As of April 10,2006, here are the prices in US$ for a gallon of gasoline, without taxes:
- Belgium - $2.33
- France - $2.15
- Germany - $2.14
- Italy - $2.34
- Netherlands - $2.61
- UK - $2.10
- US - $2.50
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/Gas0.xls (Excel Spreadsheet, beware)
If it weren't for taxes, the UK would have the cheapest gasoline of the countries on the list. The US would have the most expensive, except for the Netherlands. If we had more refineries and lifted state-to-state restrictions, we could get it just as cheap, if not cheaper.
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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
You guys might be right if you limit demand to North America, but when you look at the explosion of oil usage in India and China among the general population as well as other parts of the world, it's enough to drive demand through the roof. If only 10% of Chinese and Indians drive (remembering that each country has roughly 1,000,000,000 people each), that's an additional 200,000,000 drivers, which is roughly the equivalent of all the drivers in the US.
That's a big change in demand. It's not the entire reason for the increase in demand but the improving economies in those nations does have a serious impact.
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But lets go back just a few more years. The average (and median) price for a barrel of crude since WW2 has been around $20 per barrel. When I spoke of April 2004, we were already involved in Iraq and speculation had already driven the cost of oil up to $35/barrel. But if we go to pre 9/11 days oil prices were averaging roughly $21/barrel in 2004 dollars. The median price was $17 in 2004 dollars. Only half the time since WW2 was the price for a barrel of crude more than $17! So even with China & India I find it hard to believe that world demand for oil has increased by 350%.
Some good reading on the history of crude oil prices:
http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm Its loaded with graphs and charts. Graphs and charts are cool.
edit: I just wanted to reiterate that the only thing driving oil prices is commodity traders fear (and greed - not that greed is all bad, after all they are just trying to make a living as well). Its just one guy trying to outguess the next guy on how much the next barrel of oil is going to cost.
I was listening to ben stein talk a few minutes ago and he was saying this exact same thing, except that he added the point that the commodity traders are providing a public service in that by , even though we may have high energy prices, at least we have energy. We don't have the shortages and empty fill-stations like we did in the 70's.
If you want lower energy prices lower the taxes on gasoline, build more refineries, drop the state-specific gasoline standards. But ultimately, in order to have lower prices for oil we need stability in the middle east to ease the fears of the commodity traders. When they sense stability the price of oil falls.