This article was written by our friend Jordan Powers, not Austin, Jordan plays guitar for a band called Far-Less and he knows a thing or two about the rise and fall of gas prices.


We all know that the price of gas keeps going up and up and there is no sign of it dropping in the near future. The chances are, if you are an adult, or even a late teen, you have a car; and unless you are one of those vehicle geniuses who knows how to convert a diesel engine into bio-diesel, own a car that can plug into the electrical outlet of your wall, or take a bike or bus everywhere you go, you have to rely on gas to get anywhere. Let’s break this down a bit.

- I am 26 years old. Gas in my hometown is $3.74/gallon right now. I started driving when I was 16. Gas in my hometown then was $1.04/gallon. I am not great at math and had to actually write that subtraction problem out and it looks to me like gas has increased $2.70 in a mere 10 years. Now THATS some inflation baby.

- Why has gas gone up so much? The quick answer to that is that we as a country rely way too much on the ‚Äúoil nations‚Äù for our oil and they simply aren‚Äôt supplying. Saudi Arabian officials are making it clear that they don‚Äôt feel that they need to raise the production of oil… that they are already meeting demand even though the U.S., as well as other nations, have basically been begging them to up production.

- Oil is over $127/barrel right now. That is a record high. There are some extreme predictions that are saying we are looking at $200/barrel by as early as summer ‘09. At $200 a barrel we are looking at around $5.50 to $6.00 per gallon of gas. Can you imagine paying that much for gasoline? At $6.00/gallon a twenty gallon tank will cost $120.00 to fill up. $120.00!!!! Who is going to be able to afford to pay that? Michael Jordan, Bill Gates and Steve from He is Legend that’s who. Not me though.

- We COULD start to offshore drill for oil, refine it ourselves and slowly begin to not have to rely on everyone else to supply our thirsty demand. Everyone else is doing it…pretty much every country that can. China is drilling 20 miles off of key west, FL. Sure there are some downsides to this idea… mostly environmental, but heck there are some downsides to paying $6.00 or more for a gallon of gas as well. The prices of almost all goods are going up because of the rising price of oil. Just think about how much it costs a truck to deliver apples from Washington state to Virginia. Its crazy!

- It’s not promising that any presidential administration is going to alleviate this problem significantly. Oil is expensive and as long as we have to rely on others to meet our outrageous demands and as long as we continue to pay the ever increasing price for this product we can forget about the price of it going down.

- So what to do about the rising price of gasoline?

If you have to commute very far to work or school, I suggest that you either move closer to your job or find a job closer to you. Either that, or try to get your boss to give you a raise, but good luck with that.

Otherwise get a bike. Me = Depressed