If anything, I believe unscrupulous oil companies/dealers/gas station owners have been playing a larger role than Katrina in the sudden spike of gas prices by price gauging.
LOL! Damn. You'll probably end up spending more than the guy paying $3/gal. for gas. Hey I lived near Stafford. Maybe I'll see you driving around when I visit my parents down there every so often.
I filled up my tank Monday for $34 and burned through it by Tuesday afternoon. I drive for a living (100-200 miles a day around Houston and suburbs) so I've spent over $100 so far this week on gas and the week isn't over yet. ...UGH... I say Stafford, my office is right next door to Channel 2/KPRC on the SW Freeway/Gessner. I say Stafford because we are just a few exits from there.
Damn, I just got a promotion and a modest raise...I guess I know where my new found cash is going now.
I heard that Americans are paying $1.250 BILLION PER DAY more for gas today than they did 3 years ago.
Good grief. One thing I wondered was how all the real estate agent types that just drive people around from house to house all day are doing with these gas prices. Some of them must be downright pissed. Especially those that drive the nice cars to impress clients. Nice cars don't usually equate to good mileage. Oh yeah, I know that area pretty well. I used to drive around there when I was younger. That's over there by Best Buy and Academy (if they're still there), right?
Mentioning people that drive for a living I wonder how this will affect delivery services such as USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, food delivery, etc. and when/if they will start charging [extra] for delivery. I know the Papa Johns pizza chain in town already upped their delivery charge from $1 to $2 just waiting for others to follow suit.
My wife works for an oil man and all their experts are saying gas will move back down to the $2.50 range in 7-10 days...then as they start getting power back to the pipelines and refineries in the Gulf Coast it will relax another $0.10 or so. After that, the EPA mandated summer formula for gas ends for the year and prices should go down even more. They were predicting gas prices to hover around $1.90 - $2.10 for the rest of the winter before rising again next summer. This trend would continue for 2-3 years...they are then predicting a pretty sharp drop in oil and gas at that time with prices stabilizing at what Americans consider "normal."
these sudden price spikes are often the fault of no one other than the gas station owners. Some friends of mine own two gas stations in my hometown and I recently asked them why gas prices jumped from about 2.30 to 2.50-60 in a day or two. According to them, it was simply owners taking advantage of the fact that the price of oil barrels jumped above $60 or $65. They said that the price of barrels of oil don't have a long term effect on prices and that no one in the area would have paid more than $2.24 per gallon for the gas at their stations. Essentially, the owners of gas stations jacked up their price just because they could take advantage of news to make more money.
the biggest pipeline in the country, Colonial, has transfer pumping stations in the NO area...and without power they are unable to pump product to the East Coast. They are working hard to get them back online...but its gonna take a few dayus at the least....sorry to tell you that yall's problems in ATL are just gonna get worse before they get better.
thanks for the details. i heard that they restored connection to 2 pipelines, but i dont know if they were big ones or small ones, and if its gonna have any major effect.
