Below The Beltway

That’s what one industry executive says:
Gulf Oil CEO Joe Petrowski said on Wednesday that the price of oil could sink to $20 per barrel, and there is a chance gasoline prices could drop as low as $1 per gallon by early next year.
Speaking at a South Shore Chamber of Commerce breakfast at Lombardo’s in Randolph, [...]

Thanks largely to a decline in economic activity worldwide, oil and gas prices are continuing to fall:
HOUSTON — Retail gasoline prices dipped for a 17th week since July 4, falling below $2 a gallon in a number of states and approaching $1.50 at some service stations. The price of crude fell again too, hitting a [...]

Today, ExxonMobil reported the biggest profit earned by any company in American history:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Exxon Mobil Corp. set a quarterly profit record for a U.S. company Thursday, surging past analyst estimates.
Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500), the leading U.S. oil company, said its third-quarter net profit was $14.83 billion, or $2.86 per share, up [...]

As with Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, the approach of Hurricane Ike toward the Texas Gulf Coast is bringing a spike in gasoline prices:
As Hurricane Ike bore down on one of the world’s largest concentrations of oil refineries, workers scrambled to shut down production and join hundreds of thousands of residents evacuating the area.
The resulting [...]

I’m guess that this isn’t exactly the kind of news that John McCain wants to have come out right before the Republican convention:
SHANGHAI, China (AP) — China and Iraq have signed a $3 billion deal revising an earlier agreement for China’s biggest oil company to help develop the Ahdab oil field, an official at the [...]

Dollar up:
Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) — The dollar headed for a fifth weekly gain against the euro, its longest winning streak in more than two years, as crude oil prices declined and economies from Germany to Japan contracted.
The U.S. currency rose to the strongest level in almost six months against the euro and a seven-month high [...]

While the run-up in gas prices earlier this summer got alot of press attention, it’s interesting that we haven’t seen that much attention paid to the fact that gas prices have been steadily falling for a month now:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Retail gasoline prices fell for the 25th day in a row, a survey of [...]

Empirical evidence that pricing signals actually do change behavior:
As average gas prices hit a record high of $4.108 a gallon this week, the government released new data showing that drivers have cut back their use of the fuel to levels not seen in five years.
The average price of gasoline in the U.S. has been above [...]

The oil futures market is getting a lot of the blame for the rise in oil prices, and “evil” “speculators” are the politicians’ news boogeyman.
But, the truth is, it seems, quite another story:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — An influential oil-policy group released a report Tuesday arguing that the increase in oil-market speculation is not driving up [...]

Andrew Sullivan on the joys of expensive gasoline:
$4 a gallon is the best news this country has had in a very long time. Here’s to $5. It’s the only way Americans will ever learn.
Because, you know, stupid us we all don’t see the joys of living in big cities and taking bicycles and mass transit [...]