Gas Prices Fall For 23rd Straight Day

CNN Money:

Retail gasoline prices fell, on average, a penny overnight, extending declines for the 23nd straight day, a survey of gas station credit card swipes showed Saturday.

The national average price for a gallon of regular gas fell to $3.826 from $3.836 the previous day. That's down 7% from the record high of $4.114 that gas prices hit on July 16.

Read the whole story: CNN Money

Comments

[olephart]

05:41 PM on 08/10/2008

Well, it looks like they got all the blood they could out of us turnips. Will Americans finally stop wasting so much oil to move their fat butts around, one at a time in 3 ton behemoths? On a recent business trip to Atlanta, we were in the HOV lane and I noted that 10 times the traffic was in the other 5 lanes and about half were SUVs or Pick Ups. How could there be a shortage of oil if there was enough for all this inefficiency? How could the price be too high if everyone could afford to waste all that gas?

The answers are that there is no shortage and the prices were not too high. The deregulation of the commodities markets by Phil Gramm allowed speculators, Wall Street firms, Hedge Funds and Oil Companies the opportunity to trade behind closed doors. Just as with the “electricity crisis” there was no shortage of electricity only a shortage of regulators. Does anyone remember Enron? Speculators can only sell their contracts back and forth to each other for a limited time and since demand has dropped by 2%, they have run out of time. External events may inject buying or selling pressure but if Americans conserve and change their habits the demand will not build as it did before. If an orderly market can be restored by a change of Administrations we may not have to go through this price gouging again.

[dadw5boys]

07:28 PM on 08/10/2008

Glad your finally catching up.

So a web seach for Dark Pools. See how the funds hide from regualtors.

[vippy]

07:43 AM on 08/11/2008

Yes, and it tooke a little radio talk show host and writer, Ed Wallace, to investigate the situation and
call the ICE out on this. And yes it worked. Good for him, he has done us a great service.
Now gas should be at $ 2.99 all around the country. Why are they so slow in reducing it when oil
is falling. Yet when it goes up they up the price the very same day in increments of 10 cents or
more. When it goes down they do it in the next few days at increments of 3 cents.
And please don't forget it was our congress that knew about the ICE speculators and did nothing!
I hope you remember when you vote this time. Throw out the bums.

[foxbat]

12:19 PM on 08/10/2008

This time last year, gas prices were around $2.88/gallon and the estimate for 2008 was around $3.06/gallon. That $3.826, while representing a 7% drop from the high is still an increase of almost 35% from same period previous year prices.

Kind of like being robbed out of state. You're out in the middle of nowhere and all of your money's just been taken, but then the robber returns and says, "Here's a couple of bucks so you can catch the bus." At least you can get somewhere, but what are you going to do once you get there?

[Mark701]

10:57 AM on 08/10/2008

This is exactly what happened before the 2004 election. Gas prices continued to fall until one week after the election when they started to rise again. No surprise here. Same old oil company shennanigans. They're attempting to create a favorable environment for their candidate Mr. McCain.

[marymansour]

10:26 AM on 08/10/2008

"The national average price for a gallon of regular gas fell to $3.826 from $3.836....."

This is such a whopping difference in price I am almost in tears.

[Harod]

05:19 AM on 08/10/2008

how does a ban on drilling increse the oil supply?

[PublicAdvocate]

10:52 PM on 08/09/2008

American Oil Companies can and should be nationalized to produce higher efficiency operations. Left in the hands of private owners who both resist regulation yet don't run a tight shop billions of gallons of crude get wasted or untapped when wells are privately managed.
Chevron (Texaco's owner) and Exxon/Mobil have dumped/lost billions of gallons of oil and byproducts into once pristine Prince William Sound in Alaska and produced a Chernobyl-like area the size of Rhode Island in Ecuador because of sloppy management. More and more countries have witnessed the inefficiency of private ownership and are nationalizing their oil stocks and companies from Russia to Venezuala to Iran.
In Venezuala, Hugo Chavez nationalized the oil industry and has gotten rid of much of the private oil companies. Result? Efficiency has improved and gas has fallen to 12 cents a gallon for Venezualans according to the http://WSJ.com while U.S. consumers suffer needlessly at $4 a gallon. Nationalization has demonstrated itself as simply a better management tool giving better value to consumers, improving operating efficiency, protecting the environment, and protecting worker's safety.
US consumers should also call for oil nationalization to wring the inefficiency and needless price gouging out of oil prices that harm our economy.
Contact your represenative and senator in Congress and ask them to nationalize and regulate all American oil companies.
You can call your Representative and Senator can be reached directly by calling the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at: 1-800-828-0498.

[NewRiver]

12:13 AM on 08/10/2008

Indeed, government is the solution for everything.

[PublicAdvocate]

06:08 PM on 08/12/2008

I don't completely agree, but I will say that government regulated industries on the whole have a demonstrated record of higher efficiency/productivity, better worker and environmental safety standards, better long term management of resources, and fairer prices for consumers.
Where government regulated industries fail is in hiring capitalists who act as termites and seek to ruin a good thing and break it apart for private ownership and personal profit.
A great example of this is our own nation where federal agencies are riddled with incompetent Reagan/Bush cronies who follow the "I hate government" and "government is the problem not the solution" motto.
What hypocrits! They bite the hand that feeds them.

[TxAggie]

11:46 AM on 08/11/2008

Hugo Chavez confiscated the property of the oil companies- this is what you are proposing that our government do? This would improve the efficency? Protect the environment and worker's safety? What about the oil workers that feld Venezuela rather than be executed by that madman? Why don't you ask them about worker safety?

I d on't think we have enough socialists either in our society or government for you to get your wish just yet.

[PublicAdvocate]

06:01 PM on 08/12/2008

You do not understand the difference between nationalization and confiscation. A nation can not confiscate its own property and resources. The oil of Venezuala is a natural resource of the people and state and rightfully belongs to them not to foreign oil vipers.

American oil companies have no rightful or legal claim to steal foreign state property.That sovereign right of property always belongs to the nation itself. Venezuala's nationalization project was instituted because of the outright theft, mismanagement, poor environmental and worker safety record that is the legacy of foreign oil companies.

Hugo Chavez was democratically elected (unlike Bush/Cheney corp. which was appointed via the Supreme Court to defy democracy and the public will) and is doing exactly what he should be doing: protecting and governing his nation with courage and wisdom for the public benefit of his people.

[Paul]

09:10 PM on 08/09/2008

Still $4.05/gal here in SoCal. Not exactly the good old days.

The price of gasoline should be raised every year until we get to $8/gal like in Europe.

Then we will get a decent mass transit system and can throw away those awful money sinks known as automobiles.

[sandiegoconservative]

12:41 AM on 08/10/2008

I'll be waiting for you to hand over more of your paycheck on a voluntary basis to get that mass transit system up and running. If you really do live in southern california, you would know that every attempt at mass transit has not really been a success.

[daddydamon]

07:02 AM on 08/10/2008

$4.15 in DC.

[Pquilson]

09:07 PM on 08/09/2008

Good news. And nobody is interested!