The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
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Ridgewood NJ, Gas prices hit their highest levels since 2008 Thursday and some stations in New Jersey, the dreaded price of $4 a gallon for regular has already been reached.
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Washington DC, President Biden celebrated Thanksgiving with his family in Nantucket , but if polls of his job performance and handling of issues like the economy and foreign policy are any guide, he didn’t have much to be grateful for.
Continue reading Not Much to Be Grateful for in Latest Presidential Poll Numbers
photo by Boyd Loving
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Ridgewood NJ, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), More than 47 million people across the country will embark on Independence Day travel between July 1 through July 5 with travel estimated to reach pre-pandemic levels.
Continue reading Fourth of July Road Travel Returns to Pre-pandemic Levels
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Ridgewood NJ, since the November election the CRB commodities index has been surging. This index of nearly 20 major commodities – from silver, to copper, to corn, to coal – hit it’s three-year high on Monday at 205. That’s a 35% commodity price spike from election day when it stood at 154. Energy prices have led the ascent. The index had been rising throughout 2020 from its collapse in March and April when the virus hit.
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Paramus NJ,Gas prices have been trending sharply downward for the past few weeks, but could go much lower .
As crude oil prices trend close to $30/bbl, Americans are seeing pump prices plummet across the country. On the week, gas price averages in 35 states decreased by double-digits, pushing the national average to $2.25, the cheapest price point of the year. Eleven States Have Gas Price Average of $2/Gallon or Less.
file photo by Boyd Loving
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Ridgewood NJ, With U.S. traffic congestion costing U.S. drivers $87 billion in 2018 and the U.S. ranked 17th in the world in road quality, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2020’s Best & Worst States to Drive in as well as accompanying videos.
Continue reading New Jersey Is 2020’s 8th Worst State to Drive in
The morons in Trenton will never get it. When the original fuel tax increase went through I asked the manager of a truck stop in Mahwah if it had an effect on the volume of diesel fuel sold. He said absolutely . Truckers can take on 200 gallons or more, and since nj raised the tax the price was no longer competitive, so there was no incentive to buy fuel here. So this is what happens when morons run the state. By the way I notice the roads are worse than ever. Massive holes with metal rebar protruding on most places where the ashphalt meets concrete bridges. Holes between the lanes such as route 46 where the paving job was substandard years ago. And the old bag granny Weinberg earmarks 2 billion of this money to extend the failing njtransit light rail to englewood and teanack
BRIAN IANIERI Staff Writer
May 1, 2017
New Jersey gasoline prices dropped more than 3 cents in the past week and are expected to continue falling because of a glut of inventory, an analyst said Monday.
An oversupply of gasoline exists as refiners ramp up production, said Dan McTeague, senior petroleum analyst with GasBuddy, a price-tracking website. The peak driving time in the U.S. is in the summer, when gasoline is generally more expensive than in the winter.
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| New Jersey Gas Prices provided by GasBuddy.com |
Read More: Jersey gas prices are dropping — here are the lowest prices in NJ | https://nj1015.com/jersey-gas-prices-are-dropping-here-are-the-lowest-prices-in-nj/?trackback=tsmclip
By Larry Higgs | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on November 14, 2016 at 8:56 AM, updated November 14, 2016 at 5:22 PM
A strange thing is happening in the world of gas prices.
Discount prices at some gas stations aren’t such a discount anymore and are being separated by less than a dime a gallon from gas prices at some name brand stations.
Naturally, the caveat in finding those prices is smart shopping and access to a state highway with a selection of gas stations. But the numbers are bearing this out, which can be seen by checking the map on GasBuddy.com before getting behind the wheel.
A survey of gas station on Route 22 in Union on Friday yielded a Sunoco and an Exxon priced at $2.19 a gallon, within seven cents a gallon of an unbranded Fuel Stop. Route 28 in Cranford was a little higher, with a Sunoco priced at $2.25 while a generic station named “Gas” was at $2.15, GasBuddy reported.
By Larry Higgs | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on September 06, 2016 at 8:31 AM, updated September 06, 2016 at 10:25 AM
The September slide of gas prices is starting.
Wait a minute? Haven’t prices pushed back over $2, even in New Jersey, where the average gas price is lower than the rest of the country?
As drivers returned to work Tuesday, the average price of gas in New Jersey retracted a little, to $1.99 a gallon.
Fill ‘er up – for now. The Senate isn’t expected to take any action on either of the proposed bills that would raise the state’s gasoline tax by 23 cents overnight. If legislators passed and Christie signed a gasoline tax bill on Thursday, gasoline that costs $2.06 per gallon would have cost $2.29 per gallon on Friday morning. Mike Davis, Asbury Park Press Read more
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Ridgewood Nj, after bottoming out in February gas prices have continued to raise with the arrival of spring. The average price of regular gasoline per gallon in the Bergen-Passaic market rose 2 cents Friday to $1.81, according to data from the daily fuel gauge report by the American Automobile Association or AAA. The data also showed the average has surged in recent weeks: one week ago the average was $1.73, and a month prior it was $1.58.
Prices historically start to rise in the springtime, when the refining industry transitions from winter heating oil to summer gasoline and just ahead of the traditional summer driving season.
Tom Kloza, co-founder of Oil Price Information Service in Wall Township, said in a tweet on Thursday that the average price of gasoline in the United States rose above $2 per gallon for the first time since Dec. 31. He also predicted that the average would continue to creep higher in the next five months.
In New Jersey gas is still a bargain . By Friday, the national average for regular gasoline was $2.03, compared with New Jersey’s average of $1.81. Though the state average is significantly lower than the national rate, gas prices at both levels appear to rise and fall at a parallel rate. Both averages bottomed out in February – the national average at slightly below $1.73, and the state average near $1.63 – and have been steadily rising since.
Though the Bergen-Passaic average for regular gasoline was $1.81 on Friday, retail pumps offered gas at a wide range of prices.
According to GasBuddy.com, an online source for gasoline data, the lowest reported price in the Bergen-Passaic market on Friday was at a Power Fuel station in Woodland Park that sold regular gasoline for $1.57 a gallon. On the higher end, a Lukoil station in Wyckoff sold gas for $2.59, the highest in the state, according to GasBuddy.com.
Though gas prices are on the rise, AAA data showed that prices Friday were still significantly lower from one year ago, when the regular price of gasoline in the Bergen-Passaic market averaged $2.19. Last year’s average is still well below the highest recorded average of $4 a gallon on July 6, 2008.
For many in U.S., cash saved at gas pump is staying in pockets
FEBRUARY 19, 2015 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2015, 1:21 AM
BY CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS |
WIRE SERVICE
* Reduced spending may slow economy for quarter
WASHINGTON — In recent months, the stage seemed set for American consumers to do what they’ve traditionally done best: spend money — and drive the economy.
The lowest gas prices in five years had given people more spending money. Employers added more than 1 million jobs from November through January, the best three-month pace in 17 years. Businesses even raised pay in December. Economists had forecast that last week’s retail sales report for January would show a healthy rise.
And yet — to the surprise of analysts — consumers have held their wallets closely.
Even though Americans spent $6.7 billion less at gas stations in January than they had two months earlier, the extra cash didn’t get spent anywhere else: Retail sales, excluding gas, fell slightly from November to January.
The unexpected pullback provided evidence that drivers had used their extra money to further rebuild their savings and reduce their debts — a trend that began after the financial crisis and recession.
In the long run, deeper savings and shrunken debts benefit individual households — and, eventually, even the economy as a whole, because they supply fuel for a sustained flow of future spending.
For now, though, the slowdown in consumer spending likely means the economy will grow more slowly in the first quarter of the year than economists had previously envisioned. Their forecast now is for annualized growth of 2.5 percent from January through March, down from an earlier estimate of about 3 percent.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/consumers-aren-t-buying-it-1.1274319
Feeling Better at the Pump? Since 2008, America’s Oil Supply Has Grown by 50 Percent.
Ed Feulner / @EdFeulner / December 07, 2014
If you’re like most Americans, you haven’t been questioning the welcome drop in gasoline prices. You just fill ‘er up and feel grateful that you’re spending less.
Why has this remarkable drop come about? And what can we do to help keep prices lower?
Some of it, unfortunately, is beyond our control. Worldwide demand for oil is down now. That always causes the cost of gasoline to drop.
But the other side of the equation — the part that is under our control — has gone largely unheralded in many media accounts: the boom in U.S. energy production. Simply put, we’re producing much more energy domestically these days, and that is, predictably enough, pushing prices downward.
Since 2008, we’ve increased our domestic supply of oil by 50 percent. Thanks to technological breakthroughs such as hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and horizontal drilling, we’re able to find and extract far more oil than we possibly could have years ago.
Oil production in states such as North Dakota, Texas and Oklahoma has doubled in the last six years. The United States is now the world’s No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas. Signs that read “No to fracking” might as well read, “Yes to higher prices,” and “no” to the more than 100,000 jobs created in the oil and gas extraction industry over the last few years.
It all comes down to supply and demand. It’s pretty simple. We can’t do much about worldwide demand, but we can do a lot about supply.
Here’s what not to do: subsidize “green” energy such as wind and solar (or any form of energy, for that matter). If green forms of energy show promise, believe me, the market will put resources behind them. The fact that wind and solar producers are so wholly dependent on government handouts (i.e., taxpayer money) is telling.
Yet the push to prop them up continues. Consider the $440 billion tax package lawmakers recently hammered out. It contains a provision that would have revived the wind tax credit that expired last year. Yet the wind industry already gets $56 in federal tax credits per energy unit produced.
Infographic by Kelsey Harris/The Daily Signal
What should we do? Stop impeding markets. Here are four steps policymakers should take, courtesy of Heritage Foundation energy expert Nicolas Loris:
First, lift the ban on crude oil exports. A recent IHS study found that removing the ban would lower gasoline prices by 8 cents per gallon, saving drivers $265 billion over 15 years and adding nearly 1 million jobs by 2018.
Second, lift the drilling bans and approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline. We need more exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. We should also be conducting more lease sales off Alaska’s coasts. Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is another abundant source of oil, with an estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil resting beneath a few thousand acres.
Third, repeal the ethanol mandate. This rule forces refineries to blend increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline each year, reaching 36 billion gallons in 2022. It’s already driven up fuel and food prices, according to multiple federal-agency and government-backed studies.
Fourth, prohibit greenhouse gas regulations. The Department of the Interior has already suspended oil and gas leases because of their alleged impact on climate change. Coming greenhouse gas regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency will increase the cost of energy production — and producers will pass those costs on to consumers. Yet the regulations will have no meaningful impact on the climate, the EPA has acknowledged.
Notice the one thing these steps have in common? It’s government getting out of the way. The secret to extending the streak of lower energy prices, it turns out, is no secret at all: Let markets work.
Originally appeared in the Washington Times.
