[symple_spacing size=”80″]Has this recent dramatic gas price drop been good or bad for our country and the world in general? I would hope by now that you have noticed that oil prices have dropped very dramatically in the past few weeks resulting in a very big drop in gasoline prices throughout the United States. Some areas of the country have experienced gasoline prices that have not been seen in years. This past month shows a price drop of about $0.40 in just thirty days as shown in the GasBuddy.com historical price chart. That is impressive and OPEC is not doing anything to shore up the price of a barrel of oil at all!

As shown by the following link gas prices have fallen in every state except Wyoming and you would expect that the cost to fill your tank would be going up this time of year; because of the upcoming religious holiday(s). With Saudi Arabia not cutting back on production of crude oil and the other OPEC members following their lead it looks like for the time being that the price of gasoline will continue to drop for the foreseeable future. But what will this mean to us the consumer and what affect will this have upon our environment?

With the dramatic price reduction for the cost of driving your car, more people will be driving longer distances and more often than they have in quite a while. If we drive more that means more pollution, such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide which scientists claim cause Global Warming; which they claim is causing the polar ice to melt at an unprecedented rate. Most scientists agree that mankind’s use of oil does have a cause and effect on our planet. Whether this is true or not we do put pollutants into our environment. When the price of gasoline goes up to a certain level, then the driving public does curb the amount of unnecessary traveling around in their cars.

The other question that has to be answered is how lower gas prices will cause alternative methods of propulsion such as electric (pure or hybrid), hydrogen and compressed natural gas, cause the development and production of these alternative methods to be slowed down or dropped all together. What will more than likely happen is that there will a slowdown in the sale of electric vehicles as well as hybrids if the price of gasoline stays as low in price as it is now. As far as hydrogen powered vehicles are concerned they are just coming out and we might not make any if oil production levels stay high and the price of gasoline is below $3.00/gallon. Compressed natural gas has been around a while and it is not competitive at the price point that gasoline is at right now, again gasoline will have to go back up to at least $2.75/gallon.

A lot of the oil production here in the United States and Canada is from shale oil and fracking, they both cost more than the normal methods used in the Middle East, if the price of oil stays very low wells will either not be drilled or many even may be capped. I will not be addressing the environmental problems that are inherent in both processes, to take a look at what the concerns are use the provided links.

The world economic markets are in an excited state of agitation about the low price of oil because of the affects upon the market oil producers, such as Russia, Nigeria and Venezuela. The consumption side has problems too, such as inflation. It gets rather convoluted and I have gone on long enough, so if you want to know more use the provided links and don’t blame me if you get confused or get a headache.

That is my opinion – Jumpin Jersey Mike