Posted on 01/03/2015 10:08:58 AM PST by Theoria
Recent Price Plunge Looks Good After Years of High Costs, but Fill-Ups Were Less Expensive From 1986-2003
U.S. gasoline prices are the lowest they’ve been in five years. And they feel even cheaper because they come on the heels of the highest gas prices consumers have paid in three decades.
In 2012, the national annual average for a gallon of regular unleaded gas—the yardstick for gauging prices—hit a high of $3.77, capping a series of years in which the average exceeded $3 a gallon. Before that, the last time the average was so high was in the early 1980s, when, adjusted for inflation, it topped $3.60.
That’s why today’s prices feel so affordable. On New Year’s Day, the national daily average was $2.23 a gallon, according to Gas Buddy, a website that publishes real-time prices, and in many places the cost was substantially lower. Nearly 30% of the 130,000 vendors tracked by Gas Buddy across the country, or about 38,200 stations, were selling gas for less than $2 a gallon.
But the lowest prices today don’t match the bottom-of-the-barrel prices of the past 40 years, and it isn’t likely the current prices will stay low as long.
The U.S. experienced its best gas prices in a generation from 1986 to 2003. That 17-year stretch was the longest sustained period of cheap gas since the oil shocks of the 1970s. Prices never exceeded a national annual average of $2.06 a gallon, adjusted for inflation, and in 1998, they tanked to an average of $1.51.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
>>Why Gas Feels Cheap—and Why It’s Not, Historically Speaking
It’s cheaper than it was a year ago, so suck it Wall St. Let the little people keep some of their money, OK?
Oh NO! Now is the time to raise the taxes on gasoline!
That’s a very strange pair of graphs. The bitch claims that prices would have to fall by another dollar to be “cheap” and yet it’s obvious that they have already fallen by 35 cents of that dollar in the left hand chart. And they are still falling. The pump prices have not caught up to the crude oil price yet.
Yet another stupid and intentionally confusing article.
‘The bitch’????????????
sorry. The ignoramus.
I don’t think it can be sustained. It will rise back up and level out at around 2.50 to 3.00. So I’ve heard on the radio.
The savings also go over into winter heating oil.
I am south of Boston.,
Last March I paid $3.499 / Gal.
Yesterday I fueled up at $2.399 / gal.
Saved about $190 on that fuel up - Tom
I paid $1.60/gal yesterday. Dropping another dollar wouldn't even cover the state and federal taxes.
Probably will happen. States won't be able to resist adding some real money to the tax to save the bridges and all that. It'll seem doable if it's kept under 25 cents a gallon or so. Then it won't belong before some of these oil producing countries have revolutions or start diversionary wars or whatever and chaos happens and the supply of gas goes down and the those who manipulate the prices will raise them, way up because of the shortage. And we'll pay more than ever. And all those new taxes we'll have to fix highways etc? They'll be spent on everything but that and they'll never go away.
That's my prediction. A rocky future made worse by government greed.
I remember my Dad saying one day as he saw the latest gas station prices: “I’m buying a bicycle. I’ll be damned if I pay 25 cents for a gallon of gas.” I’m old enough to remember ‘gas wars’ where gas stations would lower prices to beat the competition. I’ve bought gas at 4.9 cents a gallon.
I'm going to say something totally outrageous:
The price of oil (a commodity), will go down, and will go up depending upon the supply and demand of the product (minus government intervention).
There, I said it.
5.56mm
Gas should get cheaper given that the cost at the pump has not caught up with the cost per barrel. We are $2.00 and under here in central va.
Author cheats. Limits the chart to the lowest period of gas prices ever.
Here’s a chart showing gas prices (inflation-adjusted) since 1918, when it was $4.
Gas was above $2 throughout the 20th, with the exception of the period the author chose to include.
http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/Gasoline_Inflation.asp
If anybody can post the chart directly, that would be cool.
Thanks much.
Of course, the methods used to adjust for inflation generally have some real problems.
Would you explain that please?
$2.17 at the Murphy’s near our house today.
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