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Gas prices set
record – again 
'Insanely bullish market' passes
already 'absurdly high levels'

Average Cost Of Regular Gasoline Rises To $3.196 Per Gallon; Crude Futures Rise

Retail gasoline prices climbed to another record Monday, while crude oil futures jumped above $65 per barrel amid concerns that U.S. refiners are not producing enough gasoline to meet peak summer demand.

A gallon of regular unleaded costs an average of $3.196, up from $3.178 on Sunday, according to AAA and Oil Price Information Service. Prices are up 33.7 cents from a month ago and 30.4 cents from a year ago, as demand remains strong, and a spate of planned and unexpected refinery shutdowns have constricted supply.

These days, every trip to the gas station is an experience in sticker shock, reports CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston. A gallon of regular gas costs $3.24 in New York. It's $3.45 in Milwaukee, and $3.59 in Chicago.

The price hikes are giving oil companies another banner year. First-quarter profits for Exxon-Mobil totaled nearly $9.3 billion. Royal Dutch Schell picked up more than $6.9 billion. The number was $4.7 billion for Chevron, adds Pinkston.

"As we start a new week, we have an insanely bullish market, which has already advanced to absurdly high levels," Cameron Hanover's Peter Beutel wrote in a research report. "We are running seven weeks behind normal this refinery turnaround season, after taking an extra seven or eight weeks in the fall to maintain refineries."

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported last week that gasoline inventories — while increasing to 195.2 million barrels for the week ended May 12 — are still well below the average for this time of year. The nation's peak driving season, meanwhile, is set to begin this long Memorial Day weekend.

Gasoline futures for June delivery rose 1.23 cents to $2.42 per gallon in afternoon trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Light, sweet crude for June delivery jumped $1.29 to $66.23 per barrel on the Nymex after earlier falling as low as $64.45. Brent crude for July delivery added $1.26 to $70.68 on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

Attackers in Nigeria vandalized an oil installation run by Total SA, the company said Monday. No injuries, kidnappings or production cuts were reported, though.

The attackers caused "a couple of barrel's worth" of oil to spill, but production wasn't affected, a Total spokeswoman said. Nigeria is one of the world's largest crude producers, and attacks on oil installations have become an almost daily occurrence following elections there last month.

The next few days likely will be volatile for oil and gasoline futures, said Jim Ritterbusch of oil trading advisory firm Ritterbusch and Associates.

The inauguration of a new president in Nigeria could lead to more violence, which would drive up prices. The June crude contract on the Nymex also expires this week, which could add to price action, and the federal government will release its updated hurricane outlook.

"That's liable to push things around a bit," Ritterbusch said. "We've got things going on here in the next few days."

In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures rose 3.8 cents to $1.9532 a gallon while natural gas prices fell 3.2 cents to $7.912 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Prices here are $3.38 a gal for regular. I think that I am ready for a horse and carriage.

 :o :o :o :o

Yep, I think you're right.  Giddyup.   ;D

Our prices here are $3.17 a gallon, and it's breaking our budget. Something will have to give, and we think that it will either be the cars or the gas station. Our car gets 27 miles to the gallon, so we think that the gas station will have to give.

We can all do something about this, and it's far past time that we did. We can carpool and start doing all kinds of things that will drastically cut our use of oil products.

It's also far past time for us to start closing down electric plants that use petroleum. We need to be going to wind energy, the new and clean coal-fired plants, and NUCLEAR. YES, I said NUCLEAR. Dramatic advances have been made in engineering and safety, and we should be building 20 or more nuclear plants right now! - this second.

We have a giant wind farm near us, and it's actually pretty. It's a raving success, but some folks almost got it stopped because of fear that migratory patterns of birds might be adversely effected.  WOW! - I've watched these beautiful giants and don't understand. They don't move very fast at all, and bird fly through them all the time. It would have to be a pretty dumb bird to fly into something that moves so slowly. This is renewable and affordable energy, and we should have them all over the country in places where wind patterns make them efficient. I want to repeat again that they are pretty - not ugly, and they make money for the investors. We would be paying our workers and keeping our money in this part of the world.

We also have probably the largest coal reserves and supplies in the world. Many people immediately think of this as a dirty source of energy, but the new and clean coal-fired electricity plants are hundreds of times better than our many oil and petroleum based plants. They are also much more efficient and make for great investments. Again, we would be paying our workers and keeping our money in this part of the world.

NUCLEAR is the big and long-term answer that we need to be working on right now. Many folks think of nothing but Three Mile Island and Chernobyl when they hear the term "Nuclear". Let's get real - the eventual consequences of us NOT freeing ourselves of oil dependency is much worse than a nuclear accident. ON PURPOSE use of nuclear devices on our soil is a much more real and possible event than a nuclear accident. Being dependent on foreign oil puts us at the mercy of the world markets we are dealing with. It also has something to do with dragging us into their problems and making treaties and promises that honesty dictates that we keep. SO, we need to free ourselves from being held hostage by foreign oil and promises we make to insure our future. Oil shouldn't be in our future. Oil futures are dim and they get worse by the minute as huge masses of more people are determined to get their share of what's left. Some estimates indicate that there might be between 20 and 30 years of oil left to supply the ever increasing demand for it. The security of nations are at stake, and we can be sure that wars will be fought because of oil. Going nuclear and using many other alternative energy sources would drastically reduce our oil dependency and fairly quickly not need a drop of foreign oil. We needed to be heavily involved in going to alternatives 30 years ago, but we obviously need to stop dragging our feet and get to work.

We don't need gasoline cars. In fact, generations of us did just fine without cars at all.  Mass transportation and cars fueled by electricity and hydrogen should be our future. This could be done pretty quickly if the demand was right, and the prices would drop drastically as the demand went up. It's really no longer a matter of what we want, rather what we MUST DO for our future and SECURITY. Let's get rid of the oil and gasoline as quickly as we can. If we have to walk, we need to say goodbye to foreign oil. We don't need to be making promises and treaties based on our need for oil. That places the honor and integrity of a country on the line for the purpose of getting more oil. We obviously should keep our promises and treaties, so we need to STOP making them for the purpose of oil.

If everyone started carpooling to work and made a firm commitment that the carpooling would continue, we could cut gasoline use by 50% almost immediately. We need to send that message NOW! If two people are in the car, the gasoline price is down to approximately $1.60 a gallon - $1.07 per gallon for three people in the car - and 80 cents a gallon for 4 people in the car. Do the math for yourself with 5 to 7 passenger vehicles that many people have. My mini-van that gets 27 miles to the gallon will hold 7 adults very comfortably. NOW - think about mass transportation, especially kinds that don't use petroleum products at all. Eventually, we need to be thinking about using petroleum products to grease bearings and things like that - NOT making an internal combustion engine work. By the way, the same new principles that make clean coal-fired electricity generating plants could power steam engines again.

Let's at least start carpooling!

Gas prices here just increased to $3.43 a gal today and that is for the low grade. I'm going to be at home at least until the first of the month unless an emergency hits.

I heard a woman on the news today while at the Drs office suggest that people stop sitting in drive through lines as that waste a lot of gas.

I've heard the same thing about wind farms. Buildings with a lot of glass are more dangerous to birds than those giant fans are.

If the environmentalists would let go of it there is the biggest oil field in the world on U.S. land. Turning that field loose would prevent us from being dependent on foreign oil for many, many years to come. Especially if we also used the many other options that Brother Tom mentioned.

Hydrogen cells....Oh noooo we had to push to convert to hybrids instead.  Bush had it right when he pushed to really look into hydrogen cells.  And that is where we should be looking to be in 10 years.  Not running hybrids and still depending on fossil fuels. 

And ANWR was another great idea shot down.  Just as you mentioned the advances in Nuclear and coal plant there have been great strides in oil production and drilling as well.  So much so that ANWR would have had minimal impact on environment....but Noooooo we could hurt the elk and moose...instead we would prefer to stay dependant upon Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and a whole host of other countries that hate our guts but steal our money.

The big picture on energy is very ugly. Currently, we are sending huge sums of money to countries around the world who want to come kill us. They are using our money to build nuclear and biological weapons. They will have plenty of our money left to infiltrate our population, especially considering that the borders are wide open.

Folks won't be hugging a bird, tree, elk, or moose in areas that have been blown up and turned into hazardous waste dumps by our enemies. They are already here with us on our soil, and it might already be too late to stop them.

Regardless, we need to learn how to start using common sense. So far, it doesn't appear that 9-11 taught us a single thing. The next round of attacks are likely to be in a much larger and more deadly scale. It's almost sure to happen, so maybe it will finally wake us up.

We do need to make a massive effort to get off petroleum, but at the present time there is no shortage of crude oil.

The oil companies' conspiracy to limit refinery capacity and drive up prices is what is at fault - and there is evidence they have done just that. While blaming environmentalists for blocking new refineries, they have quietly closed existing ones. It is more profitable to run a few refineries at 100% capacity than more at a lesser capacity - but as soon as something goes wrong or breaks down, they get behind and have great difficulty catching up.

Just-in-time inventory control works well for the auto industry where there is competition. If GM doesn't produce enough cars I can buy from a competitor. In the energy industry it is a disaster because there is no real competition.

Another problem is the proliferation of gasoline blends caused by states and cities creating their own regulations. This is not the fault of environmentalists, but of those who opposed any federal regulations and so left the door open for state and local regulators.

As far as environmentalists blocking new refineries, admittedly there has been some of that in the US, but oil is a worldwide industry and they haven't built new refineries anywhere else either, even in nations that would welcome them.

Serious antitrust action would bring prices down but that is unlikely with the present administration, bought and paid for by the oil industry. Taking oil off the commodities markets would stop the rampant speculation that is going on, but again the "free-enterprisers" wouldn't allow this.

Hydrogen is not an energy source, as there is little or no "free" hydrogen and it takes more energy to produce it than you get back from it. It is basically a way of storing and transporting energy, and not at present a very efficient one. Hybrids are more practical at present, but there are cheaper ways of getting gas mileage up - like building basic smaller cars without all the gadgets people insist on today.

Wind is being blocked locally by the NIMBYs who don't want to look at them, not by real environmentalists. But nobody has researched the long term effects of wind power, either. What effect will taking all that energy out of the atmosphere have? That may sound silly, but nobody in the early days of automobiles foresaw the environmental problems caused by the sheer numbers of them on the roads today.

Nuclear is safer than it used to be, but nobody has solved the waste storage problem yet, either. The stuff is deadly far longer than any government or civilization has survived in world history, so who is going to maintain the storage facilities and prevent leakage after the US is gone?

Rhys,
Although I agree with your analysis overall there are a couple of things I would like to comment on if I may.

As far as there being no "free" hydrogen...there really is not anything that is free.  Even the coal and oil we use now is not free and it is taking from place in the world, refining, and putting to use in a different place in the world.  If I keep taking rocks from the bottom of the stream and put them somewhere else then in the long run I am affecting that stream.  We can get the hydrogen and refine it from water, the air, and many other sources.

And hydrogen in the fuel cell technology is actually using parts of hydrogen as the energy.  An H₂ molecule is broken up into it's protons and electrons.  The electrons are used for electricity.  Then they come back and join with the protons as well as oxygen and produce water as a byproduct, along with heat which can also be used as an energy source.  Although your statment is true that hydrogen is a carrier in the case of fuel cells it is the source of energy.

As far as it's efficiency...  Current fuel cell techs are rated with efficiency ratings of 80% or more (40-60% being electricity).  Current internal combustion engines set at ratings of about 40%.  So with current technology the fuel cell is twice as efficient.

The biggest hurdles to overcome with H₂ fuel cells is cost and durability.  Right now it is to cost prohibitive for the consumer to convert as far as cost per mile/gallon....we may be paying $3 per gallon for gas now...but it could easily be in the range of $12 per gallon of hydrogen for the cell sort of thing.  And durability in that getting the cells to last longer before needing to be replaced or refilled.  Basically they are too cumbersome to use in a car for what the average person would use their vehicle for.  Fuel cells are currently where electric cars were 20 years ago...cute and interesting too look at...but when you wondered if it would take you across state without having to stop and plug in for 8 hours it would not.

hmmmm.  Although I can almost understand this it just does not quite mesh.  Let me ask this... If everyone in the world were put a solar panel on the roof of their house would it have an impact on the environment?  No.  But if we were to take huge open fields and cover them completely with solar panels all over the world then possibly (and I am not just talking about because we have killed the grass and weeds and trees and took out habitats and such), but without the sun's heat getting to the ground and warming it then could there be a cooling effect going on of the earth....we could have global cooling instead of warming.  But the sheer amount of ground coverage to cause that sort of thing would be so massive that it is not feasible.  The same is applied to wind power.  The amount of energy that is removed by one turbine, from the wind is so nominal that it would take such a huge amount of them in one area to cause any sort of environmental impact.  You can have alot of water wheel mills on the river before you even notice any sort of slow down of the water on the river.

I agree that waste disposal is the problem we face today.  And personally I say we launch it towards the sun.  Load up the shuttle with a some containers and fire away on the next mission.