Imports advanced 2.6 percent to $174.6 billion. Today’s report estimated petroleum prices rose to $72.54 a barrel in November, the highest level since October 2008. The increase in costs more than offset a drop in volumes as the U.S. imported 245 million barrels in November, the fewest since February 1999.
Prices have been jumping on the back of a strong oil market where the cost for a barrel has spiked 20 percent in the past month on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Skyrocketing gasoline prices couldn’t come at a worse time for motorists, who will see heating bills jump after the worst cold spell in years.
Oil prices are now about three times what they were a year ago.
“There is a long history of tripled oil prices causing consternation among consumers,” Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover said in a report Monday. “We are not there, yet, but gasoline prices at more than $3.00 is certainly an unwelcome sign of consumer distress.”
Prices almost always tick up toward the spring as more people begin to drive and refiners switch over to cleaner burning fuels as required by law.
Motorists are paying about $50 more a month for gasoline than a year ago, and the total fuel bill for Americans now tops $1 billion per day compared with $650 million per day last year. Add in heating oil and diesel fuel, and the total fuel bill is probably $400 million to $550 million more each day than a year ago, said Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Services.
Front range Colorado has a lot of oil rigs working. Some are reworking existing wells but some are new wells. May not mean anything but the industry has been shut down for months. Doubt the companies are expanding thinking oil prices are going down.
Unfortunately TeamObama has us right where they want us — another economic trauma waiting to happen so we can all be dependent on the government for our every need.
I work in the airline industry and we are just now recovering from the 2008 Fuel prices. We furloughed pilots and they have all been recalled. Plus, we are doing more flying and we are going to be hiring more pilots this spring.
If fuel prices go back up, we can kiss this reality goodbye.
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Inflation is starting… With the extreme cold weather, heating fuel is selling like hot cakes, leaving less for gasoline, requiring more bbls of oil for refining, driving costs up, when you add inflation, I’d not be surprised to see $100-120/bbl by summer.
WSF: thanks for visiting and thanks for commenting. You make a good point — I can only envisage prices continuing to climb.
Clint: I fear that’s going to be the path.
NFO: and you’re correct, couple this all in with the inflation we’ll all be seeing in 2010.
BZ
BZ…it’s dependence; they want us dependent for EVERYTHING from the government.
Oh, BZ….at least if our kids weren’t so completely indoctrinated, I’d feel we have a chance out of this thing. As it is, I pose the suggestion that if the Left had just waited another 5-10 years to put someone as leftist as Obama is in office, America’d have been finished off in one year; Who’d have FOUGHT other than so many senior citizens as they are today against the healthcare bill?
Z: we can fight and complain but I’m starting to have serious doubts. The more people become mired in their own debt, the more. . .
Well, I’m wondering when the People will really reach their tipping point, if they’re continuously ignored.
BZ
The tipping point is close. Prices are going up and wages aren’t.
The left has one weakness that we can exploit and that is that the typical leftist is a total coward who will not risk their I’m not-expendable skin for anything.
Prices here in Tennessee have been fairly steady over the past month ($2.40 – $2.50’s) per gallon. Obama has the power, but his agenda is not concerned with high gas prices. In fact, the higher the better as far and the Left is concerned. They always claim to be for the “little guy”, but the opposite is true.
Debbie
Right Truth
http://www.righttruth.typepad.com
Thank you BZ.
Without the assurance of a few like minds, I’d truly think I was going crazy.
A rise in the price of fossil fuels will fit right in to the Obama agenda and he will continue to do everything to assure these prices continue to rise.
Obama and those around him in the west wing secretly want inflation, and perhaps hyper-inflation, so they can declare an emergency and make more draconian moves. Just an idea, but one that does cross my conspiracy ladden mind from time to time.
funny – i heard on the radio news at lunch today that it was announced that although the total amount of unrefined oil in the country at this moment is extremely high, fuel prices had continued to rise. it’s $2.59/2.69/2.79 here in west texas…
Debbie, you bring an excellent point; numerous Leftists, and the sterling Thomas Friedman, have said gas needs to be at least $7 + a gallon in order to stave off our usage of petroleum products.
Yes. Wonderful. And that would resultingly kill national transportation, including locomotives which transport items by bulk, trucks which transport less-than-carload items point-to-point, other common carriers, not to mention those needing to work daily. But wait! The electric car, the electric truck, the electric locomotive — these will save us all, yes?
No. Just where do you think we’ll be acquiring all that required extra electricity? The electrical generation stations that we have refused to build for years and years?
Greybeard: no. You’re not nuts.
Ron: Draconian Moves? You mean like Obama’s EO for the establishment of the Council of Governors? Like the Rand Report to the Obama Admin calling for a “National Stability Police Force?”
Like THAT?
Don: and being in Texas, home of the Chemical Coast and various refineries, are they all up and running now?
BZ
GB- You ARE crazy. How soon you forget that gas was nearly $5 a gallon when W and Cheney were in the driver’s seat. Remember when you were paying $100 a week on gas and not $50 like you are now? That’s $2,600 more over one year, which can be directly attributed to the Iraq war.
The decline of the dollar was also in full swing under their sterling stewardship. The dollar will gain value when interest rates on US bonds begins to rise. When this happens, you will also see gold, oil and other commodities begin to decrease in value little by little.
With the execption of the value of my home, I have completely recovered my investment portfolio and increased it by over 25% since Jan 07. When you all were burying gold coins in the backyard I bought Apple at $88 a share. It’s at $210 now. We are at the beginning of an economic uptick. As Warren Buffet says “be fearful when everyone is greedy and greedy when everyone else is fearful.”
A certain amount of inflation is expected when there is an economic expansion.
The dollar is going to mirror Obama’s homeland currency if he, Reid and Pelosi have their way… The things at work these days in our government are typical of Obama’s fatherland. Need money? Print more… Gas prices are just the tip of the iceberg.
Amazing how wingnuts blame Obama for residual Bush incompetence.
BD- It’s all they got. They are going for the Hitler method: Tell a lie enough and people will believe it’s the truth.
Godwin’s Law on reductio ad Hitlerum.
Back up the equivalencies with the NSDAP and how they operated, demonstrate relevence or otherwise factually illustrate the reference to Hitler and the NSDAP.
That is the National Socialist Democratic Worker’s Party… the Nazis. Strange to say it Hitler was quite direct about what he was going to do in Mein Kampf, and got public adulation for it. He wasn’t selling a lie, but selling something that he told everyone about, in detail. He got his war a bit early, true, but then he thought the West was going to continue rolling over and play dead.
BTW the ‘repeat the lie’ is a Stalinism. Also of ‘one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic’ that he used to cover up the deaths under his rule. Can we at least keep the International Socialists and the National Socialists differentiated?
And do keep Godwin’s Law in mind. Not minding it loses arguments immediately: show the parallels directly or find another venue to attack as using Hitler and the NSDAP is a way of just attacking people without basis.
Doing such things helps keep discussions civil.
That builds civilization.