Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

I can't get over them. While I appreciate them being low, I feel sorry for the people buying monster-sized vehicles (not really). They're going to be in for a rude awakening when Saudi Arabia et al decide to stop flooding the market with cheap gas. OPEC is maintaining high oil production to screw with Russia and Iran, and it's been very effective, especially in conjunction with American-levied sanctions.

To give you an idea of what gas prices are like, and at how weird I am about retaining data, I have a spreadsheet that goes back to 11/21/1987 when I bought a used 1983 Mitsubishi Cordia, it was a two-door hatchback that was later the basis for the Ford somethingorother, I don't remember what. Anyway, on the day that I bought it and filled its first tank, gas was $0.999 a gallon. When I gave it its last tank on 6/24/90, gas was $0.975 a gallon. In those 2.5 years gas had not gone above a dollar a gallon. These were mostly fillups in Phoenix with some travel to California and such.

Jump ahead to my current car, a 2005 Toyota Matrix All-Wheel Drive, bought new on 11/11/2005 and filled for $2.169 a gallon. In those nine+ years I've seen gas go down to $1.999 a gallon a month after I bought it, then up and down to drop below $2 on 1/12/2007 then it hit and maintained $3+ a gallon four months later. A year and a month later it touched $4 a gallon,

And now we're back to under $2 a gallon.

While tweaking Russia's nose and making them burn through their capital reserves at a very fast rate, do we really think that's a good idea, driving a country with nuclear ICBMs, to distraction and desperation? Especially when a wannabe emperor like Putin is in charge?

I don't think it's that great of an idea. And when gas starts going back up, as it most certainly will, and starts dancing with the $4 mark again, I wonder what all those people who bought a big sedan or SUV will be thinking about.


Oh, I might as well mention fuel economy. That Mitsubishi got an of 24-28 MPG, its successor was a '90 Mazda 626LX that got high teens to low 20s. My Toyota Matrix gets mid/high 20s to low 30s. The Cordia wasn't my first car, that honor went to a 1973 Chevy Impala 4-door which I know got horrible mileage, that was followed by a 1975 Toyota Celica GT (major rice rocket) and a 1983 Mitsubishi Tredia. I find it a little amusing that I wouldn't consider a car that got less than 30 MPG on the highway and am quite intrigued by a VW diesel that advertises 70+ MPG on the highway: it achieves it by turning off two cylinders on the engine once you're cruising at a steady highway speed.

All told, I'm on my 8th car. In 35ish years. Man, there are days when I feel old, and I really ought not dig out stats like this to reinforce the feeling! ;-)

I'm a database guy. Some of us get a little hard core when it comes to collecting and collating data. I've been keeping records of my gas purchases for every car that I've had for the last 20 years, all logged in a spreadsheet. I decided that it might be interesting to compile a list of what I paid for the first fill up of the year to see how it changed over time, then compare it to the US Department of Energy report showing the cost of crude oil for that year.

Here's the results! I'm not showing MPG, because it's irrelevant for this purpose, with the exception of the early 2000's I've driven cars that typically get mid 20's in town. So what we're seeing is the date of the fill up, how many gallons bought, how much it cost, cost per gallon, percent of change from one year to the next, the nominal cost of a barrel of crude, the change in the price of crude fro year to year, and the cost of a barrel of crude divided by the cost of a gallon of gas. If a cost/gal doesn't end in a 9, then it is an average of two or more tanks but is still representative of the then price. And for the most part, all of this fuel, up until the last three years, was purchased in Phoenix, AZ.

I haven't really studied the DOE report, maybe the price that they show is the end of year price or the average for the year, so my logic may be slightly skewed

Make of it as you will.

Oh, I put it under a cut as it's slightly slow rendering: lots of HTML code. I didn't want to lag your browser when you're viewing your friends page. And the DOE site is here.

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