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Americans are pumping about 4% of their incomes into buying gasoline, according to a government report. The Energy Department said on Monday that U.S. households spent an average of $2,912 on gasoline last year, the highest level in four years. The percentage reached similar levels in 2008, when a red-hot global economy and panic over dwindling supplies sent gas prices through the roof. But before then, the percentage hadn't reached these levels in nearly three decades.

…it opens next month. It’s a propaganda film, and it’s pure BS. There is no evidence that hydraulic fracturing causes farmland to become unproductive the way it’s depicted in Promised Land. We’ve been fracking for 60 years in this country and if fracking destroyed farmland we would know about it. We don’t know that. But what we do know is that the financing of Damon’s anti-fracking propaganda film comes from the United Arab Emirates. As in, an Arab OPEC nation. Whose interests are significantly damaged by the kind of full-scale domestic U.S. oil and gas production fracking holds the key...

....So far, 36 companies that have received federal support from taxpayers have either gone bankrupt or are laying off workers and are heading for bankruptcy. This list includes only those companies that received federal money from the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy. The amount of money indicated does not reflect how much was actually received or spent but how much was offered. The amount also does not include other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies, which push the amount of money these companies have received from taxpayers even higher. The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:...

Obama's Brutal Gaffe: Low Gas Prices Cratered Our Economy by Ben Shapiro 17 Oct 2012, 11:48 AM PDT Last night, President Barack Obama dropped the biggest campaign gaffe of the season – only the media wasn’t watching. It happened during his testy exchange with Mitt Romney over gas prices. First, Obama denied that he’d done anything about denying licenses on oil and gas; he backed off of that shortly. Then he denied that production on federal land was down; he was lying. Finally, Romney hit him with this devastating line: The proof of whether a strategy is working or not...

Energy Policy: As the administration fast-tracks solar projects on public lands, it has locked up more than half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, preferring to continue outsourcing energy jobs and dollars. The price of gasoline, which was $1.84 a gallon the day President Obama took office, has more than doubled since, willfully aided and abetted by an administration that claims we can't drill our way to energy independence as we ignore vast reserves of North American energy that dwarf OPEC's and we sit on 100 years' supply of petroleum. Few Americans have heard of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska...

Gas prices have more than doubled since Barack Obama took over the White House. But that didn’t stop him from cutting off drilling in August in half of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. The Obama Administration planned for higher gas prices and fewer jobs through their many job-killing decisions. The Wall Street Journal reported, via FOX Nation: President Obama is campaigning as a champion of the oil and gas boom he’s had nothing to do with, and even as his regulators try to stifle it. The latest example is the Interior Department’s little-noticed August decision to close off from drilling nearly...

One of the great priorities of the left is to get Americans out of their cars and onto public transportation. When the masses no longer have access to cars, it clears the streets for the limos of the nomenklatura, just as it did in the old USSR, and still does in North Korea. The best way to accomplish this goal is to push up gasoline prices. Energy Secretary Steven Chu famously hoped that energy prices would double, and President Obama also admitted to wanting energy prices to rise, just not too quickly, lest the frog catch on the water is...

FORTUNE -- President Obama may have a lot more to worry about than bombing the debate this week. Traders are starting to get particularly bullish over gasoline prices – and that is bad news for the average driver, who may also be looking to vent his spleen at the voting booth. Reports of gas shortages along the high-demand west and east coasts may be fleeting – although deeply concerning – but they highlight a problem that's expected to persist in the U.S.: our refineries are getting old. Given that a new refinery has not been built since 1976, commodities desks...

When Errol Emrich drove by a Shell station in his San Jose neighborhood last weekend, regular gas was selling for $4.05 a gallon. On Monday, it was $4.15. On Tuesday, $4.25. And this weekend? Analysts say it could reach a whopping $4.40. Problems at California refineries have slashed supplies across the state, cutting fuel production and raising wholesale prices -- the price stations pay for their gasoline -- by as much as 73 cents, to levels not seen since 2007. And that almost certainly will boost prices at the pump again soon. "California gasoline prices may surge in the next...

"The squeeze is on, and people are doing desperate things," is how one independent described the situation in California. As Bloomberg reports, a shortage of supply along with drastically higher wholesale prices of gasoline has caused 'mom-and-pop' gas stations to close down as their margins are destroyed. Even larger firms, such as CostCo, are closing sites due to the shortages as Los Angeles and San Francisco gas prices jump 30-45c in a few days. As one owner noted: "I can get gas, but it’s going to cost me $4.90 a gallon, and I can’t sell it here for $5," and...

As the summer driving season comes to an end, motorists who were hoping gas prices would fall are instead getting hit with a big jump, especially in the Northeast. The average price of a gallon of regular gas increased 1.5 cents nationally for the second straight day, taking it to $3.86 in AAA's latest reading Wednesday. The back-to-back price moves follow what had been a lull in gas price activity after an August run-up in prices caused by Gulf Coast refinery disruptions as Hurricane Isaac approached. Prices had been expected to retreat quickly once the Gulf region's facilities came back...

If Citigroup is right, Saudi Arabia will cease to be an oil exporter by 2030, far sooner than previously thought. A 150-page report by Heidy Rehman on the Saudi petrochemical industry should be sober reading for those who think that shale oil and gas have solved our global energy crunch. ..The basic point – common to other Gulf oil producers – is that Saudi local consumption is rocketing. Residential use makes up 50pc of demand, and over two thirds of that is air-conditioning. The Saudis also consume 250 litres per day of water – the world's third highest (which blows...

The campaign for presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney laid out a plan Wednesday for America to be energy independent by 2020. On an embargoed conference call with reporters, Romney staffers touched on familiar themes they said would wean the country off imported oil and spark an economic boom at home. Namely, they called for fewer regulations and more drilling. The staffers pointed to the revolution in drilling technology in recent years that's unlocked an energy boom in this country, and contrasted that with President Obama's support for renewable energy, which they said has failed to pay off. "There's incredible...

In what his campaign is billing as a major policy speech, Mitt Romney will unveil an energy plan Thursday that would give states the power to determine whether drilling should occur on federal lands within their borders as part of a larger effort to increase domestic oil production and achieve energy independence. Under current law, the federal government controls oil and gas permits for federal lands. But in a speech at an oilfield services company in Hobbs. N.M., Romney will argue that determination should be up to state officials, insisting individual states are in a better position to "develop, adopt...

Gasoline and oil futures surged Tuesday to the highest prices since May, as traders predicted the damage from a fire at California's third largest refinery could take months to repair. The lowest retail gasoline prices of the year may already be behind us, some traders say, especially in light of this incident as well as refinery issues around the U.S. and across the Atlantic in the North Sea. September RBOB gasoline futures briefly topped $3 a gallon Tuesday, and settled just shy of that mark, near a 3-month high. The more than 2 percent gain in gasoline futures sparked big...

President Obama unveiled his ostensible “all of the above” energy plan earlier this year, but after gas prices peaked in April and then started to calm back down, domestic energy production also became more of a back-burner issue on the presidential campaign trail (who has time for energy when we’ve got hiking taxes on the wealthy and Mitt Romney’s tax returns to talk about, right?). Barring President Obama’s standard thrown-in support for continued federal subsidies for renewable energies, the issue hasn’t been front-and-center of late, but I’d bet good money Team Obama will make another big “all of the above”-ish...

Just three years ago, petroleum engineering wasn't an especially hot major for college students looking to enter a field with plentiful jobs. How things have changed. Today, the oil patch and active drilling in the Eagle Ford Shale is convincing more students that a job in the energy field is the way to go, experts said. A recent study of 60,000 college students, including 2,400 in Texas, by Universum, a Stockholm-based company, found that students view jobs at oil and gas companies as much more desirable than even a year ago. Top salaries paid by energy companies are making energy...

While the Obama administration was taking a victory lap last week after the 5-4 Supreme Court decision to uphold the president’s signature legislative accomplishment, Obamacare, the Interior Department was using the media black hole to release a much-awaited five-year plan for offshore drilling. That plan reinstitutes a 30-year moratorium on offshore energy exploration that will keep our most promising resources locked away until long after President Obama begins plans for his presidential library. (snip) In the past three years, the government has collected more than 250 times less revenue from offshore lease sales than it did during the last year...

Energy: The Government Accountability Office tells Congress the Green River Formation out West contains an "amount about equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves." So why are we keeping it locked up on federal lands? Exploding the Big Lie pushed by President Obama that we can't drill our way out of high gas prices because we have but 2% of the world's proven oil reserves, Anu Mittal, GAO director of natural resources and environment, testified before Congress last week that just one small part of the U.S. is capable of outproducing the rest of the planet. That small part...

Democrats on Capitol Hill slammed the Bush administration yesterday over the escalating cost of gasoline as Republican leaders asked the White House to investigate charges of price gouging by the major oil companies. “The same Bush administration that so tragically bungled the response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has now bungled its way to $3-per-gallon gasoline,” Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, said yesterday. “Now it’s clear to anyone who fills up at a gas pump that this administration is also failing in its approach to energy.”