Monday, December 1, 2014

10 year gas chart


 - by New Deal democrat

The below graph comes from GasBuddy, showing gas prices for the last 10 years:



See that upward spike way over by the left?  That's Hurricane Katrina, which knocked out refineries in Louisiana for several weeks. Gasoline is now less expensive than any time since except for winter 2005-06 and 06-07, and 2009 - and almost as cheap as most of 2010. Put another way, it is closer to its 10 year low than its 10 year high.

Here's a graph showing how $65/barrel Oil (its price as of Friday) (blue, left scale) translated into gas prices at the pump (red, right scale) in the 2005-07 period:



At current Oil prices, I would expect gas prices at the pump to settle somewhere between their current level of   $2.76 and $2.60.

I have no idea how long this is going to last.  But it is almost half as big a stimulus as the crash in prices that put a  bottom in for the late 2008 consumer collapse in the Great Recession.