I love high oil prices. 100% great. No downside.
Disclaimer: I work on an oil rig.
Despite what our friends at the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre have to say on the matter, you realize the matter is hardly settled, don’t you? Perhaps not, base on you reliance on only certain perspectives. Here let me help you out with one:
I’ve been hearing about oil running out poste haste for 30 years now. Sorry, but I just can’t bring myself to believe the sky is falling every time someone decides this is the real time to panic.
Riiiight, why don’t you? Clearly only you get this stuff.
Right back at ya, sparky.
Very little effect. I live 15 mins from work and 15 mins to school. My suzuki gets about 30 mpg, but when you drive only 30 miles a day, it’s no big deal. Kinda morbid, but I’d like to see the prices rise a little more. Forces people to actually conserve energy and maybe even buy smaller cars. How many SUV’s you see with more than one person in it? Reduce our usage across the board. The people I know, hardly a representative of the US as a whole, don’t conserve as the price of oil goes up. They just complain more about it.
I don’t really care whether or not gas cost the same today as it did 30 years ago when you factor in inflation. When I bought my car in 1998 I could put 10 gallons into it for less than 10 dollars. I get 30 MPG on the highway, the majority of my driving, and I drive a minimum of 400 miles getting to and from school Mondays through Fridays. Factor in weekend activities such as shopping and recreation and the gas I consume is even greater.
I’m not really going to complain very much because this isn’t entirely unexpected. I bought my Saturn because I figured fuel prices would go up at some point though I didn’t think they’d get this high. Has this affected my life at all? It’s put a dent into my recreational cash and I’m a bit more careful about driving my car around town. If the price of gas keeps going up it’s possible that I’ll feel the crunch even more. I might try to scrape together the funds to purchase a hybrid or a more fuel efficent vehicle next summer.
Marc
I don’t drive, so the negative impact on me is minimal.
My parents live in Alberta. The high oil prices mean a whole lot of extra provincial tax revenue from the local oil producers, and by extension less money paid to the government by the other taxpayers (including my parents). I see this as a good thing.
I’d say it is a minor annoyance. I’ll use my Kroger card for the discount more often.
I do enjoy smiling at the Hummers, Escalades, and other vehicles which must cost a fortune to fill up. You’re making a “Statement” by buying such a vehicle and I hope the extra 10 or so dollars per fill up will begin to hurt them fiancially.
I walk to work and take trains and subways everywhere. The indirect inceaded cost are nomimal and eliminating a couple of beers a week would take care of those, if it came down to that.
I do have agree that the owners of SUVs and other gas guzzlers get little sympathy.
You are going to be disappointed then. An average hummer costs over $50,000 and can easily cost more than $100,000. If someone can afford that, an extra $10 is not going to hurt them one little bit.
True, but many (of course, not all) Hummers and the like of “extreme” SUV’s tend to be bought with flashy, new money. Many (but of course, not all) of their owners are probably streched very thin on their actual budget.
As I don’t have a car, the high petrol prices aren’t really affecting me much. I expect they will though once the higher costs of transportation start to show up in inflated food, service and public transport prices. In the meantime I’m deriving a bit of perverse enjoyment listening to the whining of all those people driving their huge 4WDs around the inner-city suburb where I live.
You can include me on the list of people who want to see it go up higher. The laws of supply and demand will not trigger a swing in buyer behavior until the pain index is raised significantly higher. It will probably have to top $3.50 a gallon before people demand 50 mpg cars in the same numbers we saw in the 70’s. It wasn’t just price that made people switch it was also RATIONING. It was actually kind of funny because car manufacturers initially responded with larger gas tanks. One of the early selling points on cars was distance traveled.
Even at $2.50 a gallon and an 18mpg Mustang, our annual petrol expenses are less than 0.5% of our net income. The high gas prices are having no direct impact whatsoever on me.
However, indirectly they are of course having an impact, in raising the costs of other items.
As a life-long Mustang fan, I forgive you for your contribution to global warming.
I average 400 miles a week when I’m working during the summer. I get about 400 miles out of my car’s 16-gallon gas tank.
Gas prices for premium fuel having risen from $2.00 to $3.00, I’m paying an extra $16 a week. Not insignificant, but not all that much of hardship.
When I go back to school in a few days, the only driving I’ll do is for pleasure. I’ll probably cut back a little as compared to how much I did last year.
So, all in all, it’s not really doing that much to me. Of course, I fully expect to be affected when consumer prices rise because of the increased cost of transportation.