Gas Prices Rising Every Day

[Henry]

Went up to Johnson last night to my friend Mutt's wake and noticed that my gas tank was down.  I had filled up my 3 gas cans earlier in the week down at Nan's, but wasn't on the right side to fill up my car.  Meanwhile gas has gone up about 5 cents a gallon and as I drove through Jeffersonville, noticed gas was still much higher there as I guess they must rely on the tourist trade.  No matter what, I must fill the car up today.

Was listening to David Letterman last night and he had a guy on from the Auto Industry who said, people only want fuel efficient cars when gas is $4 a gallon, but when it gets down to around $2 they want the pick-ups & SUVs.

I think he was right, because when gas is at the price it is now or a little lower, when you go on Gas Buddy or some of the other gas price web sites, there is little or not posting.

As for me, my Van still doesn't have 45,000 miles on it yet, it makes 20 mpg and the thought of buying another vehicle hasn't entered my mind.

[David Shea]

Henry,

During the presidential election season there was a lot of talk from President Obama about energy efficiency, clean coal, solar, biomass etc...  Did you notice that right after the election the prices of petroleum products fell?  I think that the big energy companies lowered prices so that the new administration would not spend as much money on developing new alternatives.  Now that the big bubble of stimulus money has been allocated, the fuel industries are raising prices again.

Just before winter the prices will rise again as the refineries have to change from summer to winter production.  What a bunch of hogwash.... with computer modeling of demand cycles, don't tell me that a production changes can spike prices so widely.

[mirjo]

It's probably about the holiday weekend and summer driving season. I never believed it would go down for this long. It's all BS and never needs to be as high as it is. People really need to stop in a big way. Not buy gas guzzlers, not use excessive amounts of gas, no one wants to change their lifestyle--at least not those with $ to back it up.

(Un?)Fortunately, I am not one of those. I have a fairly old car, by today's standards. It's a great car that I love that used to get fantastic gas mileage(30-35mpg) before they added ethanol to the gas, now I just barely break 28mpg most of the time. It really annoys me! Does that make any sense? 

[trussell]

Lisa- Go Go Gas in St. Albans.... Ethanol Free and not that far!

[David Shea]

The drop in your fuel economy makes perfect sense.  Ethanol has less BTU's per gallon than conventional gasoline.  A BTU is a measure of energy.  It takes 1 BTU to heat 1 pound of water 1 degree F.

In other words there is more energy in a gallon of good old gasoline than a gallon of 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol.