Free Republic

It’s pretty clear, there is going to be a major push to raise the state’s gas tax during the upcoming legislative session. While that should surprise no one, I was shocked to see the over-the-top TV ad that the pro-gas tax crowd is currently using to advance the issue. That’s right, school children are going to die if we don’t raise the gas tax. This outrageous ad makes all those negative ads in the U.S. Senate race look like child’s play. Talk about jumping the shark. The ad begins with the claim that there are currently 5,000 deficient bridges in...

An Oncue Express station in Oklahoma City was selling the motor fuel for $1.99 a gallon Wednesday, becoming the first one to drop below $2 in the U.S. since July 30, 2010, Patrick DeHaan, a senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy Organization Inc., said by email from Chicago. "We knew when we saw crude oil prices drop last week that we'd break the $2 threshold pretty soon, but we didn't know if it would happen in South Carolina, Texas, Missouri or Oklahoma," said DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for Gasbuddy. "Today's national average, $2.74, now makes the current price we pay a...

Free enterprise is proving to be Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's most potent foe. Moscow's February 2014 invasion of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and its immediate annexation drastically altered international diplomatic calculations. In a year marked by the homicidal rise of the Islamic State and Chinese probes of East Asian maritime borders, Putin's destruction of post-Cold War security arrangements is the most dangerous challenge to global peace. Yet U.S. and Western European attempts to penalize the Kremlin its Crimean theft and blunt its relentless "slow war of moral attrition" in Eastern Ukraine have been erratic. Though France's decision to halt its sale...

February 28, 2012 Newt Gingrich's lower gas price promise 2012 candidate guarantees he can lower gas to $2.50 a gallon and explains how he will do this

Republican oil mogul Harold Hamm says Congress is wasting its time debating the Keystone XL pipeline. “It’s not relevant at all, in my opinion. And here we are making it relevant now? Forget it,” the billionaire CEO of Oklahoma-based Continental Resources told Politoco in an interview Friday, just before the House passed a bill aimed at approving the pipeline. […] Hamm said his company, which had planned to use Keystone to ship some of its North Dakota crude, is already using other pipelines for half of its oil. And the percentage is growing. “We’re supporting other pipelines out there; we’re...

Despite losing at least eight seats, and probably nine before all the votes are counted by 2015, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has not faced much in the way of a public pushback from his fellow Democrats… until today. Purple state Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) revealed on Thursday that she will not back Reid in his role as minority leader in the next Congress.The revelation came as a surprise when she was asked by reporters if she would stand by Reid. “I will not,” McCaskill replied.“Yesterday, I met with Harry Reid and told him I would not...

Oil prices are plunging. Gasoline is now cheaper than milk. Why doesn't Washington do something already?Since peaking in June, the price of oil has tumbled by 25 percent. Texas light sweet crude futures have fallen to around $77.40 a barrel, a three-year low, while Brent oil, the global benchmark, sank on Monday to its lowest price in four years.With cheaper oil has come cheaper gasoline. The national average price for a gallon of regular is now just $2.926. Drivers haven't seen pump prices this low since December 2010. Nor have they seen such a sustained decline — the price has dropped...

New U.S. pipelines and a revival in Libyan supply are increasing the likelihood that oil prices will slump through year-end after climbing in the first six months. Wall Street analysts tracked by Bloomberg predict West Texas Intermediate oil, the U.S. benchmark, will average $100 a barrel in the fourth quarter, down 5.1 percent from June 30, while Brent drops 4.8 percent to $107. Violence in Iraq sent Brent to $115.71 in June, its highest level since September, on concern supplies would be disrupted.

This Independence Day weekend, drivers won't see any relief from high gas prices. Although prices retreated by a fraction of a cent at the beginning of the week, AAA predicts holiday travelers will pay the most at the pump since 2008. In its monthly gas price report released June 30, AAA said, "With Independence Day only a few days away, today's national average price of gas is $3.68 per gallon. This average is considerably more expensive than recent years for the holiday. The national average on July 4 in previous years was: $3.48 (2013); $3.34 (2012); $3.57 (2011); $2.74 (2010);...

WASHINGTON — AAA Mid-Atlantic says the civil war in Iraq is pushing up gasoline prices in the United States. Drivers in the District of Columbia are paying $3.89 per gallon. That’s up 5 cents from a week ago and is far above the national average of $3.68 per gallon. In Maryland, AAA says gas prices are up 4 cents this week to an average of $3.67 per gallon. Prices are highest in the Washington suburbs and western Maryland. In Delaware, AAA says gas prices have risen 7 cents over the past week to about $3.68 per gallon. AAA says national...

Supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline have found a new talking point: Iraq Violence exploding in one of the world's largest oil-producing nations is ricocheting in the debate over U.S. energy policy. Backers of the pipeline, which would run from Alberta, Canada, to Texas, are pointing to the crisis in Iraq as a rationale for pushing the project forward. Often billed as a possible component for supplying the U.S.'s voracious energy markets with crude oil, TransCanada's long-delayed $5.3 billion pipeline has been mired in delays for six years. On Wednesday, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee voted 12-10 to...

Russia cut off gas supplies to Ukraine on Monday, a move that will inflict immediate pain on its turbulent neighbor and could eventually affect other gas-dependent European nations. The cutoff intensifies pressure on Ukraine, which is contending with an increasingly violent pro-Russian insurgency in its east and with economic challenges that were crippling even before the upheaval sparked by the ouster of Kremlin-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych in February. And if the gas flow is halted for a long time, winter stockpiles across Europe could be depleted, causing problems across the continent, particularly in eastern European countries that depend solely on...

Tyler Durden 05/30/2014Submitted by Jeff Nielsen via BullionBullsCanada blog, Regular readers are familiar with my narratives on the U.S. Greater Depression, and (in particular) some of the government’s own charts which depict this economic meltdown most vividly. The collapse in the “civilian participation rate” (the number of people working in the economy) and the “velocity of money” (the heartbeat of the economy) indicate an economy which is not merely in decline, but rather is being sucked downward in a terminal (and accelerating) death-spiral. However, even that previously published data, and the grim analyses which accompanied it could not prepare me...

Memorial Day weekend drivers will continue to take a hit as gasoline prices remain high. May 20 marks the 1,245th straight day that the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline costs more than $3 a gallon, according to AAA data. That’s nearly three-and-a-half years above $3 a gallon.

At $3.67, US Regular gasoline prices are their highest since March 2013 having risen over 12% (40c) in the last 2 months. This must be great news, right? It must mean world demand is picking up and driving up prices of crude oil as global trade soars (amid a collapsing Baltic Dry and decelerating Chinese growth). This can't be related to "war premia" right? - as we noted here - because stocks (which always know best) have discounted all this tomfoolery. However, as the following chart shows, each time gas prices have surged up toards the Maginot Line of $3.80,...

California is preparing for an oil boom — brought in on rail cars. There are no pipelines that bring crude oil into California. For decades, the fuel that powers the state’s 32 million vehicles has come from tanker ships or in-state production. But government regulators predict a surge in U.S. oil production will means a steep increase in the number of trains carrying it to California refineries. The Ventura County Star reported Sunday that the increase in rail traffic will happen quickly, jumping from 9,000 carloads in 2011 to more than 200,000 carloads by 2016, according to California Energy Commission...

>Gasoline prices have risen steadily in the past six weeks through March 18. There was an uptick in gas prices in 37 of the past 38 days, and gas is now more expensive than at any point in the past six months. In a number of states, the price of gas is now more than $3.75 per gallon, versus $3.52 nationwide, with gas prices in several other states not far behind. In Hawaii, the price of gas is $4.17 per gallon. Here, as in a number of states, the high price of gas reflects the difficulties involved in transporting oil...

Lots of things that should have happened in 2013 did not. We were supposed to have long ago reached "peak oil" and an age of always-higher gas prices. Wind and solar power -- and a reduced lifestyle -- were our dismal future. But someone or something did not cooperate with gloomy government predictions. After all the failed subsidized green companies, the postponement of the Keystone Pipeline, the radical restrictions of new gas and oil leasing on federal lands, and the promises for radical climate-change legislation curtailing carbon energy use, the United States nevertheless seems awash in old energy. Gas prices...

Warren Buffett’s company has agreed to trade roughly $1.4 billion of its stock in Phillips 66 for one of the refiner's chemical businesses. Houston-based Phillips 66 said Monday that Berkshire Hathaway will give up about 19 million of its 27.2 million Phillips 66 shares to acquire a business that makes additives that help crude oil flow through pipelines. …

At the beginning of this year, many Americans opened their paychecks to find that their take-home pay was suddenly less than it had been the previous month. The payroll tax cut had expired, resulting in the average American worker owing an additional $700 in payroll taxes this year compared to last. For a two-parent household, that’s $1,400 less with which to pay the bills, put food on the table, and fill up the gas tank. But it’s far from the only added expense straining family budgets. Oil prices, in particular, have skyrocketed over the past decade, imposing higher direct and...