Gas prices inch closer to $4 while oil gyrates

[UpInArms]

Source: Associated Press

NEW YORK - Retail gas prices jumped a cent Friday to a new national average over $3.96 a gallon, putting them on a course to hit $4 by early next week. Oil futures, meanwhile, traded in a narrow range as investors tried to determine whether recent price declines were temporary.

At the pump, gas prices rose to a record national average of $3.962 a gallon, according to a survey of stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Gas prices keep rising despite a downturn in the oil market over the last week, and will likely soon pass the $4 mark.

"I do think we could get to $4," said Geoff Sundstrom, a spokesman for AAA. "We could get there right in time for June 1."

Gas prices are already higher than that in many parts of the country, and average more than $4 in 12 states and the District of Columbia.

Diesel prices are also soaring; the national average price of a gallon of diesel rose half a cent overnight to a record national average of $4.792 a gallon. Diesel prices are above $5 in some parts of the country. Because diesel is used to transport the vast majority of the goods, prices of food and consumer goods are also rising.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080530/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_prices?_ylt=Apew5fncPE0o0xG6V5uzwxtv24cA

[gateley]

1. My best friend in L.A. told me today

the cheapest he could find was $4.03 - or something like that. It was definitely over $4.

And he lives in an area that isn't considered upscale by any means.

[TomInTib]

4. $4.29 here this morning.

I think they are punishing us for living in Marin.

[Newsjock]

6. Up 16 cents this afternoon in Sunnyvale

$4.199 before lunch, $4.359 after lunch. Weekend!

[Barrett808]

7. $4.15 all over N. Seattle

Me with Prius == happy. :)

[DebbieCDC]

30. Me with Prius in North Seattle too!!

I noticed that gas at the Chevron at the corner of 125th and 15th Aven NE went up from $4.07 on Monday to $4.23 today -- $.16 in less than a week!!!!!

[bluesbassman]

11. Same here in Pleasanton Tom.

I found one station selling for $4.18, but you had to clean the restrooms first.

[XemaSab]

34. Well then we're being similarly punished for living in Redding

:crazy:

[Amerigo Vespucci]

2. I know this article refers to "the national average" for "regular" gas, BUT...

...I drove by a Chevron station this morning that was selling supreme for $4.59 per gallon.

So this "inching closer" crap makes me laugh. We done INCHED.

[TomInTib]

5. It's that high here, as well.

More like Leaps and Bounds.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

9. It seems like it jumps ten cents every frigging time I turn AROUND.

I don't fill my tank anymore. I just go in every couple of days with a $20 bill and hope the hell my gas gauge is accurate.

:toast:

[poppysgal]

44. By leaps and bounds

gas prices are racing to $4 per gallon here in Northwest Missouri and we are considered "Rural America." Five dollar a gallon here we come! :argh:

[Bobbie47]

3. I'm in

s.w. Illinois by St. Louis and it's $4.09 a gallon.

[SlicerDicer-]

8. 3.78 here in NM

[SpiralHawk]

10. "Cool." - VP Dickie 'Five Military Deferments' Cheney *& republicon oil cronies

[dapper]

18. is that gas in those glasses?

If so, I could use a fill up.

Dap

[notadmblnd]

12. is this last weeks news? Because gas has been over $4 for over a week

It's just starting to creep back own today, I found it for 3.87 last night, but that was on a corner that competes with the station right next to it. All other places were still running between 4.09 and 4.19.

[KT2000]

13. $ 4.23 and mayonnaise

(Best Foods/Heillman's) is $ 5.79 for 30 oz. - a featured item in our Kroger store.

[llmart]

14. It's been over $4.00 here in Michigan for a couple weeks......

This is bullshit.

By the way, have you seen the price of laundry detergent? Everything is so sky high. I think I'll stop washing my clothes and just put them through the rinse cycle without detergent:)

[TheMadMonk]

21. Use daiper sanitiser powder instead. enzyme/oxy.

Generic is fine. About a lidful per wash.

Bonus: If you recycle the grey water it won't hurt grass.

[KT2000]

32. I bet you could go

every other wash with the detergent. Or maybe it is my machine - before I put the detergent in the water it's already sudsing.
I think you are on to something - would rather cut down on detergent than lots of other stuff!

[michaz]

15. $4.19 today in northern upstate New York. n/t

[HockeyMom]

16. My daughter saw $4.30 on LI

a few days ago. We are in SW Florida and I have seen $3.91 to $3.99 in my area.

[AndyTiedye]

17. $5 in the Blue States by the 4th of July

[hunter]

19. I drove out on a short errand this afternoon and gas was $4.18

When I was done gas was $4.22

That's at one of our stations with lines. I'll bet the people waiting in line when the price changed were pissed off.

[dapper]

20. I refuse to pay $4....

and in fact, I filled up with E85 at approximately $3.50. Both prices are a rip off but I had to get home!

Not sure what I am going to do going forward. Hopefully find a car pool!?!

Dap

[LibDemAlways]

33. Wish I could figure out a way to avoid it. It was up to

$4.43 at a station near me in So Cal this afternoon.

[ckramer]

22. What price of gas will stop you guys from driving?

8 bucks?

[TheFarseer]

46. would it make a difference if we all stopped?

I'm not saying this to be confrontational, but we are being treated like we don't matter anymore. It doesn't matter that Memorial Day driving was down. India and China are all that matters. There seems to be nothing we can do to bring prices down.

[QUALAR]

23. BREAK UP MONOPOLY

Big Oil was starting to gouge Venezuelans so Chavez took action and nationalized them. Result 12 cents a gallon. The oil industry's monopoly needs to be broken up. I suggest that we start with nationalizing the refineries. It's long overdue to return some of the misery this industry has inflicted around the world. Countless wars and coups are a direct result of their greed.

[Jack_DeLeon]

31. ROFLMAO...

We could see .12 cents a gallon gas, if we wanted our government to subsidize our driving.

I dont think that is the answer, infact I think that would definately be the wrong thing to do.

We need to accept the fact that cheap oil has run out, and we need to change our way of life because I'm fairly certain that within my lifetime the decrease in available oil will make it no longer economically feasible to base our entire civilization on it being around.

[QUALAR]

35. BIG OIL BS

We're subsidizing Big Oil now. I own a lot of oil stocks, but what they are doing should be criminalized. We should enforce the antitrust laws and begin sending the vultures to prison. Start with that turkey necked Exxon/Mobile executive who just retired.

[Terry in Austin]

45. No such thing as "big oil"

Not in the sense that private oil companies are able to manipulate prices. They only control about 20% of the supply. Even OPEC, at about 40%, has long since lost the power to control prices.

As supply falls short of demand, prices rise as part of the natural behavior of markets. That's the way demand is brought down in order to correct the shortfall.

All big corporations are worthy of our contempt, so there's no particular reason to single out oil companies. Blaming price rises on them is one of the denial narratives that are going around as we try to come to grips with the fact that oil is in decline.

We've been jonesing on the oil, and it's time to kick, like it or not.

[Bombero1956]

24. taxes the speculators

I know Big Oil has a hand in this but so do the investors who are driving up the price of crude oil. Tax the shit out of the clowns making obscene profits on the backs of the poor and middle class.

[Historic NY]

25. What are these people smoking its been over 4.00 for almost 2wks.

[CRF450]

28. Its still less than $4/gal in alot of places here.

Last I saw, they were $3.87 for regular here. My car takes premium which hella expensive right now, but because I have to drive the truck alot (it gets regular) now, its actually MUCH more expensive to drive than the car!

[villager]

26. "inch closer?" Where the hell does the headline writer live?

n/t

[high density]

27. In last month, evidently

These articles are so stupid, I can't believe people get assigned and paid to write this garbage.

[Liberty Belle]

29. Beyond inching. $4.19 in San Diego, up 20 cents in a day.

[neverforget]

36. Thurs it dropped from 3.95 to 3.91. This morning it was 4.05 this afternoon

4.11. :wtf: I couldn't believe it had actually dropped 4 cents on Thursday......

This was at the gas station I fill up at in Milwaukie, Oregon.

[uppityperson]

37. Did that up here in smalltown, WA, but add 10 cents to each of those.

[Baby Snooks]

38. Wait until your June light bill arrives!

In most areas of the country the June electric bill will be double what it was in May. And then the July bill will probably be even higher.

[ohio2007]

39. 100,000 Americans Petition Congress to Drill for Oil Now

Here, Drill Now, Pay Less' campaign continues to gain momentum



WASHINGTON, May 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- American Solutions for Winning the Future announced today that more than 100,000 Americans have now signed a petition urging Congress to immediately start drilling for oil domestically to ease gas prices. The petition is part of the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" campaign American Solutions launched last week.

snip
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=prnw.20080529.DC23746&show_article=1

[sakabatou]

41. Riiiight

And what about our aging refineries... guess they never thought of that.

[Historic NY]

42. Another Gingrich plan....tell Newt to go to hell he had his chance.

Why are people so ignorant? You can drill all you want but if you can process the oil what do you have. It takes year to drill from the time you search out the location, build the necessary infrastructure and get it on shore for processing. Do people actually think gas comes out of the ground? The answer is not more drilling but refining capacity. If we did away with processing corn ethanol the price would come down immediately as the capability to process oil would increase. Bush has turned our economy and energy policies upside down. Ethanol needs to comes from outside our food chain.

[NickB79]

48. Look up a graph of US oil production and tell me what you see past 1970

US oil production peaked in 1970, and has been declining ever since. This is in SPITE of the drilling of the North Slope/Prudhoe Bay, and the numerous Gulf of Mexico drilling rigs.

The remaining conventional oil reserves that the US has are SMALLER than either Prudhoe or the Gulf fields. The only large reserves left are the tar sands and oil shales, which are incredibly polluting and extremely expensive to develop.

Developing new, expensive fields that cost $100/barrel to drill in to offset declines in the $50/barrel aging oilfields won't bring down the price of gas.

[Diclotican]

40. UpInArms

UpInArms

I wish I just have to pay US 3,96 for a gallon with petrol... Here in Norway, we pay average of Kr 13.00 for One liter... (A gallon is 3.9 liter). By the way, the british Gallon is in fact 4 liter, not as the US gallon:eyes: And Norway are for the moment the most expensive country when it come to petrol.. And we produce the stuff.... In Nordsjøen (The north sea)

For a full tank, on my old, shappy Toyota Corolla I have to pay (for 95 Octane) average Kr 400, Maybe even more if I have to full the car not on the weekends... So I guess US still have a way to go, before it would come to what we are accustomed to... When I first started to drive 14 year ago for regular 95 the petrol cost 6.50, and it was almost revolt because the price was been told to rice to 7 kroner by the liter.. Today for regular 95, the price is also 13.00 (and more I have seen prices up to 14 kroner by the liter)

But off course I understand it is hard times for the american public, who also pay for almost every ting else in the life.. Medical help is not sheap in US... Something like Universal Health Care, from the taxes you pay is something you would never get I fear... It smell of "socialism" so I guess for the moment, the fear of paying more taxes, than the truth about universal health care would benefit the ordinary american great... It is not without troubles, but I would rather pay my taxes, and get free medical help when needed, than be screwed by the health care industry who are putting the "bottom line" as the most important thing.. Than helping the public who pay great for insurance..:sarcasm:

But again, even with the high petrol prices in US, it is still far lower than in many european country.. And in other places of the world they even have to rationalize the use of petrol, so not it goes dry.... A country like Indonesia would from the end of the Year in fact go out of OPEC, and use the oil to help their own people, even if it means that the indonesian oil would not go into the world anymore... And if Indonesia are starting a trend, it would not be the last country to decide that their oil would go to the benefit of their own peopole...

Diclotican

Sorry my bad english, not my native language

[tularetom]

43. In order for it to inch closer to $4 here

it would have to inch downwards ($4.14 yesterday in Oakhurst CA).

[Critters2]

47. $4.09 here today. Well past "inching closer to". nt