Fill up your gas tank ASAP. The price of gas is only going to go up up up.

[dkf]

I'm at half tank, but if I fill up now, I might save some cents per gallon before the next increase in price.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080516121648.qtu856k9&show_article=1

Oil price surges to record high above $127
May 16 08:18 AM US/Eastern

The price of oil rocketed to a record high point of 127.43 dollars per barrel on Friday, as US President George W. Bush prepared to urge Saudi Arabia to pump more crude, analysts said.

New York's main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for June delivery, beat the previous peak of 126.98 that was set on Tuesday owing to worries about tight supplies despite a downgrade to global oil demand growth for 2008.

[hlthe2b]

1. Pay it now or pay it later......

Somehow, given the short term savings, it feels a bit lacking in making any real difference for me... Maybe for those who can go a month without a refill...

[dkf]

3. I have a 20 gallon tank so I can go a week and a half

before fill ups.

http://biz.yahoo.com/cnnm/080516/051608_gas_prices.html

Gas prices have now risen for 10 straight days. The pinch on consumers at the pump comes just ahead of the summer driving season, which kicks off with Memorial Day weekend.

The AAA national average shows gas prices up 11% over the past month and up nearly 22% from year-ago levels.

[Canuckistanian]

2. Good to see George is "preparing to urge" the Saudis

He just keeps forgetting to do that.

[GliderGuider]

4. How high will it be in 2012? Here's an analysis

Oil Prices in 2012

The price of oil is setting a new record every week, it seems. Everybody wants to know what's going to happen in the next few years. Will it keep rising? How high will it go? Of course that's impossible to answer with any accuracy because of poor reserve data, the obscure intentions of oil producers and elasticity effects that lead to demand destruction or substitution. However, it is possible to do simple-minded extrapolations of recent price behaviour to see what might happen if various trends continue.

Just for grins I extrapolated the price of oil (currently trading at about $125 per barrel) out to 2012 using Excel's exponential trend line function. I examined three cases. The first uses weekly price data from 1998 to the present, the second extrapolates the trend we've seen since the beginning of 2002, and the third extrapolates the trend of the last year and a half -- from the beginning of 2007 until last week.



If the trend since the beginning of 2007 reflects the underlying reality of the oil markets, we should expect to see oil selling for $900 per barrel by the beginning of 2012. That's less than four years from now.

Since the price of gasoline generally follows the price of oil, Americans should be prepared for gasoline selling for around $30 a gallon by the beginning of 2012.

[VWolf]

5. Why exponential?

Is there any reason you used an exponential curve fit? The data looks rather linear - possibly $400/barrel by 2012.

[GliderGuider]

8. The exponential fit was far better fit than the linear fit as measured by R^2

With a flat or declining supply and a rising, increasingly inelastic demand the price response is very unlikely to be linear. In fact the price will be very prone to chaotic spikes. These spikes will probably overlaid on an underlying exponential trend until demand inelasticity is finally overcome and demand destruction takes over.

[VWolf]

11. Fair enough

But 4 years is an eternity in this kind of market - equivalent to predicting the weather 3 months out.

The only thing I'm willing to predict is that the price will be above $200/barrel by then.

[GliderGuider]

12. I agree. I'm mostly trying to set expectations

We shouldn't be too surprised to see $1000/bbl oil and $30/gal gas in a very few years. We will be surprised, but we shouldn't be.

Peak oil etc.

[EstimatedProphet]

6. That's if it is exponential

I don't see a reason to assume an exponential fit.

[GliderGuider]

9. Could you suggest a better one?

As I said above, this was a SWAG based on the best R^2 I could get with a simple fit (without going to something absurd like a 4th order polynomial).

As I say in the article the price behaviour is very hard to predict because the fundamental data is so bad. This just gives a range for us to think about. $250 to $1000 per barrel seems to me like a reasonable range for 2012.

[LiberalEsto]

7. Could we get "forever" fillups

the way the Post Office sells Forever stamps?
:think:

[Virginia Dare]

10. What with Junior going to jawbone the Saudi daddies today..

that sounds about right...:scared:

[taterguy]

13. Are you suggesting that I ride my bike home from work and go put a couple gallons of gas in my car?

It would be "possible" for me to do that but it would take about 45 minutes and I'd save about a quarter.

My time is worth more than that.

YMMV of course.

[KharmaTrain]

14. The Bubble Could Burst Soon

I keep hearing about how the futures market is starting to overheat. The many profiteers who bailed on the real estate and predatory lending ponzi schemes last year headed into the energy market and a lot of the run-up in the price is based on the large amount of futures speculations. Just like we saw with the real estate boom, the more the speculation the higher the price until the public demand drops and then so will supply and then watch out below.

I suspect the this regime will let that bubble burst in the Fall...letting Huggy Bear tap dance how he made the price of oil drop, gas prices will fall and we'll all have ponies. We'll be sooooooo glad to have that lovely $3 a gallon back. We'll all just be compelled to vote in Gramps as he made the impossible possible :sarcasm:

This game only works as long as this regime can control all the profiteers.