Business Economics GM545
Summer Session A July 2011
One Question One: Everyone’s Gasoline Problem
Gas prices are constantly fluctuating with reviewing the text we see where the United States has depended on the Middle East to purchase the crude oil to manufacture the gas needed to fuel our cars. (Stone, 2007) It was evident that there were issues during the years of 2006 and 2007 when we seen the biggest rise in gas at that time there was not much we could do we needed to purchase the gas to use for everyday functionality throughout the United States we seen here in the state of Florida (Jacksonville) particularly that the prices went from $2.10per gallon to an all time high of $3.06 this increase was not gradual it was almost overnight when this increase was a period just about a month. This tended to come from some events that occurred in the following countries Mexico, Iran, Iraq, Israel, India, and North Korea that have energy markets on edge and the crude oil prices were heavily elevated at that time. (Jacksonville Bussiness Jornal, 2006). When looking at recent information that has been collected on gasoline prices we tend to look at earlier month May 2011, Jacksonville Florida was getting near the $4.00 per gallon with that we then seen a drop in prices from $4.00 down to $3.85. Typically this is when the summer driving season is starting and the elasticity for fuel starts to rise and continues to do so along with that need for gas the prices rise along with it. This is the typical use of economic terms of “supply and demand.” You start to look at what goes into the production of gasoline the biggest necessity is Crude Oil this alone has a price averaging between $113 to $100 per barrel this is a major contributor to the pricing of gas. The refineries buy the crude oil then refines the oil and other attributes to make the gas then sell it to the