Better Fill up today

[W. Gray]

Gas in Denver metro area at the moment:

Regular: Low, 2.82; high, 3.65

Premium: Low, 3.10; high, 3.79

Elk/Greenwood:
Regular: Howard, 3.19; Severy, 2.99, Moline, ? Longton, ?

Area:
Fredonia, 2.99
Eureka, 2.99
Winfield, 2.96
Sedan, 2.99
El Dorado 2.95
Independence, 3.09


Honolulu, 3.93


Guam, October 14:

[larryJ]

SoCal prices have dropped over a dollar a gallon and is currently averaging $3.39 at major brand stations and $3.19 at some independents for regular grades.

Larryj

[W. Gray]

Price of gas around the world per gallon as of April 2014,

Highest in world, Norway, 9.79
Lowest in world, Venezuela, 4 cents

Others:
Netherlands, 9.46
Iran, 1.52
Saudi Arabia 45 cents
China, 4.73
Russia, 3.19
US, 3.69


When Hugo Chavez was alive, he use to brag about ten cents per gallon gas in his country vs the price in the US. Gas apparently dropped another six cents since his death.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/221368/gas-prices-around-the-world/

[oldfart]

P&J gas 3.39 today

[W. Gray]

I served in Germany, '67 to '70.

My memory is getting hazy of that time and place but as I recall we--American military or American military civilian employees--could purchase gas tickets/coupons at the  PX that we presented when filling up in a German gas station—one coupon per gallon. For whatever reason the coupons were only good at an Esso station.

The end result was we could buy gas at about 45 cents a gallon while the Germans were paying several times that amount.

The coupons were rationed and I recall having used my monthly allotment up and was running out of gas and had to pay for gas in Marks. I spent the equivalent of $10 and did not get much gas but it was enough that I could get back and forth to work until I was eligible to buy more coupons.

[frawin]

When I started with Phillips Petroleum  44 years ago WTI (sweet crude) was $2.77 a barrel at the  lease.  In the 70 s and early 1980S it went to $39.00 a barrel. With Ronald Reagan as President it went back to $9.00 a barrel. Then when the OPEC Embargo hit it went to $150.00 a barrel. Now it is at $81.42 a barrel. As a young boy growing up in Howard, the cheapest gas I remember was 17 cents a gallon. Our neighborhood pump price here is $2.94 a gallon.
The USA is the least dependent on Foreign that we have been in 50 to 60 years. There is so much oil coming on in West Texas that it is almost impossible to keep it all moving. The Pipelines are full and a lot of oil is being moved to Cushing via Rail cars. Additionally more use of Windpower, Solar Power, and Natural Gas are lowering our crude oil consumption.

[W. Gray]

The lowest gas price I can remember was in 1958 when it got down to 14.9 per gallon. That was during a gas war.

There was a small station on US 24, running through Independence, Mo, that was called the One Pump Oil Company. They had one pump and they only had only regular.

Independents would keep their prices two cents below the major companies.

One Pump kept its price one cent below the independents, even during a gas war. I always "filled up" there. Fact is, though, back then I could only afford $1 worth at a time.

Sometime around 1950, I was standing inside a Howard gas station on the west side of K-99 with my Uncle Johnnie Miller. We were talking to a friend of his that was working in the station. Along came a kid on one of those newly imported Vespa motor scooters from Italy. The worker went out to wait on him and the guy wanted five cents worth of gas. When the worker came back in he was laughing out loud, told my uncle what the guy got and then they both started laughing. I was too young at the time to know why they were laughing.

[larryJ]

I was out today running errands and noticed I needed gas.  I went to my usual Chevron station and began filling the tank before I noticed the price.  Two days ago it was at $3.99.  Today it was $2.99! 

Whoopee!

Another thing I saw.....On one corner in town there used to be a Chevron which I went to on occasion.  Then it changed to Shell.  Across the street was an Indie.  Today I had to go in that direction and noticed that now the Shell station has changed to 76..........and so has the Indie.  Two 76 stations across the street from each other!  Business must be good.

Larryj

[Warph]

The next great financial crash (which many have been anticipating for years) is rapidly approaching.  So many of the same things that happened last time are happening again.  This includes a crash in the price of oil.  In the months prior to the last stock market collapse, the price of oil began plummeting dramatically in the summer of 2008.  This was an "early warning signal" that something was deeply amiss in the financial world...

Many people assume that a lower price for oil is good for the economy, but the exact opposite is actually true.  The oil industry has become absolutely critical to the U.S. and Canadian economies.  And in recent years, the "shale oil boom" has been one of the only bright spots for the United States.  If the shale oil industry starts to fail because of lower prices, a lot of the boom areas all over the nation are going to go bust really quickly and a lot of the financial institutions that were backing these projects are going to feel an immense amount of pain.

Unfortunately for us, the "shale oil revolution" simply does not work at 80 dollars a barrel.

And it certainly does not work at 70 dollars a barrel.

As I write this, U.S. crude is sitting at about 66 dollars a barrel due to OPEC's recent decision to not cut output.

That is the lowest price for U.S. crude since September 2009.

So just like we saw during the summer of 2008, crude oil prices are collapsing once again.  The chart below comes from the Federal Reserve, but it is a few days out of date. 

Now that the price of crude is down to about 66 dollars, you have to imagine the price actually going below the bottom of this chart...

Needless to say, this price collapse is having a huge impact on the stock prices of oil companies.  The following information about what happened in the markets on Friday comes from Business Insider...

Here were some of the biggest losers on Friday 11/28/14:

•BP (BP), down 5%
•Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A), down 6%
•Total (TOT), down 5%
•Statoil (STO), down 14%
•Exxon Mobil (XOM), down 5%
•ConocoPhillips (COP), down 9%
•Marathon Oil (MRO), down 13%
•Occidental Petroleum (OXY), down 7%
•Anadarko Petroleum (APC), down 14%
•Linn Energy (LINE), down 13%
•Whiting Petroleum (WLL), down 28%
•Oasis Petroleum (OAS), down 32%
•Kodiak Oil & Gas (KOG), down 28%

And this list goes on.

But this could just be the beginning of the oil price declines.

The most powerful oil official in Russia believes that the price of oil could fall below $60 next year...
Russia's most powerful oil official Igor Sechin said in an interview with an Austrian newspaper that oil prices could fall below $60 by mid-way through next year.

Sechin, chief executive of Rosneft, Russia's largest oil producer, also said U.S. oil production would fall after 2025 and that an oil market council should be created to monitor prices, the same day the OPEC cartel met in Vienna and left its output targets unchanged.

"We expect that a fall in the price to $60 and below is possible, but only during the first half, or rather by the end of the first half (of next year)," Sechin told the Die Presse newspaper.

And one oil industry analyst just told CNBC that he believes that the price of oil could ultimately plunge as low as $35 a barrel...

"When you look at the second half of 2015, that's when you see oil beginning to dwarf demand by about a million, a million and a half barrels a day," he said. "Thirty-five dollars is a possibility if they don't get an agreement next spring because that's when the oil really starts to build and you can have a billion barrels of oil with really no place to put it."

...By Michael Snyder

[W. Gray]

These figures are supposed to be from 20 minutes ago:

P&J, Howard 1.99 gallon regular

Tripco, Severy 1.88 gallon regular


Low here in Centennial, CO is 1.87 with the highest at 2.29 for regular. For whatever reason (location, location, location, chuckle) there is always a similar large spread across town.