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Topic: Gas Prices in your area

Stephen Furley
Film God

Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002

posted 05-26-2008 05:25 AM

quote: Steve Guttag
I would highly doubt that gas will hit $25/gallon (in the States). It would shut down this country...which is the sort of thing that wars are made of.

I really do think that sort of price is possible within a ten year timescale. Oil prices will rise and fall, but there is bound to be an overall upward trend, and I think it will be a steep one.

The remaining oil reserves are getting ever more expensive to recover. There is a global market for energy, not just oil, and increasing demand from increasing demand from increasing industrial development in such places as China and India will tend to increase world prices. Much of the world's oil reserves are in politically unstable areas, which makes supply uncertain. Those countries which have oil may wish to keep more of it for their own use rather than exporting it. Governments may increase taxation on fuel to suppress demand, both to extend the life of the remaining reserves, and to reduce pollution. Combine all of those factors, and there is only one way that prices will be going in the longer term.

A $25 per gallon price is not much more than a five-fold increase, and much greater increases than that have certainly happened in the past. We never had a family car, but when we rented one for our weeks holiday I think we paid about 5/- (five Shillings) per imperial gallon (~4.5 litres). At that price it was rather more than a Shilling per litre, and it's now rather more than a pound; something like a 20-fold increase. I'm sure that people 35-40 years ago would have thought that a 20-fold increase was impossible, but it has happened; why is a five-fold increase over the next ten years not possible?

If this happens, it will not shut down the Country. It will certainly change people's lifestyles, but people will learn to live with it. To start with, at those prices they will waste a lot less energy than they do now. At the College where I work I would say we could something like halve our energy costs, though it would take some investment to do so; we are not doing it, even with the new building about to go up, but if energy costs rise this much then we will do so; we won't be able to afford not to. For example, we burn large amounts of gas in six large boilers to heat the place every Winter, but many parts of the building are then so hot as to be unbearable, so we have to open the windows to let the heat out. We have lighting, tens of kW of it, left on for about 16 hours per day, in rooms which are not in use, and which are often lit by bright sunlight anyway. It's not just at work, it's everywhere. We have trains which sit at a terminus for an hour or so with the engines running, and which when they finally depart carry so few passengers that they could be taken by mini-bus, or in some cases by a taxi. We simply won't be able to afford this in future.

quote: Steve Guttag
This country is rather spread out and has always pushed the transportation of the day. The very nature of States as individual sovern entities within a common "united" collective is, at the root, how this country runs. Without transportation by road/air...etc in an economical fashion will kill not only the economic infrastructure but the whole way of life. $25/gallon based on current income levels (or even rosy projected income levels 10-years from now), would effectively strand people and kill them.

You talk about how the Country runs now, but if it can't afford to run that way in the future then it will have to run in some other way, won't it? Let's say a company pays some of its staff to fly, or drive, to a meeting for a few hours, and then drive back again. In the past that was cheap, but in the future it won't be, so we have to ask if it really makes sense to physically transport all of those bodies several hundred miles to the meeting.

If the current way of life is to transport lots of people ad goods huge distances all the time, then the way of life probably will have to change, but I don't think that change has to be a disaster. People will live closer to their work, they will buy more in local shops, they will buy more local products. To fly fruit half way round the World just because it's out of season here doesn't make sense either; I can eat something that is in season. For several decades we saw small local shops being replaced by supermarkets, first by smallish local ones, then by bigger out of town type ones, which were difficult to reach except by car. That is now starting to change, she big chains are now starting to open smaller local stores.

For most of the time that people have lived on this planet they didn't travel great distances, and they didn't use vast amounts of fuel to do so. This is something that really only came about over a period of a few decades; if we could manage without doing it in the past then we can do so again, possibly rather better than we could then since we can communicate via telephones, Internet, etc.

I'm sure we all like to travel from time to time, and I think we will still be able to do so, but not to the extent that we do now.

quote: Steve Guttag
At $3.00/$4.00 per gallon it is already showing its affect on our economy entertainment businesses have already felt its affects. How many miles does the average American drive in a week?

I have no idea, obviously some much more than others. Some will need to travel more than thers due to the nature of their work, etc. However, if the price of fuel rises steeply then they are going to have to either:

1) Pay much more to do so.

2) Travel less.

3) Use more efficient means to travel, e.g. use smaller cars, walk for short journeys, shop more locally.

Or, more likely, some combination of these.

quote: Steve Guttag
For me, it is in the hundreds, just to get to/from work (not the miles at work, in a company vehicle). Call it 300-miles for me. My vehicle seems to get about 30miles/gallon or about 10-gallons a week. That is $250/week or $13,000/year for gas at $25.00 a gallon. For some, it would be notably more...for some a bit less but either way...rather parallizing. Then again, at those gas rates...most won't be able to go to the theatre so my income to drop to make things even more dire.

So what will you do if fuel prices do rise that much, which is something that is completely beyond your control? Will you just crawl into a hole and die, or will you make changes to reduce you energy consumption to what you can afford? If changes have to be made isn't it better to make them gradually rather than to wait until there's a major crisis and then be forced to make them suddenly?

How about this for an idea. People live in somewhat higher density communities, and they have shops, schools, workplaces, cinemas, churches or whatever nearby, like they used to. Unless the weather is bad, or you are carrying something heavy,or are disabled, you probably don't even need to get the car out to get to these places, because they're within walking distance. That's obviously a big country that you live in, but so what? Europe is a big place, but I don't go to France to buy wine (there are some that do), I don't go to huge out-of-town hypermarkets, I buy things from local shops. I don't walk to work, because it is just a bit too far, but other than this, I don't travel much; I sometimes go for several weeks without even getting on a bus, other than to go to work. You seem to be describing a place which developed as it did because transport was cheap; if it becomes unaffordably expensive, as I believe it will, then things will have to change.

quote:
In a day when people still talk about the difference of a few pennies over a loaf of bread, the difference of 300-400% in a gallon of gas to get that loaf of bread would seem to finanically kill the shopper (note, the loaf of bread would also go up in price more than pennies since the transporation costs of getting it to market would also go up 300-400%).

So produce the food more locally; food eaten in Maine doesn't have to be grown in California. Lamb for England doesn't have to come from New Zealand. I'm not suggesting that we all need to become farmers, and grow all our own food at the bottom of the garden, but if we reduce the distances that we transport goods, use more fuel-efficient ways of transporting it, use alternative sources of energy, reduce the excessive packaging which many products have these days, consume a bit less generally and pay slightly more then it doesn't have to be a disaster; it's not the end of the World.