Yippee! Six-dollar gasoline is in sight!

Wow, is this encouraging: Gasoline demand for motor vehicles in the USA is dropping like a stone.  Take a look at this chart I assembled using the most recent data from the Energy Information Administration:

If we can keep gasoline demand headed in that direction, it will accelerate the arrival of oil independence day—which I still hope to see in my lifetime.  How encouraging! 

I credit this good news to the rising price of gasoline.  It's $4 per gallon and climbing.  With luck, $6 gasoline is right around the corner!

I can hardly wait.  How about you?

Comments

[JeffFire]

Steve,

What do you make of Newt's American Solutions campaign of Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less? Can it have any near term impact? It seems to me that the concepts discussed by American Solutions would help us along to oil independence (the combination of drilling here, clean coal, nuclear and shale oil).

Thanks for the great post!

Jeff

[Grodge]

Is the demand dropping because of a recession? In which case, this is no real reason to celebrate.

How does this decrease in domestic demand compare with earlier recessions?

[workindev]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the problem that I have with this logic is that if we don't have oil independence with gas at $4+/gallon, whatever comes along to replace it isn't going to be any cheaper than the equivalent of $4+/gallon. Oil independence isn't going to make energy costs any cheaper, it's just going to change where the money we spend on energy goes to.

[Mike H]

Have prices that high and greater gotten oil independence in Europe and Japan? I guess I'm not following how decreased demand is going to get us to oil independence. I have a feeling the price of oil is about to plummet for a variety of reasons: Rising dollar, lower demand, increased output from Saudi Arabia, China unsubsidizing gas after the Olympics, and whichever of these pops the oil bubble. If the oil market were actually a free market, the price of energy would be a lot cheaper and economic growth would be much easier.

[wonderputz]

Wait a minute... Gasoline demand skyrocketed starting in roughly August-September of '06, according to that chart. If memory serves correctly, wasn't that a few months AFTER the beginning of steep price increases and warnings of out-of-control gas prices? Are you telling me that the American public is collectively stupid enough to have started this price trend? (I'd believe it.) Kinda makes me wonder what people are complaining about.

[Counter Revolutionary]

Steve, what ever you do don't bite down hard. Losing that much of your tongue so firmly pressed into your cheek could be painful.

Otherwise, if you look at the strikes and near riots/riots around the world, it is obvious that the specter of high prices for oil and its derivatives is going over really well.

Europe is turning away from the Green message. We were lucky enough to not fall hook, line and sinker, but we are watching our slow turn away from the Green agenda.

CoRev, editor
http://globalwarmingclearinghouse.blogspot.com