are one of the lucky ones you may actually get to glimpse a snowflake or two before it hits the ground and melts. If there is the faintest hint that it WILL snow, all the schools and half the businesses close automatically. Like a bunch of kids at christmas, waiting on a gift that never comes. Funny as hell to me. And funniest thing is I'm right in the middle of it. Georgia is not prepared for snow or ice, so it only takes a little to bring power lines down, make trees fall into the roads, etc. Even knowing that, EVERYBODY just sits around and PRAYS for snow.

Damn, I miss those days. I rememeber one year it snowed on a Sunday and they automatically closed schools in Gwinnett county for Monday and Tuesday because it was so heavy. Sunday evening, the snow began to melt and on Monday morning it was gone. On Tuesday, it hit 65F outside and all us schoolkids were in heaven. It was awesome.

Of course, there is always the snow Atlanta saw in the blizzard of '94. That was true insanity for the South.

This statement has been made by you many, many times and I finally figured out what it is that need to comment on. True, people need to start changing their driving habbits in order to compensate for the higher gas prices. However, the gas prices have only been really, really high for a very short time, and we've been driving the way we do for a very, very long time. You're asking people to change decades and decades of driving habbits in a few months. I also can't imagine that there hasn't been some sort of change occuring over the last few months. I myself am not as 'willey-nilley' about driving all over town for no good reason. I pick and plan my driving trips to incorporate several errands in one trip and I try not to drive all over town. We should car pool but we always can't especilly when my wife has a meeting at school till seven and I need to pick up two very tired girls from their school.

The United States is about convienience. It's convinient to have your own car. We love to drive.

Hobbs, tw isn't trying to convince people to change their driving habits. He's saying that obviously gas prices are not too high since the driving habits haven't changed yet.

If gas prices were really too high, you wouldn't say "we should car pool but we can't..." You would simply car pool because you had no other choice. If convenience is still an option, then gas must not be too expensive yet.

Relief at the gas pump is progressing visibly here in southern CA: $2.68/gallon this morning, down four cents from yesterday. Not bad for the pricey California blends, especially those oxygenated winter ones.

California gas prices act like the light curve of a Cepheid -- abrupt rise and considerably more gradual decline. Everyone in the state knows this means fat profits for the refiners. No one's yet been able to bring them to heel about this, though building a couple of major new refineries would likely help. I don't know how much of the comparatively quick price relief has a political basis this time -- but Californians also know we get none of our oil from Gulf production.

I'm just glad I heat with wood.

My peekup is in the shop so I borrowed the bro-in-laws to get some fencing. Traditionally we fill the tank on a borrowed truck... $47 dollars freaking ouch. I'm gonna drive that smugmobile in all kinds of inappropriate weather this winter.

I love those commercials w/wood, propane & electricity.

Griff, I thought wood retired. :bolt:

Yesterday, it cost me just under $30 to fill my tank...I run it almost down to E all the time. That's the first time it has cost less than $30 since August.

The pizza shop I work for just increased its delivery charge this week from $2 to $2.50. No complaints from customers...yet.

They'll bitch when it gets to $3.

I paid $2.54 yesterday for regular. (and darn good thing I did, because I bought 14.22 gallons. That is as close to sucked totally dry as I have ever gotten.)

well they are starting to come down on their prices. think the pressure the feds put on the oil companies for their "record" profits had anything to do with it? maybe/maybe not. topic could've been talked about somewhere else here, haven't had time to surf around the threads lately. anyway a quick repost of a link to help you find Cheap Gas found gas in my area below the $2.00 mark. $1.89 to be exact....

Here in the Oxnard CA area, we're pleased to see California blends now at around $2.45/regular, down from a high of three-plus. I think the pressure plthijinx is speaking of wasn't governmental but of the general public around here -- the refiners and suppliers had the habit of ramping prices up steeply and then doing a much slower decline, to the jaundiced regard of everyone in California who burns gasoline. This time I think the refiners are paying attention to the politics of the matter, and are rolling prices back with more alacrity than the last couple of times. Good PR, I must say.

Want to save gas? Let the state whole? your DRs a while. :smack: I put 20 bucks in my p-up the morning of Katrnia, still have 1/4 tank. Filled up Honda the 9/7/05 still have 1/2 tank. Some how I don't think this's going to be a great money saver!

I look at the current level of fuel prices this way: Just because I'm being backsided with a smaller crank than before does not change the fact that I'm being sodomized.

Uh...wha? :eyebrow:

The state has been insisting that buster leave his vehicles sitting in the driveway for a while, as a consequence of a little misunderstanding.

don't move, you'll only make it hurt worse! :lol2:

:driving: :guinness: :cop: After all the calamity did you at least get to eat the sausage?

Nope. No fridge for around 24 hrs.