When will gas hit $4 a gallon here?
Posted on May 15th, 2008 – 1:01 PMBy Roadguy
The national price for regular unleaded hit another high today, leaving Roadguy to wonder when the cost of gas might exceed the cost of cigarettes on the sign above. (Photo taken Wednesday in Minneapolis.)
Alert reader Karen points us to a contest being held by Mr. Roadshow, the Roadguy equivalent at the San Jose Mercury News. He asked readers to guess the date that gas would hit $4 a gallon in San Jose, and he’d buy the winner a tank of gas. He received more than 2,300 entries — you can read about it here, and you can hear from people who were not amused by the contest here.
I don’t think my employer can afford to give away a tank of gas at this point, but we haven’t had a contest in a while, so pick a date in the comments below and I’ll see if I can’t scrape together $4 for a prize by the time AAA’s average gas price for the Twin Cities area tops four bucks.
79 Responses to "When will gas hit $4 a gallon here?"
July 30th, 2008.
June 3rd, 2008.
May 23rd, 2008
May 29, 2008.
May 22nd, 2008
July 3, 2008
I don’t like the direction these guesses are trending… 
I actually think $4 is going to be a “big freaking deal” when it happens, and the oil / gas companies are going to do everything they can to delay it. I say August 24, right before my roadtrip.
July 24th, 2008
September 2, 2008
June 4 (happy birthday to me)
Friday the 13th of June.
July 2nd, 2008.
May 21st.
June 30th, 2008.
My car takes premium, but I’m assuming our guesses are for regular 
Interestingly, the last time I filled up (Holiday on Xerxes in SW MPLS), premium was only 14¢/gal more than regular. It’s typically 20¢/gal more. I’ve yet to figure out why the difference is a consistent monetary value and not a percentage, but I’m not complaining. The smaller gap this last time baffles me also. Could drivers of cars that require/recommend higher octane gas be putting in regular to save $$? Or was it just a fluke?
June 18th, 2008
Oh no! Friday the 13th comes on a Friday in June!!
June 15.
My guess is $3.99 - techinally not $4 - it will occur Friday May 23 - 00:01am and just in time for Memorial Day Weekend.
July 1st, 2008.
I told Mr. Roadshow that it would hit $4.00 in MN when the RNC came to town on Sept 1.
July 4th
Silly 2 cent gas tax increase. :0
4.00 9/10 … I’m betting June 5, 2008. I think it’ll be around 3.92 or so during Mem Day weekend.
Also FYI Mr. Roadshow is from Iowa. How he got to San Jose I am not sure.
Suggestion for next Roadguy contest:
Guess when (not if) the Met Council will approve transit fare increases, and by how much…
The better questions is, When will gas hit $5.00?
July 4th
It’s all a scam. Gas doesn’t go up 50 cents in 30 years, and then it goes up $2.50+ in two years? Right before the last Presidential election, gas was $1.39 here in the south metro. What has changed since then to warrant such a huge price increase?
Personally, I think it’s terrorists bribing/blackmailing/coercing the oil magnates in the Middle East, part of their plan to destroy our economy.
I’ll go with July 14.
Morg,
I think consumption has risen a little bit over the last 30 years–especially since the last Presidential election in places like China and India. Note the populations of China and India, then realize that folks in China and India want to live like folks in the United States have lived for the past 50 years (driving everywhere all of the time no matter what) and it’s clear where gas prices are headed.
Rising oil prices is the best thing that could be happening to us. The rising price of gasoline will expedite much needed behavioral and community design changes. It’s funny how economics can have a way of changing bad habits.
beaarthur,
July 1 (again), and 25 cents across the board.
My guess is right before 4th of July weekend. The 4th is a Friday so I’m sure a ton of people will be traveling for the three day weekend. I’ll say it hits $4 on the 3rd and drops back down a little the following week.
MJ - that sounds likely - or will they hike express fares at a greater rate since they usually travel longer distances? When fares last went up, I was a Met Council employee and we had free bus/rail access as one of our union benefits. Oh how I miss that…but at my private sector job now, we have free coffee and a candy dish. Not sure if that’s an equal tradeoff, but you take what you can get.
It’s gonna kill the economy.
Right after the election, I predict ‘it will go to hell’.
I think Matty is a true communist.
They are the arrogant ones who think they know better than the other 98% of the people.
Matty won’t wake up. He keeps beating the drum for his collectivist ways.
Gas $4 a gallon by June 1st.
june 1,2008 at 12:01 pm
July 2nd
Matty, in your perfect design, how close should everybody live to where they work? Should it be walking distance? Or biking distance? What if your place of work is in a not-so-safe neighborhood? What about schools, should they be placed in the middle of commercial/industrial areas took make it easy to drop off & pick up children?
Do you work out of home? Do you have kids? Do you bike in rain, the heavy downpours that we sometimes get? How about when the temperature dips below zero?
What works for you, might not work for everbody else. I know it wouldn’t work for me. I do agree, change needs to happen, but changes like you would like to see take a long, long time. Decades maybe generations.
September 5
sorry, typo
“commercial/industrial areas took make it easy to drop off & pick up children?”
took should be to
June 6th - D-Day.
As for Morg’s comment about rising gas prices, I’ve been kicking around an idea in my head. Disclaimer: this is not meant to be political, but will appear that way.
Some economists have indicated that the recent jumps are due more to speculation than consumer demands. In short, we have a oil bubble. As we saw with the housing prices, the way to pop the bubble is to have a glut on the market. That likely won’t happen unless we dramatically increase production (won’t happen) or cut consumption (we’ll have some small decrease, but not much).
So, where am I going with this? As one of my professors explained, the biggest threat to OPEC is new oil - such as ANWAR. They set production based upon their feeling that new oil would come ont the market. Now that Democrats control Congress, ANWAR drilling is highly unlikely. The result, however, is that speculators don’t fear a bubble bursting.
Could gas prices be inversely proportional to the likelihood that we’ll drill in ANWAR? I’m not saying we should (and have always argued against it). I’m just saying that high oil prices may be the cost of that decision. Any thoughts?
Gas has been over $4 a gallon in Chicago for at least the last week and a half.
@Prof S.
My understanding is that even at peak production, the oil in ANWAR could only supply like 3% of our daily oil needs. I don’t think that would pose any real threat to OPEC’s profits, particularly since countries like India and China are starting to slurp that stuff up like mad.
@DGB
Calling someone a communist because they present an alternative to the current (and obviously unsustainable) way of doing things is really unproductive. It makes you sound sort of foolish.
July 16. If I win, can I please have $4 in soda-pop instead of gas?
I will be pedaling a Matty-mobile instead of driving a car, anyway.
If I win, I want the $4+ pack of cigarettes.
Maybe the next poll could be to guess DGB’s blood pressure while posting a comment!
Fuel prices will never go down. Don’t kid yourselves. I agree with Matty though that our wasteful use of natural resources must end. It won’t end until fuel prices rise high enough to alter the suburban/exurban wasteland that depends on foreign oil.
You don’t need to live in cramped conditions to live in a compact community.
Most of the core cities and suburbs are compact enough to allow for alternative transportation. Who wants to mow an acre lawn anyway? More waste of fuel and water resources just to maintain that yard.
JH,
I realize that these things take time–Copenhagen has been taking back space from cars and returning it to people for decades. My position has always been that we should have realized that auto-only design was a failure back in the 1960’s like most of today’s great cities realized. To suggest that because we didn’t change our ways then that we shouldn’t now (I know you are not saying this) is ridiculous.
Again, I did not type that we should outlaw all automobiles. I’m talking urban design that allows people to choose to not drive for all of their needs. I advocate transportation choice and greater mobility through creating and maintaining a multi-modal system.
Believe it or not, I actually drive or ride in an automobile a handful of times each year. Next week, in fact, I have to endure a trip in an automobile in order to be rewarded with an entire week without motorized vehicles anywhere near me. I can’t wait.
@ Adam - It didn’t take much excess in the housing market to get people to turn around. If the current prices are due to speculation, the extra 3% (or even threat of it) may be enough to get people to start dumping oil onto the market - which will cause others to dump theirs as well - which will cause the next guy… and so on. Simply speculating and don’t know that I believe it myself, but thinking about it…
July 18
” I advocate transportation choice and greater mobility through creating and maintaining a multi-modal system. ”
That’s not communist at all–it’s capitalism.
Communism would be: “We have one mode and you will like it.”
Adam, I don’t think Prof S meant ANWAR was the only source of new crude production, just one example of it. There are a lot of crude wells in Canada that were shut down about 10 years ago because at the time crude was too cheap to be worth pulling from them. It’s only a matter of time before they go back into production. And the price of crude is getting high enough now where it may be economical to upgrade refineries so they can handle Canadian tar sands.
Pablo, I already picked May 23rd. Pick a new date. I’m not sharing my gallon of gas with you.
August 25th, just in time to get the Democratic National Convention off the top news story on the cycle. It will fall a stunning 50 cents by September 1st, for some unknown reason (hint hint) in St. Paul.
In 2004, I lived in St. Cloud about four blocks from the place where Bush came to speak shortly before the election. Gas went up 15¢/gal overnight (to a staggering $1.70 or something like that. Oh, the horror…) and Bush’s speech touched on, you guessed it!, high gas prices and the resulting economic issues. I do love conspiracy theories.
I’ll take May 30.
My guess is June 27.
(A little slow this morning… I was wondering why everyone was guessing May 15 and 16 until I realized that was the posting date!)
Morg says
“It’s all a scam. Gas doesn’t go up 50 cents in 30 years, and then it goes up $2.50+ in two years? Right before the last Presidential election, gas was $1.39 here in the south metro. What has changed since then to warrant such a huge price increase?”
Several things. 1) destabilization in the middle east - there is an ‘instability premium’ priced into each barrel. Which reminds me to back up a hair. The price/barrel is 5 times what it was 8 years ago (and twice what it was 2 years ago), so we have to figure out why the price of oil went up - which impacts the price of gasoline.
2) devaluation of US dollar. Oil, like most commodities (see food & metal prices), is priced globally in US dollars. As the value of the US dollar falls, the price of oil rises. In countries with strong currencies, relative to the dollar, the price of oil hasn’t increased nearly as much as it has for us. Further discussion of this factor is beyond the scope of this blog.
3) increase in demand. Matty & others have noted that there is higher global demand for oil. Oil for gasoline, oil for plastics, oil for fertilizer, oil for other energy needs (i.e. home heating oil is popular in the US northeast). Our friend Adam Smith tells us that higher demand means higher prices, if the supply doesn’t change.
4) Market speculation. As each successive bubble bursts (see housing, 2001-2006 & internet, 1996-2001), investors look for ‘the next big thing’ that will outperform other alternatives. Right now, that appears to be commodities.
Adam says: “Calling someone a communist because they present an alternative to the current (and obviously unsustainable) ”
First I did not ‘call anyone a communist”. If you read my statement I said “I think he is”…..
Second, you state your opinion as fact: “they present an alternative to the current (and obviously unsustainable)”. I don’t know of any reason why our current way of life is unsustainable.
To quote wikkipedia: Communism attempts to offer an alternative to the problems believed to be inherent with capitalist economies and the legacy of imperialism and nationalism. Communism states that the only way to solve these problems would be for the working class, or proletariat, to replace the wealthy bourgeoisie which is currently the ruling class, in order to establish a peaceful, free society, without classes.
This is what transit debate is all about, a few people who want to plan our lives. If we would just shut up and let then decide what’s best, it would be a better world.
Even though the free market doesn’t want/can’t use transit (95% of the folks drive cars, and will continue to do so). There are a group of people that are attemping to ‘level the playing field’ by making us wealthly bourgeoisie folks (who drive cars) pay for the transportation for the less fortunate. Add to this the riders don’t even pay enough to have transit break even. Read between the lines - redistribution of income.
From the same people we hear cries for high density living, moving next to your job (like you will have one job for life), elimination of the skyways, carving up our streets with bike lanes, and the Criticl Mass anarchists that bike at rush hour.
Sounds a lot like a communist philoshpy to me!
Oil markets have been taken over by “irrational exuberance”, and I can’t wait for this bubble to burst.
My problem isn’t so much that gas actually got expensive, but that it got expensive SO FAST. It’s hard to adjust to prices doubling every year. The economy is in recession because fuel costs increased faster than people could adjust.
Bottom line, there’s no RATIONAL market reason for oil to be over $70, like LAST ^%#%$# YEAR.
“Someone farted next to a pipeline, raise the price of oil!”
By the way, the “car” won’t go away, it’ll just run on electricity or something else
That’s why I like the idea of the Chevy volt so much. Battery technology is going to be “there” a lot sooner than fuel cells, though the latter is the more long term solution. Plug it in for trips to work, but if you need to drive to Chicago it runs on expensive although quick to refuel and readily available gasoline. So it’s practical for a one car family or individual. The only question is how often and how much to replace the batteries. Is it going to be junk after 100,000, or 150,000 miles or however long they’re supposed to last. Next step: plug in vans, SUVs and pickup trucks for those that need to haul more than a Volt can hold.
My question with fuel cells is, what about the exhaust? If the exhaust is water vapor, that’ll take black ice to a whole new level. Has anyone thought of this?
It’s Hubbert’s Peak, or or the passing of it, that is at the root of this. It is still an unpopular thing to say, but the evidence is stacking up.
A long time (and now retired) oil exec from Gulf/Chevron, and author, Charles Campbell wrote recently:
“It is now an established fact that the discovery of new oil reserves is not keeping up with demand. Get a copy of the June National Geographic issue —
The article gives an excellent presentation of the rise and then decline of major oil discoveries in the world over the last 80 years.
The article highlights the work of Al Husseini, the head of exploration and production for Saudi Aramco who projected 2004 as the peak year for oil production. He worked with data from the 250 largest oil fields in the world.
He would certainly have had more accurate data to work with than any of the Western talking head experts. Note that oil prices began their climb to the current levels in mid-2004.
Worth noting that Hubbert was Shell Oil’s US senior geologist in 1955 when he published his work on peak oil in the US. He named 1970 as the peak year and was right on the money. He was pilloried by his peers for 15 years and then was declared a genius.”
My point was that I wished gas prices had increased 2-3% a year for the past 20 years. That way, the economy could have adjusted as we went, rather than tripling in three years and driving us into recession.
Monte writes
“That’s why I like the idea of the Chevy volt so much. Battery technology is going to be “there” a lot sooner than fuel cells, though the latter is the more long term solution.”
I didn’t get to the green expo to check it out, but apparently there’s a local guy converting old VWs to electric motors. In looking for info on him, I found a couple sources online for the parts - and kits geared towards other vehicles than the old air-cooled VWs.
Point being: people are exploring various alternatives already & coming up with some cool solutions. None are yet ready for the mass market, but its good to see some good old american backyard engineering & ingenuity going on.
Don’t forget a couple bicycle mechanics were the first to successfully achieve powered flight!
DGB: are you saying that using a non-renewable, finite resource made up of dead dinosaurs to supply our energy needs forever is sustainable, and does not need to be changed? Talk about the band playing on while the ship sinks…sheesh…I need to have a $4.18 cigarette after reading that one!
1st - Suz is right. The extra energy could come from anywhewre.
2nd - Electric cars are NOT “green.” They in fact can be less green, since it takes coal in a power plant to make the electricity.
3rd - How about we just make our own gas from carbon in the air?
Carbon capture for gas is cool. Too bad it needs so much energy.
So, as I’ve always said - Cold Fusion will solve the world’s problems.
“A commercial nuclear-powered gasoline factory would have to jump some high hurdles before it could be built, and thousands of them would be needed to fully replace petroleum, but this part of the global warming problem has no easy solutions.”
Prof S - I doubt there is enough uranium to power thousands of nuclear-powered gasoline factories for any reasonable length of time. Some have already predicted that we are past the Hubbert Peak for uranium. And your article states that it would be “far less economically favorable” to run them via solar power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium
The science is definitely interesting, but this isn’t going to bring back cheap gasoline. Nothing is. Ever.
Electric cars make more sense because even though they do shift the carbon production to a power plant (only for those plants fueled by hydrocarbons); it makes the car agnostic to its power source. And hydrocarbon power plants can scrub emissions, or as your article points out, the carbon dioxide can be pumped underground.
Indeed, electricity does not have the same ‘bang’ as petroleum, but we will always be able to generate electricity. An electric car may not (currently) have a range greater than 100 miles, but seriously - how many trips does the average American make in a year over 100 miles? Not many.
Unfortunately, the limits of electric cars are dependent upon the limits of battery technology. And if you think nuclear waste is bad, imagine the thousands upon thousands of landfills that will be required to store spent batteries and the acid contained therein.
There is no ‘perfect solution’. We will always have problems with transportation as long as we continue to think it’s a good idea to sally forth in a 2-ton vehicle just to move a 150 lb person.
“My question with fuel cells is, what about the exhaust? If the exhaust is water vapor, that’ll take black ice to a whole new level. Has anyone thought of this?”
Cars already have water vapor as an exhaust. Assuming complete combustion, the end result of burning any hydrocarbon, including gasoline, is carbon dioxide and water vapor. I’d have to dig out my chemistry books to compare how much water vapor is produced per joule of energy produced by oxidizing hydrogen versus how much is produced by burning gasoline.
DGB Says:
“Even though the free market doesn’t want/can’t use transit (95% of the folks drive cars, and will continue to do so). There are a group of people that are attemping to ‘level the playing field’ by making us wealthly bourgeoisie folks (who drive cars) pay for the transportation for the less fortunate. Add to this the riders don’t even pay enough to have transit break even. Read between the lines - redistribution of income.”
First of all, the notion that the “free market” chooses automobiles is crazy. We currently live in a society where the car is dominant, but it did not evolve this way. Choices have been made by the government since at least the 1930s that have favored roads over transit. Streetcar systems were regulated by local municipalities, who refused to allow them to raise fares when inflation made costs go up. Streetcar systems were sometimes required to pay for the maintenance of the entire road on which they operated, not just the few feet of tracks, but the whole thing, curb to curb.
I believe there are a few major things that have brought us to where we are today: the interstate system, and home loans after WWII.
Now, I’m not saying these are bad, but both of these programs were choices made by the government. Home loans provided low cost loans for returning veterans, something not available to the middle class before. But these programs required new, single family homes. They could not be used for existing city homes, nor multi-unit dwellings. Transit is not good at serving these post WWII neighborhoods. Essentially the government was encouraging the use of cars.
Second, the Interstate system. Imagine for a moment, if you will, that instead of Hitler building the Autobahn, he had built a high speed rail network. When Eisenhower was in Germany, he was impressed with the Autobahn. Now imagine if he would have been impressed with Germany’s high speed rail system?
What if, instead of building a network of high-speed freeways, Eisenhower built a system of high speed rail? Freight rail would be segregated from passenger rail, so that passenger rail could operate economically at high speeds. This system of rails would still transport Americans across the country, it would still transport freight across the country, and it would still allow the military to traverse the country quickly (probably quicker than by highway).
So yes, the vast majority of people in America drive, but that’s because that is the option that people have. It’s not even about money. It doesn’t matter if the roads pay for themselves. Assuming the Interstate pays for itself, high speed rail could as well. Freight rail is profitable right now, and plans for high speed rail between Minneapolis and Chicago show it being self-sufficient in a few years, a network of federal rails could be self-sufficient.
And now, with gas nearing $4 dollars a gallon and showing no signs of stopping, Matty welcomes the market forces that will change American’s minds, while you DGB insist that we should all be using roads.
“This is what transit debate is all about, a few people who want to plan our lives. If we would just shut up and let then decide what’s best, it would be a better world.” People are trying to decide, only people like you are forcing them to use the automobile.
“Sounds a lot like a communist philoshpy to me!”
Oh it most certainly does.
“Hydrocarbons are not biology reworked by geology (as the traditional view would hold) but rather geology reworked by biology.” – Thomas Gold
Gold achieved fame for his 1992 paper “The Deep Hot Biosphere” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which presented a controversial view of the origin of coal, oil, and gas deposits, a theory of an abiogenic petroleum origin. The theory suggests coal and crude oil deposits have their origins in natural gas flows which feed bacteria living at extreme depths under the surface of the Earth; in other words, oil and coal are produced through tectonic forces, rather than from the decomposition of fossils. At the beginning of his 1992 paper Gold also referred to ocean vents that pump bacteria from the depth of the earth towards the ocean floor in support of his views. A number of new such hydrothermal vents have since been discovered, as recently as 2007
Interesting, DGB. If there is more oil than once thought, it’s comforting… But, we still need to find ways to get it. And the suits that set the prices don’t care whether there’s a teaspoon of oil left on earth, or whether we have trillions of tons below our feet…
And, if alternative transport is equally hard to come by, then we will have the exact opposite of Matty’s utopia: worn down streets overloaded bumper-to-bumper with big boiling hot cars, drivers with boiling hot tempers… shelling out big bucks to go nine miles an hour, and then shelling out more cash to park their big vehicles–and then having to walk a half mile to the office, anyway. (Hmm… that already sounds kinda familiar…)
Barry says: “then we will have the exact opposite of Matty’s utopia: worn down streets overloaded bumper-to-bumper with big boiling hot cars, drivers with boiling hot tempers”
Sort sounds like 35W and 62 right now
Speaking of streets: There are many truely bad streets in Mpls. Litteraly disintegrating, some streets are comprised of patches.
What I don’t get is why they are rebuilding the Nicollet Mall, when so many other streets badly need fixing.
Even if gas reaches $4 a gallon this summer, it will still be a bargain by international standards. It’s been around $5 a gallon or more in Japan for years, and it’s about $7 a gallon in the UK.
DGB - I love how you complain and complain and complain about how everyone is a communist; and yet you trumpet out a theory from 1950s Cold War Soviet research that is generally regarded as ‘hocus pocus’ in Western society.
Indeed, Thomas Gold was initially accused of stealing most of his work from communist research. Once ‘found out’ he started crediting that research and stated that he simply developed the same theory in parallel. Riiight. 30 years later.
The whole argument of biogenic versus abiogenic origins is generally seen to be politically and economically influenced and not scientific. In that way, it resembles the Global Warming debate. Personally, I think it resembles UFOlogy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ufology
But - I guess communism must not be so bad after all, Da ‘Comrade DGB’!
Peter says: “First of all, the notion that the “free market” chooses automobiles is crazy. We currently live in a society where the car is dominant, but it did not evolve this way. Choices have been made by the government ”
Yes, the government (the elected government) has chosen.
Peter continues: “Streetcar systems were sometimes required to pay for the maintenance of the entire road ”
Yes, just like today, where all us drivers have to support the mass transit system.
Peter continues: “Transit is not good at serving these post WWII neighborhoods. Essentially the government was encouraging the use of cars.”
Once again Peter, it was OUR government, the elected government. Sorry you can’t nullify the elected government by the people, for the people.
Peter continues: “Second, the Interstate system. Imagine for a moment, if you will, that instead of Hitler building the Autobahn, he had built a high speed rail network. When Eisenhower was in Germany, he was impressed with the Autobahn. Now imagine if he would have been impressed with Germany’s high speed rail system?”
What a stupid thought! Hitler bulit highways, Eisenhower understood this. Trucks can travel on any road. Trains can only travel on tracks. It did not happen. Your assumption and conclusion are faulty and illogical.
Peter continues: “What if, instead of building a network of high-speed freeways, Eisenhower built a system of high speed rail? ”
Another stupid, what if. What if the moon was made of green cheese. It did not happen.
Peter, you live in your own fairy tale world. Good luck!
Comrade DGB - actually, when Peter says streetcar systems were sometimes required to pay for the maintenance of the entire road, that would be like mass transit today being required to pay for your roads, not your ridiculous inversion.
High speed rail could move cargo containers between major cities, then at the cities the containers are unloaded on to trucks for local delivery.
And also, you don’t seem to understand government very well. Unless we had a national referendum, “the people” didn’t choose to build the interstates.
I think I understand how this works. If the government does something you don’t support, like raise the gas tax, you complain about the legislators not representing the people. But if they do something you like, like build the interstate system, they are enacting the will of the people. I’m confused, which is it?
I think you’re the one living in a fairy tale world.
DGB writes
“Gold achieved fame for his 1992 paper “The Deep Hot Biosphere” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which presented a controversial view of the origin of coal, oil, and gas deposits, a theory of an abiogenic petroleum origin.”
Curious. This must be the new pseudo science making the rounds of the internet. This is the second time in a week that I’ve heard about the theorized abiogenic origins of petroleum.
Here’s the deal: whether or not the theory is correct, it is irrelevant - unless the abiogenic form of petroleum production can produce roughly 80 million barrels of oil per day.
In other words, it doesn’t matter where petroleum came from - whether its from God, from decomposing plant matter, or from extremeophile bacteria - if we’re consuming it faster than its being replaced, we need to find alternatives to oil.
(My data is from a google search, which answers the global oil consumption question as: “between 2002 and 2006 the daily consumption was between 78 and 85 million barrels a day.”)
Voting is now closed. Thanks to all who picked a date!
