Tag Archives: energy prices

business news

POTUS pounded unfairly

My bias is clear and well-documented on this blog. I stand in support of President Biden.

That said, I need someone to explain to me just why he is getting pounded — in my view unfairly — for the rising energy prices that are taking an increasing bite out of our disposal income.

Supply of fossil fuel is down, demand is up. Russia has gone to war with Ukraine, forcing the United States and our worldwide allies to cut off Russian oil exports. The “supply chain” crisis isn’t letting up. Not only that, Americans are paying less for fuel than citizens of many other industrialized nations, meaning that this is a worldwide crisis.

And yet …

We hear from the right wingers that Biden is “doing nothing” to ease the pain at the pump. We hear he is feckless and clueless.

How in the world does the president of the United States control the worldwide supply and demand? What can he do to correct it?

Hey, I admit to being slow on the uptake on a whole array of issues. This is one of them. I don’t profess to know all the answers. Hell, I cannot even figure out how to correct some of the glitches in my TV streaming service at home.

I have said all along — and this argument has applied to presidents of both parties — that the POTUS never should take undue credit for success, nor should he received undue blame for problems that occur on his watch.

However, Joe Biden is the president of the United States. He has served in government long enough to know that the blame he gets just goes with the territory.

It’s just not fair.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

business news, local news

Age keeps getting in the way

Don’t you hate it when you show your age to a young person who doesn’t quite get the reference?

It happened to me today while I was working one of my four part-time jobs.

I was sitting in the break room at the car dealership where I work, visiting with a courtesy driver who’s about eight years older than I am.

I’m 65; he’s 73.

In walked a young salesman. We started talking about how his sales business was going.

The young man made note of how popular SUVs have become “since the price of gasoline has gotten to be so cheap.”

My courtesy driver friend and I exchanged looks — and then laughed out loud.

I told my young salesman friend that he was “talking to two fellas who remember when gasoline sold for about a quarter a gallon.” My courtesy driver friend mouthed the words “19 cents.”

My young friend, who’s 26 years of age, took note of when gasoline “first hit a buck 50.”

So, there we have a clear definition of what I’ve termed the “new normal” at the gasoline pump.

When gasoline sells for $2.50 per gallon for regular unleaded and that’s considered “cheap,” well, that signals a new way — in my view at least — of assessing the relative price of a common commodity.

I reminded my good friend — the young man — that when gasoline hit $1.50 per gallon, some of us became apoplectic.

I don’t think he quite got it. My other friend — the older one — surely did.

 

business news, local news

Gas-price skid causes nervousness

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.

 

Uncategorized

New normal in gas prices no longer so new

The “new normal” in gasoline prices used to be cause for laughter around our house.

I remember when Mom or Dad would pull up to the service station pump and tell the attendant — yes, they still have attendants in my home state of Oregon — to put a “dollar’s worth of regular” into the tank. That would be about four gallons. Off we went and tooled around for the rest of the day, maybe a bit into the next one.

Those days are gone.

Now comes news that gas prices are declining. They’re at the lowest level since 2010. They’re heading downward into the new year.

Gas prices at lowest level since 2010

It’s not that we should be surprised that gasoline still costs about $3 a gallon in Amarillo, which is a bit lower than the rest of the state. My wife and I just returned from the Metroplex and were surprised to learn that drivers there are paying about 20 cents more per gallon than we are.

We’re all going to welcome the prospect of paying less for gas in the new year — and hopefully beyond.

Automakers are building more fuel-efficient cars, people are buying them (we’re driving a Toyota hybrid and loving the 45 miles per gallon were getting with that little buggy) and domestic energy producers are pulling a lot of oil out of the ground in newly discovered well fields way up yonder near the Canadian border.

I still have to chuckle at the notion that gasoline that dips below 3 bucks a gallon is now considered “cheap.”

My memory of the old days remains too fresh.