In one of those “every silver lining has a cloud” kind of situations, state and federal government road maintenance funds are dwindling as people drive less and use less gasoline per mile as they buy more fuel efficient cars. The federal government had to put $8 billion into the Highway Trust Fund because plummeting gas [...]

Thanks to Justin and company for welcoming me on here as a regular contributor. I will be posting on a number of issues, but one area you can expect that I will regularly be tracking is technology related developments and how they interact with the political world and policy. I also live less than ten [...]

Most people don’t realize that the insane gas prices last year had nothing to do with increased demand and had everything to do with market speculation and hoarding encouraged by the top investment banks.
Now True/Slant’s own Matt Taibbi uncovers the truth behind the scam.
Read the rest at True/Slant.

This is a pretty big stake in the ground, because they’ll be using California’s standards…the toughest in the nation.
No doubt you’ll be hearing that this is bad for business, but that’s what they said about seat belts, airbags and every other time CAFE standards were raised. And I think we’re all fairly aware that the [...]

Oh, and hybrids too.
From NY Times:
The goal, which radiates from the very top of the Chinese government, suggests that Detroit’s Big Three, already struggling to stay alive, will face even stiffer foreign competition on the next field of automotive technology than they do today. [...]
To some extent, China is making a virtue of a liability. [...]

The moment I heard this idea it sounded like box office poison, and it looks like the administration did too. Because not only does it mean you’d have to have some sort of Orwellian GPS system attached to every car, but it completely negates the benefits of higher mileage hybrids that are in the pipeline.
From [...]

Following up on my earlier post about oil speculation, there’s news that 50 million barrels of oil are being hoarded on supertankers.
The market calls it “contango.”
I call it irresponsible.
From Marketplace…
“Contango” refers to a market condition in which the future price of a commodity is higher than the cost of buying it today. Right now, [...]

And they find that the folks who were trying to make a quick buck were affecting oil prices far more than the normal market forces of supply and demand.
Gee, that sounds oddly familiar…

Last year I argued time and time again that the energy speculators were the cause and that supply and demand couldn’t cause such [...]

Larry Burns on General Motors’ ideas for the next generation of automobiles, which include cars giving power back to the grid.

We can talk all we want about how firms like GM have failed in the past couple decades, but they’re right at that point where they can really make a difference and it would be [...]

Yesterday they cut off their natural gas supply to the Ukraine. Completely.
That also means the supply to numerous European countries has been severely diminished.
From AP:
The Russia-Ukraine natural gas dispute hit Europe with the force of a winter storm Tuesday, cutting or limiting supplies to nearly a dozen nations. Tens of thousands of people were left [...]

I’m glad to see we learned our lesson…
From CNN:
After nearly a year of flagging sales, low gas prices and fat incentives are reigniting America’s taste for big vehicles.
Trucks and SUVs will outsell cars in December, according to researchers at the automotive Website Edmunds.com, something that hasn’t happened since February.
Meanwhile the forecast finds that sales of [...]

Massive energy speculation mixed with much lower demand is driving the price down, down, down for the foreseeable future.
From AP:
A report by the Commerce Department showed that sales of new homes fell in November to the slowest pace in nearly 18 years, while new home prices dropped by the biggest amount in eight months.
“The energy [...]

While recent economic news has been grim, we can at least take a little solace that gas prices have plummeted. Currently, we’re more likely to see $1 a gallon gas than $4 a gallon gas in the immediate future.
Since the price of gas peeked last July, prices have dropped 72% with a 25% drop in [...]

As always, the entire thing. Today’s was particularly good, with T. Boone Pickens making an appearance.

Thoughts?

As purse strings tighten and consumption plummets, the market runs screaming.
Reuters has more…
Oil dropped $6 to below $88 a barrel on Monday on expectations the growing financial crisis will further slow already faltering global fuel demand.
Crude prices have plummeted from a peak over $147 a barrel set on July 11 as high fuel prices and [...]

This may seem like good news for people at the pump, but let’s not forget that even with oil falling to $115 a barrel, it’s still well above where it was just a year ago…and a year before that…and so on.
And as the following graph from The Oil Drum illustrates, prices have dropped over the [...]

“Obama said a couple of days ago says we all should inflate our tires. I don’t disagree with that. The American Automobile Association strongly recommends it. My friends, let’s do that, but do you think that’s enough to break our dependence on foreign oil? I don’t think so.”
Yeah, because that was Obama’s entire energy plan…proper [...]

Why is McCain ridiculing Obama for a solution that would actually have an immediate impact on our fuel usage?
I’ll give you one guess…
From TIME:
The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about [...]

Unlike McCain’s suggestion that Obama is himself responsible for rising gas prices, there’s nothing untrue about what Obama’s campaign is saying in this ad. However, by saying that McCain is in the pocket of Big Oil like Bush, he takes what could have been a solid campaign ad and turns it into a negative hit.

Obviously [...]

The problem with high gas prices is that they have a rolling effect not just on prices but on overall quality of life. New data indicates that 81% of counties say public safety is the most impacted by higher fuel prices. But it’s not police or fire that is typically being cut. It’s other services. [...]