Friday, March 4, 2022

Zero Hedge — Oil Crisis 2.0: US Gas Prices Jump Most Overnight Since Iraq War, Record Highs Imminent

According to new AAA fuel data, the current national average gas price is $3.837, up almost 11 cents overnight, the second biggest move on record since the early days of the Iraq war in 2005. At this rate, gas prices could exceed the record in days, which is only 27 cents away....
Zero Hedge
Oil Crisis 2.0: US Gas Prices Jump Most Overnight Since Iraq War, Record Highs Imminent
Tyler Durden

10 comments:

lastgreek said...

Since the madman's war started, gas prices here in Montreal up 30 cents liter. Of course, the attack on the nuclear plant didn't help matters. (How insane dumb was that?)

Ahmed Fares said...

This will encourage EV adoption.

Tom Hickey wrote an article a few months back about how it was too early for EV adoption given the price of EVs. I didn't want to say anything at the time because it might sound like conspicuous consumption, but we'd already made the decision to switch to EVs and had a couple of Teslas on order. My wife has been driving hers for a couple of months now, and my daughter is waiting for hers to arrive.

We've locked in our electricity prices for the next 5 years at roughly 7.5 cents a kWh, which is the cost of generation. The total cost is about 16 cents a kWh when you include the cost of transmission and distribution charges, along with things like rate riders and city taxes.

Our decision to go electric was that we were in the market for a new car. We could have bought an ICE car but in a few years, we'd be trying to sell it into a market which I believed would then be flooded with ICE cars. So I see it as a wash, i.e., you can pay more now or see a much larger depreciation in ICE cars. Also, you don't have to do things like oil changes, etc. It's just electric motors and a battery.

In any event, the total cost of transportation includes fuel costs, so this is just one more reason to encourage switching to EVs. In that sense, it's acting as a carbon tax, which is what the greens wanted as an incentive.

As an aside, here in Alberta we've switched our coal-fired plants to run on natural gas. So the price of electricity here is basically the price of natural gas plus the "spark spread". So in that sense, EVs here are actually running on natural gas. In other parts of Canada, it might be more on hydroelectric, which is even more environmentally friendly. A quote about spark spreads:

The spark spread is a common metric for estimating the profitability of natural gas-fired electric generators. The spark spread is the difference between the price received by a generator for electricity produced and the cost of the natural gas needed to produce that electricity. It is typically calculated using daily spot prices for natural gas and power at various regional trading points.

Ahmed Fares said...

re: The Energy East pipeline

The Energy East pipeline was a proposed oil pipeline in Canada. It would have delivered diluted bitumen from Western Canada and North Western United States to Eastern Canada, from receipt points in Alberta, Saskatchewan and North Dakota to refineries and port terminals in New Brunswick and possibly Quebec.

At the same time a number of groups announced their intention to oppose the pipeline. The project was cancelled on October 5, 2017 by TransCanada.

Peter Pan said...

It's God's will, Ahmed.

EVs in Nova Scotia run mostly on coal.

Matt Franko said...

Nice Ahmed…

idk when we’re going to transition we have so called “range anxiety “

I’ve been daily driving a Prius last couple of years getting as high as 63mpg…

I think I might like a plug in hybrid at first…

Ahmed Fares said...

We got the long-range battery.

As estimated by Tesla in November, the Model Y LR AWD has an EPA range of 330 miles (531 km).

Google Maps says my wife's drive to work is 11 km, so 22 km roundtrip. So that's 24 trips in the battery. We rarely travel on the highway, but even then, that's about 5 hours of highway travel time (100 km/hr). Here in Canada, the federal government is pouring money into communities for chargers to encourage EV adoption, which means people who do long-range travel can opt for EVs with smaller batteries. Then there's this:

​Swedish home furnishings giant IKEA says it will have free electric car-charging stations at all 12 of its stores in Canada by the end of this summer (from a 2015 article).

IKEA announced at the Climate Summit of the Americas just outside Toronto on Thursday that it will install 60-amp charging stations at all of its Canadian stores by the end of August.

"Charging will be provided to customers at no cost, on a first come first serve basis," the chain said.

Every location will get two chargers per store to start with.

The infrastructure will be installed by Canadian energy firm Sun Country Highway, which says the type of charger it will be installing is compatible with every electric vehicle currently for sale in Canada and is strong enough to recharge approximately 80 per cent of an electric car battery in under three hours.


As anyone who's shopped at IKEA knows, it takes about three hours to find your way out of the store.

Ahmed Fares said...

Ikea confesses that their meatballs are made out of people that didn’t find the exit

Ikea has not been able to hide more time and has recognized that the origin of the meatballs that he sells in his restaurant, knowing that they were going to be discovered at any moment.

“Yes, we recognize that the meatballs so delicious that you can taste in our establishments are made with the meat of the people who got lost in our corridors and never found the way out”. The multinational wants to flee from unnecessary controversies clarifying that “we have not killed anyone, we would be incapable of harming our dear clients. They were lost because they did not follow the instructions and ended up dying from hunger, thirst or despair. “

IKEA also defends itself claiming that everything is done for the benefit of the clients themselves. “That meat was going to be wasted and it would be a shame, so we are giving it an outlet at an unbeatable price, in the end it has an impact on the benefit of the customers, those who remain alive, yes.”

S400 said...

IKEA used to have production facilities in former East Germany. It was imprisoned people and dissidents who were used and the price for IKEA was excellent.

Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, used to be an active Nazi. The forced strolling in line through an IKEA store is a great dribute to his Nazi background.

lastgreek said...

I always suspected something was not right. I mean, how could they serve meat so cheaply?

And then there is their ice cream...

Peter Pan said...

Joe likes their ice cream...