We’re hovering around $3 a gallon right now, but how high will gasoline prices go in the long term? Will we ever see $10/gallon? $15? I heard someone on NPR’s “Marketplace” the other day say that polls suggested it would take $5/gallon before most people started to change their driving habits. When demand falls off, prices should start to fall. But gas prices have done counterinutive things in the past.
So, as supplies diminish and demand increases, how high will it go? I really don’t know, but Dopers are smarter than I am*, so what do you think? What’s the conventional wisdom in the short term (next two years), medium term (until 2015) and long term (beyond 2015)?
*May not apply to all Dopers. Void in Utah. YMMV. IMNAL.
Well, I’m probably not smarter, nor do I have any great claim to knowledge of the future. I was reading an article the other day talking about gas price trends that predicted gas prices in the short term will stabalize or even begin to fall somewhat (this seems to be happening in my own city as gas is down under $3/gallon and I’ve seen it as low as $2.75 in some places). I think that they will drop but I doubt we’ll ever see them go below $2.50 again…I think those days are done.
Medium term I’d say gas will slowly continue to rise in the next few years (I saw a chart with the prices of gas vs time and it generally trended upward), with perhaps spikes up and down but generally up. When gas reaches a certain point I think that alternatives will become much more attractive…and some alternatives that could perhaps compete with gasoline today will come on stream in the not so distant future as well.
Long term I think it will be a moot point as I think we will switch to some alternative fuel source for personal transport (I believe that, at least in the US, personal transport will always be a first option for our citizens and will remain as wide spread and popular as it is today…just using a different fuel source).
I can’t really see gasoline going beyond $5 a gallon, aside from maybe some freak, short term occurances (think panic over terrorist bombing a refinery), ever. Oil shale and thermal depolymerization should be profitable at that level, and could provide plenty of oil for the next couple decades, beyond which predicting technology available is impossible.
I was thinking $5/gal would be a reasonable upper limit for the short term because of the polling information, but frankly, I figured if that were the case the oil cartels would just drive it up to close to that level as soon as possible and just leave it there indefinitely.
For questions like this, it’s important to consider the prices in adjusted dollars. Remember, gas prices adjusted for inflation have been this high (or very nearly so) before, in the '70s. Gas will get to $10 in about 40 years without any supply or demand fluctuations.
I hear this argument a lot, but i don’t understand it. You are comparing an oil crisis in the past to the normality that we have now. Since 1960, gasoline prices have been under an inflation adjusted $2.00/gallon, except for the late 70s/early 80s. We’re at around $2.70/gallon right now, and i don’t predict them dropping, ever, even adjusted for inflation.
There is plenty of crude oil, it is refineries that are constrained in the US. When gas stays above $3.00 a gallon, it makes sense for Europe to tank gas over here, which is what happend after Katrina. Further out, we should try for more standardized requirements for gasoline between the states. It looks like a patchwork quilt now, so it is harder for the market to put gasoline where it’s needed on short notice. Also, more refinery capacity. It will come in time, IMHO.
Funny as it might sound, for me the far bigger concern is heating costs this winter. I can deal with the relatively slow but steady increase in gas…but putting out a large sum of money for filling my oil tank for heating this winter is giving me heartburn.
I don’t have any real concern about rising gas prices (understanding that it affects me directly and indirectly) but damn I’m worried about staying warm this winter.
If you cut off the inflation adjusted price graph at 1980, it would look exactly like the current end of the graph. I’d be more impressed with predictions of the price never again going down if we had been living with expensive gas for more than 6 months. I never thought I’d see < $1/gal gas again in my lifetime after the early nineties, but there were a few weeks a few years ago where it dropped that low in LA. The truth is that it’s really hard to predict that kind of thing.
