Why Are Gas Prices So High?

why are high gas prices important? and who it may affect?

hey, i'm doing a summary on that, and i need help. thnx in advance Canadian economy please (^_^)

Public Comments

1. high gas prices raise the price of everything that is transported over a distance; truck, train. plane, or ship
2. The American economy is almost wholly dependent on everyone having his/her own automobile for transportation. That is why, for example, you don't really have to know how to drive too awfully well to get a driver's license, and why the USA has the most lax drunken-driving laws in the industrialized world. Think of all the things that depend on everybody driving his/her own car: Auto industry Oil industry Insurance industry Highway construction Trucking Glass Rubber and - most importantly - real estate development, because without universal access to cars we could not have suburban sprawl and everything that goes with it. So for at least 50 years the American energy policy has been this - "cheap gas at the pump." The true cost of gasoline is not only what you pay at the pump, but the tax breaks and subsidies and drilling access to national lands that the oil companies get, as well as the $50 billion USA military presence in the Middle East (not even counting the $120 billion a year for the Iraq war) that is designed to ensure a supply of "cheap gas at the pump." So if the price of gasoline gets high enough to make people reconsider unlimited driving, the entire economic underpinning of the USA is threatened.
3. Well our transportation system works similarly in the lower 48 as well as in Canada, I would think. Whether goods are being transported to distributors in local areas, for retail sale, or raw materials are being moved to processing facilities they depend on petroleum based fuels, for the most part. There is some biodiesel and ethanol moving into the market, but it's still a small percentage of the total fuel used. Trucks run on diesel fuel, trains run on diesel fuel, ships run on diesel fuel. These transport goods to be processed and transport the finished products to distributors for sale to consumers. When the price of fuel to them increases, the increase is passed on to their consumers, whether they be the customer in the shop, or the manufacturer in the factory. In addition, the consumer, that is, you and I who have to go to work and make a wage, then travel to the store to buy these finished goods, all use gasoline or diesel fuel, with a little ethanol perhaps (I only use a mix of 90% gasoline 10% ethanol fuel) to get to our jobs and to get to the stores. In addition, some of our electric power is supplied by petroproducts. In a statement I received with my Ameren CIPS bill, it says that about 18 % of my electric power is supplied by natural gas, with the remainder being coal fired plants. Coal is a natural resource that's quite plentiful in Illinois, and there are large deposits found elsewhere on the continent. The natural gas is supplied in two ways. We have wells in this country, perhaps in Canada as well, which supply some of our natural gas. Most of ours comes from a pipeline that runs north from Texas to Chicago. Some of this is produced in wells, gas being a product found in some oil wells. Other sources are from refineries, which include natural gas as one product they produce along with gasoline and motor oil. Other things the refineries produce are byproducts used in the chemical industry, producing plastics, solvents, even medicine. And all of this comes from Oil.