My friend in CT discovered that his gas provider has a sliding scale according to how much he uses. Use more, pay less; use less, pay more.
Energy sellers print their own money.

EnviroDude: The spike seen after Katrina will not occur again unless the government intervenes (even with a Katrina event pounding the GoM again).

Plus the spike before Katrina, and the one before that, and the one before that:

If you look at the price of natural gas over the past 10 years, it fluctuates wildly.
-$2 in Dec 2001
-$10 in Dec 2002
-$6 in Dec 2005
-$16 in Dec 2006
-$8 in Dec 2008
-$14 in Dec 2009
and now back to $3 at the end of 2011.

It'll be interesting to see how long fraking will be able to keep prices down. There will have to be a bottom on the price fairly soon, or else transportation users will start shifting consumption to NG fueled cars again.

HotIgneous Intruder: My friend in CT discovered that his gas provider has a sliding scale according to how much he uses. Use more, pay less; use less, pay more.
Energy sellers print their own money.

Woa, really? That's nuts.

MrSteve007: EnviroDude: The spike seen after Katrina will not occur again unless the government intervenes (even with a Katrina event pounding the GoM again).

Plus the spike before Katrina, and the one before that, and the one before that:


If you look at the price of natural gas over the past 10 years, it fluctuates wildly.
-$2 in Dec 2001
-$10 in Dec 2002
-$6 in Dec 2005
-$16 in Dec 2006
-$8 in Dec 2008
-$14 in Dec 2009
and now back to $3 at the end of 2011.

It'll be interesting to see how long fraking will be able to keep prices down. There will have to be a bottom on the price fairly soon, or else transportation users will start shifting consumption to NG fueled cars again.

Right now it's just a matter of getting the gas to market via pipelines and LNG exporting facilities. Vehicles switching over will be next, but take a little longer. Natural gas is a game changer as far as american energy is concerned.

Zombie Butler: HotIgneous Intruder: My friend in CT discovered that his gas provider has a sliding scale according to how much he uses. Use more, pay less; use less, pay more.
Energy sellers print their own money.

Woa, really? That's nuts.

Yep. It's propane, though, not natural gas. (Sort-of my bad. But it's still crazy.)

Prices go up, prices go down. In the end my gas bill looks something like this:

natural gas used : $13.20
delivery fee : $88.43


Like booze and smokes, the actual product is pennies to create, it's the taxes an surcharges that make the price.

MrSteve007: It'll be interesting to see how long fraking will be able to keep prices down. There will have to be a bottom on the price fairly soon, or else transportation users will start shifting consumption to NG fueled cars again.

The opposition to fracking is doing its best to get it outlawed, though. Old and busted: water table contamination. New hotness: earthquakes.

Someone needs to blow up a fracking crew, get these numbers back under control.