Has Gas Consumption Really Spiked that Much?

They are claiming that they are low on supply. They need to start drilling in areas that they don't want to drill in, but by the time they decide to do that we are ging to be in real trouble.

I have heard that world wide gas consumption has increased. Other countries are now buying more oil which is causing a rise in the fuel prices. Not sure how true that is but I am sure it is not the only reason gas prices have been increasing.

One big thing is that I don't think people realize how much they really depend on gas. Not just the people who drive, but everyone. If you fly, the plane takes fuel. If you order somehing, mail something or receive mail, shipping involes gas. If you go buy a cup of coffee, importing the beans, delivering them to the various coffee houses/stores etc. takes GAS for shipping!! Riding a bus, a taxi, a boat, whatever... mowing your lawn, all take GAS!!!!

I think that gas consumption has gone up over the last ten years. People just have more places to go. Ironic, considering that you can watch movies at home on your computer and even order food and have it delivered as well as other things you can buy online. I don't have to go anywhere in my car that I don't want. We save lots of money by staying out of our car!

I'm guessing it's because the owners of all the major oil companies suddenly wanted to buy another island and decided to increase the prices per barrel for funding

The gas prices are from more than supply and demand. If you do your homework, you will see that this has all happened before in I think 1979 and the early 80's. Back then, they said we were running out of fuel too, which is just not true. At the same time, food prices went up and people were trying to say that there were food shortages. What happeend to fix that back then was the Fed (the national bank that basically controls the economy) raised interest rates. It boils down to complicated economics. I think they like it that the average person doesn't really understand the reasoning. I did read somewhere recently though that fuel consumption from cars has gone down in the US recently, but I don't know about other things that fuel is used for such as freight transport and the making of plastic products. If you notice, the Fed has been lowering interest rates. You keep seeing in the news that they lower it another half percent and so on. After the last one, I think they decided they weren't going to lower it again. Apparently, they would wait until the unemployment rate spikes and then begins to fall to raise the interest rate. How this makes sense, I don't know, but it is what happened before when were in the almost exact same situation, so I don't think they don't know how to get us out of this mess. For some reason, I just don't think they want to get us out just yet.

It finally rose to $4.00 in Los Angeles County, California today. We were are fearing that this horrible day would come.

Now that is a interesting question; what is the cause in the spike of gas prices. From what the news is saying it's the people who we are buying it from. Yet there was someone that posted a discussion listing prices of gas from all over the world and in some place gas was cheap and others it was high. So you might have to do some research and find out what is the real cause of the spike in gas prices.

It may have increased because we've been manufacturing gas guzzling big SUVs but I don't believe it's increasing in price because of the demand. Our demand has been going down as the prices have gone up. I think they're trying to squeeze us out of the mideast, which is fine with me but I don't like their methods! Perhaps they're hoping there will be an uprising here, which would probably be a very good thing that's long, long overdue.

Yes it has spiked that much. Here in the Philippines, everyday there is an increase in prices, I really do not know what's causing it. Maybe we should think of other alternative as to how or where are we going to get that source of energy for our daily needs.

Recently I heard on the news that the stock of fuel in the USA was down. Because it was down that meant that fuel in general all over the world would go up. In your economics class you probably also learned that crude oil is sold using USD as a currency. Well the dollar is very weak at the moment. That means that the oil producing countries want more dollars for the the same amount of oil. The fact that there are large fields of oil still on fire in Nigeria doesn't seem to bother anybody though.