The daily average of each week in the listed month adds to the monthly total. Some months have four weeks others five, but over three months this tends to average out.
Posted on 03/11/2012 9:01:38 AM PDT by Kaslin
he following chart shows U.S. petroleum and gasoline usage for December-February compared with the same three months in prior years. Chart is courtesy of reader Tim Wallace.
Note that petroleum usage is back to December 1995 thru February 1996 levels. Gasoline usage is back to December 2001 thru February 2002 levels.
All data derived directly from the Data 10 section of the EIA download.
The daily average of each week in the listed month adds to the monthly total. Some months have four weeks others five, but over three months this tends to average out.
Exactly right. When Obama took office the gas price was $1.80 a gallon. We have added 33 million people to our population since 2000. The higher cost of gas reflects a down economy. Just look at the graph and see how gas usage surged during the 1990s. People are not driving as much period. The precipitous decline begins with the recession that started in 2008. The reality is that we are still in it. Take a look at the graph for food stamps to demonstrate how bad things really are.
Vital Signs: Truck Shipments Growing
By Josh Mitchell
WSJ
January 30, 2012
The supply of goods being shipped by truck has been growing. The American Trucking Associations’ index of commercial truck shipments, by weight, rose a seasonally adjusted 6.8% in December from November. The 5.9% increase notched for the full year in 2011 was the largest since 1998. The trucking group attributed the gain to increased manufacturing production and restocking of inventories.
Gas was inching back up into the mid-2's which was sky high at the time.....for our entire time on the road, we probably saw less than 40 RVs; astounding, given that this was just past Memorial Day.
Coming back to California, we left Pecos, TX one morning around 8am and went for a full one hundred miles before we came to another westbound vehicle.
Disco wasn’t really that bad.
OK, I’ll bite.... how does “warmer winter” signify lower gasoline consumption?
consumption is down so i guess it's time to raise prices to make up for the lost revenue...
Highways are empty here.
Lower heating oil consumption means less demand. That combined with lower domestic demand on gas, and higher global refining should equal lower prices domestically.
Hussein and the oil cartels are working on it though/s
Most everybody around here in Minnesota has noticed that their gas mileage goes down noticeably in very cold weather.
Gasoline is consumed to produce energy. The more of it that is used to heat the air for combustion, the more that is consumed, since the energy used for propulsion should be the same either way. I suppose there might be some small effect too from moving the vehicle through denser air the colder it gets, and more people warming up their cars before driving.
A warm winter will, however, cause consumption of natural gas and home heating oil to decline.
The interesting thing is that the fuel usage started to crater in late 2005 by this chart. I have created something I call the Biflation Index for a book I wrote that shows the economic peak also coming in 2005.
What this means is that the wheels started coming off the bus with compassionate conservatism, well before Obama, but has continued to accelerate. See my chart here, going back to ‘48.
http://www.futurnamics.com/biflation.php
Over the same period, the population has increased ... so the numbers are even worse and point to a continued economic recession if not depression.
Last year I saw this Billboard in Texas.
Yeah — if you’re young, you don’t realize that its because of the 70s gas crises that all cars now come with a locked gas hatch cover that can only be popped from inside the car as standard equipment.
Prior to the 70s, there was no locked hatch and no locking caps. When locking caps became popular in the 70s, they required a key, which was inconvenient.
So starting in the 80s cars started making hatches that could only be opened from inside the car. No extra key required.
We must be doing a good job of keeping our tires properly inflated.
It already has. We are importing less crude oil and even become an exporter of refined products (downstream of the refineries)>
People don’t believe it, but oil is are number one export.
What I find interesting is how divergent petroleum and gas usage have become. According to the chart, they remained relatively in sync from 1992 to 2007 with the exception of 1998-99 when petroleum usage spiked above gas usage. Now the gap is in the opposite direction and we are in a steeper decline with gas usage higher than petroleum usage.
There seems to be no doubt that there is a direct correlation between the state of the economy and oil/gas usage. The chart portrays a much more gloomy picture of the economy than the happy talk we have been hearing lately. And we have the anomaly of higher gas prices despite reduced demand. The declining value of the dollar, increased global demand from the emerging economies, and the situation in the ME contributes to the rising cost of oil. If this trend continues, this is not good news for the future no matter how one tries to spin it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
