How high will gasoline go in 2012

The UK government has been playing games with "green" taxes in the last few years (read that as"nice little revenue earners").
IIRC the fuel tax currently runs at about 58 pence per litre, before sales tax (at 20%) is added onto the total cost. So reversing that... Cost before tax for the fuel is at about 50 pence per litre.

I believe some sort of ramped year-on-year increase in the fuel duty was introduced a few years back, which contributed to the current (excessive) tax levels.

Note: figures used here are "as I recall", so don't take them as gospel...

 

+1...and this is the only reason I bought my prius...to defer some gas expenditures.....I can only afford filling my Acura so much....dropping $30 at a clip 3-4 times a week gets expensive quickly!

 

This was at a Gulf station, not one of those American or Valero places. I would still recommend shopping around.

 

There was a 1p escalator that's been removed for now.

But fuel duty is still indexed.

 

End of Ethanol Subsidies Could Increase Gas Prices!

End of Ethanol Subsidies Could Increase Gas Prices Marginally - Kicking Tires - The Washington Post

 

T.V. news just said this year will be the highest prices ever. $4.95 in Chicago and $4.70 in L.A.

 

I feel for anyone who will try to buy a new Prius around Memorial Day, the Prius c and Plug-in Prius especially, will be selling for top dollars.

 

Yeah, I'm watching the NBC News story and I just had to chuckle when they interviewed a random driver. He said "gas prices are killing me. I got the big V8, the 5.4 liter and uh, it's just not fair."

Seems pretty fair to me. Wouldn't "kill" him as much if he'd bought a more efficient vehicle in the first place.

 

The price of oil is largely speculative--it depends on whether oil futures paper is being bought or sold. In fact, the price of electricity from your local power company is now figured that way, and can change every 3 months depending on the price of oil. That's what my power company told me.

As for the price of gas this year, hold onto your hybrids. Gas prices aren't going down.
The slightest excuse to buy oil futures--the price will be up the next day at the pumps.
That's the way it works. You can imagine what will happen if the oil supply in the Middle East is even remotely threatened.Gas will hit $5 easy.

 

That's odd. That doesn't happen around here. That happens in Hawaii which gets a lot of its electricity from oil. Google for hawaii electricity oil adjustment price.

I don't know who your provider is but if I put in the 19397 zip code into How clean is the electricity I use? - Power Profiler | Clean Energy | US EPA, it says that for PECO Energy Co for that region, only 1.1% of electricity there comes from oil.

I could see adjustments from the price of natural gas, which is very low right now.

If gas prices do get as high as predicted, I'd imagine demand for all Prius models will surge and EVs, PHEVs and NGVs will start looking a lot more interesting to folks.

 

The price of gas is expected to go up in part because the 10% of ethanol content in every gallon of gas is no longer subsidized and the change to summer gas formulation. It usually goes up right around Memorial Day!

 

You can thank current admin and life long professional politicians for that backwards subsidy besides countries like Brazil produce "ethanol" more cost effective and efficient than a corn subsidy which only contributed to economic "bubble".
Additionally, if Iran gets "nukes" or is engaged in a war the price of gas will skyrocket!!

 

Not all gas. I have about 7 stations locally that have the option of gas that is "Unlaced" with ethanol.

This should help that problem.
http://pure-gas.org/

 

We have one in Monroe that doesn't use the Ethanol added fuel. I checked your link and it was listed. So it is accurate for my case.

 

If you notice, you can also add them as you find them.

 

Hawai'i has an unusual situation. (This applies to the Big Island, and I only assume it also applies to the rest of the state.)

In order to get electricity, the government granted a monopoly to a company which then installed diesel generators, powered by oil brought in by ship. Because of the monopoly, nobody can introduce sustainable energy, other than private systems for the owner's home. And the power company has so much capital invested in the diesel power plants that they don't see any advantage in installing renewable energy. They have invested capital, and are protected from competition. Research has been done on ocean thermal: bringing up deep, cold seawater to power generators . But the monopoly economics has resulted in that cold sea water just being used for aquaculture. There's a really cool seahorse farm that you can visit, and hold a seahorse. And a really dull abalone farm that you can visit also, where they raise abalones the size of small clams which they sell for an outrageous price.

 

I predict a national average of $4/per, obviously higher on the high-tax coasts and in isolated boutique-fuel areas. I don't foresee it rising significantly higher, bar some major international crisis that may cause a price spike or three.

People talk a lot about Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran's military strength in absolute terms is paltry compared to what the United States has deployed in the area - although the number of Iranian missiles and planes may seem impressive, they (like many non-Western nations) are so far behind in flight hours clocked, maintenance, and military doctrine that any conflict would be extremely short and one-sided.

To be fair, it only takes one sunk tanker to send the speculators running for the hills.

A lot of people like to criticize Obama for blocking oil production - and I'll quickly say that he isn't doing everything he could be doing to get America independent of foreign oil - but the fact of the matter is, domestic oil production has risen 11% since 2005 and the proportion of imported oil has dropped from 60% to a projected 36%.

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/24/145719179/foreign-oil-imports-drop-as-u-s-drilling-ramps-up

One telltale sign of this is the difference in crude oil prices: for the past year or so, there's been a significant difference between West Texas Intermediate crude and London Brent crude - the latter of which most of the world is benchmarked to.

As of today, WTI closed at $101.60 and Brent closed at $119.63. Any international crisis will disproportionately affect Europe, not the United States.

With that in mind, I'll stick to my prediction of $4/per.

 

Actually....it wouldn't even take that.
Ever been to the NAG?

It's pretty crowded there, and the shipping lanes bring ULCCs (tankers) pretty close to Iranian shores. You don't need expensive, Gucci military hardware to knock a hole in a tanker. They wouldn't even need one of their "newer" Zulfiqar tanks to do it with. A rusted out M-60 or T-62 tank could do the job quite nicely, thank you very much.

OK....reality check time.
The traffic separation scheme has outbound ULCCs exiting on the UAE (or Omani side, take yer pick.) They wouldn't get more than a few shots off before the US Navy would be all over them like a hobo on a ham sandwich, and ULCCs are soft targets, but they're BIG targets. Kinda hard to sink, unless you use Mr. John Daniels as your bridge watch officer and pile yourself up on the rocks. Even then…..you don’t actually sink.
Tactically....such an attack would be pretty valueless.

However (comma!) as you pointed out such an event would send the spot price of oil shooting up about 20-percent faster than the CNN reporters would have time to get their makeup on.

Gas is at 3.something right now. That's with a mild winter, and the fact that we're about 3-4 months to the left of the peak summer driving season and with an economy that's trying to get back up off the floor. ADD to that the fact that several states are running out of Obama bucks to plug holes in their state budgets, AND the fact that world energy demands are still going up.

Four dollars?
I do not know....I think that even barring some (more) feistiness from the folks in the sandbox, all of the steering currents for oil pricing are going up, and that we'll get pretty close to that nasty five dollar mark this year. That’s my humble prediction. Current value: <$0.02.

Might be that my boss will regret booting that Keystone pipeline deal. I'm thinking that he's going to either sneak it through anyway and blame those waskly Wepupwicans, or he's gonna get it shoved up his stern this fall.

Bear in mind that it rains on the just and the unjust alike.
It matters very little how much or how quickly the pipeline would affect actual US gas supplies.
Howzit going to sound in a 30-second commercial?

Ya never know....
It will be fun to watch though!