Gasoline may hit $2.50 by Memorial Day, $3.00 in California

[DanielX]

There are several reasons for high gas prices:

1. High demand. India and China especially have rapidly growing oil demand to go along with their rapidly expanding economies.

2. Not enough supply - or rather, not enough supply is used. Large tracts of land, in the US and elsewhere, cannot be drilled either due to political considerations (like ANWR) or due to being only worthwile with high gas prices (like a lot of Canadian shale oil). More importantly, not a single new refinery has been built in the US for decades. Although existing refineries have been expanded, new ones would increase capacity vastly.

3. Instability in oil-producing countries. Not just Iraq. Iran is a big threat, there's instability all over the African countries, the companies in Venezuela are being assaulted by Chavez, Mexico's fuel industry is chronically inefficient, and so on.

4. High gasoline taxes. Federal tax alone adds 43 cents to every gallon of gas. And it's not even that bad in the US: In some countries, it's a dollar or more.

5. Political concerns block many of the most cost-effective oil alternatives. For example, oil power plants in the US could be replaced with nuclear power, but no one wants a nuclear reactor in their backyard. Coal could also be used, as the US is actually a net producer of coal, but it pollutes even worse then oil in most cases.

6. the US government hugely regulates the oil industry. I mean, do we really need 100 regulated regional blends of gasoline? The system is way inefficient, in addition to being suffocating.