Gas Prices : What is the Cause of This?

People are starting to wonder when the gas price is going to go down, if it ever does of'course. How did the gas price become so ridiculous anyways?

This has been a tremendous concern for all of us including the schools and transportation departments. We have all been asked that questions, If gas keeps going up, then will you walk to work or quit your job? The answer to this is simple, we would still have to go to work. Even though we all know that it is going to cost us a fortune, we still drive the same amount of miles as we did before the gas price shot up. I don't really think that the price of gas really made anyone change there daily routine. One would think that it should have, but instead of changing how much time we are in our cars, we all decided to change something different all though we may not notice that we didn't get that extra pop because we used it for gas instead.

So, what is to blame for these heckling gas prices? The United States consumes an average of twenty million barrels of oil per day. Of that, about forty-five percent is used for motor gasoline. The rest is used for distillate fuel oil, jet fuel, residual fuel and other oils. Each barrel of oil contains forty- two gallons, which yields nineteen to twenty gallons of gasoline. So, in the United States, something like 178 million gallons of gasoline is consumed every day.

Usually, the demand for gas goes up during the summer, when most people go on vacation. Holidays sometimes create huge gas jumps because of tourist traffic. This high demand usually translates into higher gasoline prices, although that's not always the case. For instance, while gas prices soared 31 cents in April and early May of 2001,reaching $1.71 per gallon, prices actually declined during the 2001 summer.

In the year 2004, prices continued to rise past the end of the summer season for a lot of reasons, including several hurricanes and an increase in the price of crude oil. And in 2005, Hurricane Katrina pushed prices to $3.07 per gallon on September 5, 2005. Prices settled down somewhat in November and December of 2005. But now the numbers are seeming to start to climb once again.

The price of gas usually increases when the world crude-oil market tightens and lowers inventories.Also, growing demand can sometimes outpace refinery capacity. In the spring, refineries perform maintenance, which can place a pince on the gasoline market.

People are now putting up pages on the web as well as t.v. and on the radio about where the cheapest place to get gas is. Many of us are still wondering when the price of gas is going to go down and if it ever will.