I wanted a place we could gripe about the rising cost of gas.

Every year, it goes up in summer and never completely comes back to its previous price. This year, with all the other added ....issues... I'd be willing to bet we'll never see gas below $3/gallon again.

Anywho, here on the left coast, land of the automobile (and where much of the stuff is refined) regular unleaded is ranging from $3.05 to $3.31.

What's the rest of the country's price for a gallon of the rare and precious elixir (i.e. gasoline)?

Well here's a really excellent guide to show you

Gas Price Temperature map

I just filled up for 3.26 the other day, seems like it shot up about 30 cents from the last time I filled up about 2 weeks ago.

CJ, what the hell?! Why do Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana get a break???? Doesn't gas have to be trucked out to B.F.,Utah-Wyoming-Idaho-Montana, or do they have a secret pipeline????

I'm just guessing here, but I bet the taxes are higher in California. How much longer does this go on before more refineries are built? Anyone care to guess when the last one was built in the US?

That's where Cheney's ranch is.



Gas in the Midwest isn't as bad as other places, it's under $2.90. I drive maybe 50-100 miles per week. I'm close to work and only go 3 days a week. If I could buy a Honda Civic or Hybrid, I'd only be using 2-4 gallons per week!


To add to the question, what cars do you drive?

In many ways I am cheering the rise in gas prices. I don't understand how people can complain when more than 50% of the vehicles on the road are individuals in SUVs or trucks. When I see the last Hummer on the road, then I'll start to feel bad for people.

Suck it up, get a gas efficient vehicle. They're not expensive at all. Try a Civic or a Pontiac Vibe, both get over 30 MPG and are under $15K.

http://www.carpricesecrets.com/form.php?mo...20513a451e42922

RedCedar, I drive a Mazda truck. Before you berate me and tell me to get a more fuel-efficient vehicle, prior to this I drove a Miata, prior to that a Neon. The only reason I got a truck was that I was buying a house, and figured a truck would be useful (and boy howdy, has it been!). And besides, it's a little truck. I purposely live close to work (15 miles, which in LA is practically next door ), and don't do much unnecessary driving.

But I still grouse about gas prices, cuz I'm an old fart and I remember when.


Heh. Good one.

I just filled up at $2.84 per gallon.

State gas taxes do not explain the whole price picture. New Jersey, for instance, has a low state gas tax (14 cents per gallon), but recently adopted California emissions regulations ala California.

Prices in many places are driven by the lack of ethanol to add to the gasoline. Some stations have no gasoline, not because of the petroleum product, but because of the ethanol additive.

Gasoline remains cheaper than milk or bottled water, however.

Hardly Amlord, I know of no one that drinks $40+ worth of water or milk a week.

Sounds like a line from Mathew Simmons (the author of Twilight in the Desert). I heard a news commentator say this but then add, "just how many gallons of milk and water do you buy?"

I paid about $2.62 on my last fill up. I have since seen regular unleaded as high as $2.90 at some stations in Western Washington.

I regard gas prices as partially influenced by world demand for oil, partially influenced by the situation in Nigeria, partially the result of the orchestrated confrontation with Iran, and partially the result of a failure to invest in new refinery capacity by the oil companies. However, I think the prices we're seeing now or only a foretaste of what we will face when peak oil becomes obvious. We will have to learn to get by using much less gasoline and to paying much higher prices for it as much of the world already does. (See World Oil Prices and Taxes).

I bought milk on Saturday for $3.29 a gallon. Bottled water is $1.29 a pint.

Each is more expensive (for me) than the $2.84 a gallon I paid for gas. That's all I meant. Obviously I did not buy a pint or a single gallon of gasoline.

$2.95 and letting people know how upset I am about it the whole time.

It was about $2.87, cheapest place I saw while I was cruising around town with about a quarter of a tankfull. It's $2.65 according to the gas website I've got bookmarked, but they're all on the West side of the city and not worth the drive to save 22 cents.

Then again, if I could rationalize a shopping trip on that side of town, maybe it would be worth the extra miles.

Decisions, decisions...

114.5 a Litre for regular unleaded. Not bad but not great.

Is bottled water really that expensive?

Is milk supposed to be cheap?

Hey, it's cheaper than gold as well!

Lately the price has fluctuated up to about 30¢ per day. On my last payday, it was at $2.89/gallon, but I splurged and purchased a full gallon that day... At a dime a gallon less the next day, I splashed in $10.

This months natural gas bill was so high that I thought I must have missed a payment. I hadn't. Locally the papers have been writing stories of people who are making their own biodiesel fuel.

If it makes anyone feel any better, it's about $1.70 here in New Zealand.....

per litre! That's almost $7/gal, for those keeping score back home.

Similar here in the UK - it's 96.9 pence per litre in my local supermarket's filling station, and my town is one of the cheapest for petrol in the country (for some odd reason - it's nowhere near the coast or any pipelines or refineries).

That's roughly $1. 73 per litre - a little more than NZ. And, according to this article, the price could easily top the psychologically important £1.00 per litre barrier quite soon.

The trouble is, petrol (or gasoline, if you will) is a grudge purchase. Nobody WANTS to buy it, it's just something you HAVE to buy in order to be able to do things you DO want to do (drive places). Rising prices are making people think harder about how much they drive, but most people's journeys are centred on commuting of various kinds (to work, but also ferrying kids to & from school, that kind of thing), and there isn't a lot of cutting down you can do on that - not in the very short term, anyway.

So people are generally content to just complain about the price, rather than do anything much about it. And I think there's a general consensus among the population that governments can't do much about it either, except in the medium or long term. (This is borne out by the general thrust of the other gasoline thread currently running.)

So there is not yet very much political demand for action, which means that there is not much political will in government to take any action; contrary to most evidence, Tony Blair's government doesn't deliberately set out to do unpopular things. In turn, this means that we'll carry on the way we always have - grumbling but not changing much - until the paradigm shifts somehow, as it eventually must.

I predict that, in the US and the UK, we won't change our habits dramatically enough to affect oil prices (or in the wider context, pollution, emissions and the plausible effects they might or might not be having on the environment and climate) unless some non-petroleum-fuelled form of personal transportation becomes a mass market possibility, or the demand-supply equation tips so far in favour of demand that petroleum-based fuels become genuinely scarce products. Whichever happens first.

And, since I haven't seen any Jetsons-style flying cars that make a 'be-be-be-be-be-be' sound or Star Trek transporters around recently, I further predict that we won't significantly change our habits until the oil really does start to run out.

I remember driving through Europe maybe 10 years ago and paying $60 to fill up the little compact we were driving. Europeans were mostly driving small cars or motorcycles.

The US highways are an embarassment. Tons of big vehicles with single drivers. Cheap oil will make people act that way.

The big problem is limited leadership around the globe making renewable energy a reality.

I've got a VW Corrado 2.0 litre, and the tank holds 15 gallons. It costs me just under £50 to fill the tank from near empty (I never let it run out altogether). That's about $90 for just over 14 gallons - say, $6.20 per gallon. (I'm not sure, but I think that US gallons are a bit smaller than UK gallons - which doesn't much matter as we now buy petrol here in litres, but complicates things a bit for this thread.)

Last night I checked around for the best price. Regular unleaded gas ranged from $2.99-9/10 per gallon to $2.94-9/10. Curmudgeon and I just put in a few gallons at a time these days, hoping the price goes down before we have to fill the tank of our economy car.

Okay, just to keep this interesting topic going, I filled up my 1995 Kia Sephia (that gets from 37 to 40 mpg) yesterday in Tumwater, WA. The pump price for regular unleaded was $2.99/gal but I received a 6 cent discount from the Safeway station, so I paid $2.93. Driving around I saw gasoline prices posted from $2.91 9/10th at a an off brand outlet to $2.99 9/10th at an Exxon station.

Needless to say, I find myself driving the Kia more and the Subaru, that gets about 27mpg, less. I'm less concerned about the run up in gas prices (since I expected it) than the effect it is having on peoples psychology and the housing market. We're trying to sell our old house to support out move to a more sustainable new house. I'm afraid our timing wasn't the best.

I can sympathize. It's amazing how the price of gas affects so many other things. I really need the housing market to hang in there for another year so I can refinance my ARM. My timing sucks, too!

Moi, I am driving an Opel Astra [new generation] 1.4. Kewl car, but I can't afford to drive anywhere. Gas (petrol) prices [premium] just hit 1.42 EUR/l, equals 1.78 $/l, that would be 6.71 $/gallon and anyone who thinks the prices will drop any time soon is kidding himself. Time to sell the car and buy a cheap car or the yearly subscribtion for public transportation. Good I am living in a city that provides this kind of transport in abundance.
In addition, the government is pushing for a law that requires the oil companies to intermix the gas with eco-fuels like canola-oil. That would help to decrease oil-consumption, but the prices would increase additionally.
The future belongs to bicycles I guess.

What's the rest of the country's price for a gallon of the rare and precious
elixir (i.e. gasoline)?

I filled up the tank in my car about 5 days ago and at the time it cost $2.95
per gallon. The very next day I saw the prices go up to $3.05. Now at the
same gas station the price for regular unleaded is $3.17.

I heard from more than one source that moderating your driving habits can
save you up to 40% in gas consumption. For example, if you are usually the
type to accelerate right after the light turns green, and you are also the type
to race along the street only to hit the breaks at the upcoming red light, you
are wasting a lot of gas. IF you can learn to drive conservatively you will save
a lot in the long run. It's hard to change your driving habits, but I'm certainly
working on it myself.

Also, in case any of you are paying for premium unleaded, it's a total rip-off
and unnecessary, with the high standards ensuring cleaner gasoline.

I suppose some vehicles need the higher octane due to higher compression, sportscar engines. CR might have a take on that.

Wanted to comment on the Prius and other hybrid vehicles that are and will be coming out soon. The downsides involve having to learn a completely different way of driving and the battery wearing out.

When driving a hybrid, the rules go like this: Accelerate hard up to speed and use the brakes a lot when going downhill or coming to a stop, but do not brake hard. This is directly opposite to what the rules are for a regular vehicle, so if people get a hybrid and don't change the driving method, the gas mileage is really pretty bad for a rollerskate.

The battery is expensive! When it wears out, figure on thousands of bucks to replace the thing. How much does a rebuilt engine cost, $400-$800? Same for a rebuilt transmission, I estimate.

The point is that if one can afford to buy new every two to five years, the hybrid might make economic sense. Or maybe the batteries last longer these days, although I'd not count on MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure, or Mighty Tall Billygoat Figure) from the manufacturer.

But, if one can afford to buy new at these intervals, does the price of gas really matter?

Prices seem to be receding somewhat.

Back down to $2.74 here and it never hit $3.00.

Prices may be receding in other parts of the country, but California's still holding steady over $3 (3.19 at the station I use).

I'm currently in the Ft. Walton Beach/Pensacola area, and in the last three weeks, gas has gone down from approximately $2.92 to $2.76.

Still high here, filled up for 3.36 yesterday.

This map is dynamic and confirms prices have come down in some areas.