So-called “experts” on energy prices and policies keep telling us the same thing.
The downward spiral in oil and gasoline prices is going to continue perhaps well into the new year.
But watching the price ticking down — often more than once daily — continues to make me nervous.
The price of unleaded gas has now dipped to less than $2 per gallon in Amarillo. I work part time across the street from a leading gas dealer here and I’ve seen the sign tick down as many as three times during a single day.
How low will it go?
The experts aren’t saying yet how cheap they think gas will get.
Supply is up. Demand is down. American drillers keep producing oil like there’s no tomorrow. But everyone knows how free-market economics works: If the supply keeps outstripping demand, eventually the suppliers will scale back their production to even out the inventory of oil and gasoline on the market. The result inevitably increases the price of gas a the pump.
As we’ve all seen for the past several years, gasoline increases in price at a far quicker pace than it decreases.
Hey, I’m not predicting gloom and doom at the pump.
I’m merely suggesting that I’m getting quite used to paying the same amount for gas that I was paying five years ago or longer.
The “new normal” in gas prices had produced a certain form of numbness to the prices we were paying. Now that new normal has been shaken — but in a positive sort of way.
It still makes me nervous about what could be coming down the road.