N. Californian Gas Prices Approaching All-Time Records - Thanksgiving Looks Expensive - SF Chronicle

[hatrack]

You might want to stay put for Thanksgiving. By the time the holiday rolls around, gasoline could cost more than ever before. Driven higher by the rampaging bull market for crude oil, Bay Area gas prices could soon top records set just this spring. This, at a time of year when gas prices rarely rise at all.

San Francisco's average price for a gallon of regular reached $3.51 on Friday, 12 cents shy of the city's $3.63 record. San Jose is just 7 cents below its record of $3.50. California's statewide average is $3.35, up 33 cents in the last month. The state set its current record in May, at $3.49.

Prices usually fall in the fall. Americans return from their vacations, delve back into their jobs or classes and put fewer miles on their cars than they do in the summer. Price spikes of this magnitude simply don't happen at this time of year.

The stunning run-up in crude oil prices has changed all that. Crude, the raw material for gasoline, is pushing close to $100 per barrel, a level that just two or three years ago would have been almost unthinkable. It closed Friday at $96.32 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 90.8 percent from its lowest point this year. "If this proves to be a sustained price level for oil, that's very troubling from the consumer's perspective, to put it mildly," said Sean Comey, spokesman for AAA of Northern California. "I don't see anything on the horizon to support optimism."

EDIT

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/10/BUKBT9OGP.DTL

[TomInTib]

1. We're getting killed.

Our town is largely dependent on car (tourist) traffic.

I sure am glad that our little business is not.

And I have been walking everywhere I go.

[Trajan]

2. But hey ... WHY are you complaining ?

The tax rates on the super rich oil barons are WAY down .....

Furthermore: there has been a shift in cash flow: BILLIONS more going to those Texas oil barons, with MUCH less tax revenue coming from those billions ..... God Bless America !

So, you should gladly PAY UP those extra petroleum 'costs' because at least you got a tax credit 6 years ago ..... RIGHT ? .... TAXES are lower on the rich, so suck it up and buy what your piddly low wage job can afford ..... Thank your lucky stars you arent an Indian working for 20% of that wage .... THAT is your damned 'Thanksgiving' ....

BTW: How did you spend that $400 in 2001 ? .... Let me guess: Filled the tank ?

:sarcasm: