I just paid £70 to fill the car with fuel.

[Moonbear]

Gas is absurd. In Alaska which is a beautifully cheap and wise purchase on Americas part has tons of gas. As far as I'm concerned they have more then you think and most of it is for military use if things ever got bad enough in the other parts of the world. Imagine America fighting a war if no country sells us any gas, we need the reserves!

That's a good point, that nobody is going to want to tap into their reserves when they can still get it from somewhere else. Better to get people to start changing their habits with prices climbing than to just start using up the reserves. Even if we do have to start tapping reserves, you want to be sure people have learned to conserve as much as possible before you start to do it so they can stretch as long as possible.

On a separate note one wonders how much the current price of oil is being fueled by all the talk of alternative clean fuels. It seems plausible that the oil producing countries and oil companies are raking in as much as they can before their product becomes obsolete.

I think that's also a reasonable assumption. I think it's also why companies like Exxon are buying up these clean energy technologies, partly so they still have a business when demand switches from fossil fuels to clean energy, and partly so they can control the timing of its release. If they own the patents/exclusive licenses, nobody else can start selling it before they're done squeezing every drop of profit they can get from oil. It's the same tactic pharmaceutical companies will use to buy up an exclusive license on a potential competing product and hold onto it until their product goes generic, then release the new money-maker.

 

[Astronuc]

Oil Price Rise Fails to Open Tap
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/business/worldbusiness/29oil.html

As oil prices soared to record levels in recent years, basic economics suggested that consumption would fall and supplies would rise as producers drilled for more oil.

But as prices flirt with $120 a barrel, many energy experts are becoming worried that neither seems to be happening. Higher prices have done little to suppress global demand or attract new production, and the resulting mismatch has sent oil prices ever higher.

That has translated into more pain at the pump, with gasoline setting a fresh record of $3.60 a gallon nationwide on Monday. Experts expect prices above $4 a gallon this summer, and one analyst recently predicted that gasoline could reach $7 in the next four years.

A central reason that oil supplies are not rising much is that major producers outside the OPEC cartel, like Russia, Mexico and Norway, are showing troubling signs of sluggishness. Unlike OPEC, whose explicit goal is to regulate the supply of oil to keep prices up, these countries are the free traders of the oil market, with every incentive to produce flat-out at a time of high prices.

It would seem the oil producers are hold back letting demand keep ahead of supply, which will keep a steady upward pressure on oil prices. Why should they produce more when they can just sit back and rake in the money? Brasil's new find will take several years to develop.

 

[wolram]

In the mean time that fat slug Gordon Brown is making sure the government in the UK is raking in vast sums of extra VAT out of our misery, and oil companies are whistling to the bank, if i had my way Browns testicles would be extracted, if he has any.

 

[turbo]

I just got back from getting my truck inspected. I should have filled the tank yesterday when gas was $3.57 because today it was $3.61. Four cents in one day and every single gas station in town is in lock-step with the price.

 

[Moonbear]

Oil Price Rise Fails to Open Tap
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/business/worldbusiness/29oil.html

It would seem the oil producers are hold back letting demand keep ahead of supply, which will keep a steady upward pressure on oil prices. Why should they produce more when they can just sit back and rake in the money? Brasil's new find will take several years to develop.

Yep, if they just sit on it, let the prices keep climbing, and then start selling when there are lines around the block waiting for the rationed 5 gallons of gas/vehicle at $7/gallon (and before people send their cars to the junkyard and buy bicycles), they stand to reap in huge profits for their nations...why wouldn't they try to do that?

 

[wolram]

Yep, if they just sit on it, let the prices keep climbing, and then start selling when there are lines around the block waiting for the rationed 5 gallons of gas/vehicle at $7/gallon (and before people send their cars to the junkyard and buy bicycles), they stand to reap in huge profits for their nations...why wouldn't they try to do that?

Dangerous grounds MoonB, holding people to Ransom, people will surely die because of this profiteering.

 

[mgb_phys]

$7/gallon (and before people send their cars to the junkyard and buy bicycles)

Gas is over $9/gallon in the UK and huge SUVs are now nearly as popular as in America.