This is a good article about one of the reasons we are seeing the prices we are seeing:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/flowchart/2008/3/10/why-gas-prices-rise-as-the-dollar-falls.html
This is a map of the country and the various gas prices…
http://michigangasprices.com/map_gas_prices.aspx?z=0&lat=37.984375&long=-96.312500&ft=A&tl=48
This is where the country should be focusing dollars at
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/current.shtml
My one hope with the outrageously high fuel prices (yes Europe… I know how high it has been for you and for how long… I remember being shocked to death when I was in London and Koln back in 2000) is that maybe, just maybe, this will push the general public into thinking more about alternate renewable energy forms. I don’t think we need to dump fossil fuels completely, but removing our absolute dependence on them would be great.
I saw something recently that said that speculation on oil is contributing something like 50-60% of its price. All commodities, including oil, have some percentage of buyers and sellers that are speculators (i.e. they don’t actually use the commodity they are buying or selling). Oil has recently seen a huge increase in the numbers of folks speculating on it (i.e. trading oil futures) which has contributed an amazing amount to its recent run-up (in addition to the weak dollar). Guess its time to peg oil to the yuan 🙂
the only reason it is still doable for us (with 1.50 Euroos to the litre! for diesel) is the low dollar (at 1.6dollar per euro)..
could be me, but if you guys where to use a little less oil we’d have more 🙂 and our prices could drop..
did you know the US uses the most oil per user .. ? and more intresesting facts aswell as the future of oil:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/