Gasing up?

Driving a car or a boat. Mowing the lawn. Heating a pool. With summer soon approaching, it is time to start thinking about soaring gas prices.

Recently the price for an imported barrel of oil reached a record high of about $58 per barrel. This oil must be refined, sold at wholesale and then priced for profit at the retail level, according to Dr. Michael Tucker, professor of finance at Fairfield University.

“When people pay more for fuel, they have less to spend on other goods and services so it has an adverse effect on the U.S. economy,” said Tucker, an expert on energy issues.

One of the biggest problems, according to Tucker, is that energy issues are not taken seriously enough.

Half of all the money spent on gasoline and oil is going directly out of the United States and into Venezuela, Canada, Mexico and the Middle East to buy more oil.

“This is part of the reason that the U.S. had its largest monthly trade deficit last month – over $61 billion,” said Tucker.

For Terence Hurley ’07, funds for gas take precedence over most other purchases.

“As a student who has an off campus job, it is increasingly expensive to commute from school to work,” he said. “I think of how many hours I need to work so I’ll have gas money.”

Students without cars on campus do not feel the price hike as directly.

Morgan West, ’07, said, “I honestly really don’t care as much. I am kind of indifferent. It would affect me a lot more if I had a car.”

Tucker said a related issue is that the rest of the world’s countries have signed what is called the Kyoto Treaty, but the US has not. BBC news describes the Kyoto treaty as a pledge among industrialized nations to reducing their emissions of Carbon Dioxide and oil consumption to a level below their 1990 levels a great deal over the next ten years.

The US is the number one carbon dioxide emitter and has used 25 percent of all oil ever produced in the world.

A strong advocate for environmental awareness, Tucker is disheartened by the US’s inability to sign. “Failure to sign and agree to reduce fossil fuel use indicates how less that seriously energy issues are taken,” Tucker said.

With no real short-term solutions, many Americans feel it is their duty to purchase a hybrid car or even begin riding their bicycle instead of driving.

“I think that those cars will probably be one of the biggest inventions of the 21st Century. They will help our economy,” said Neil Patrick O’Toole, ’07.

Either way, it is plain to see that people are still driving large SUVs, and the demand for these types of vehicles as well as the demand for gasoline continues to rise.

Tucker helped to explain the widespread aspects of this issue. In Europe, gas prices are over $5 per gallon today. China and India have populations that are growing rapidly. There is a war in the Middle East. Oil is a finite resource. Human apathy is real. All these reasons add to the ever-growing demand for gasoline and oil. People still need to transport themselves.

CBS News reported Thursday, March 31 that, gasoline demand isn’t even expected to peak until the summer driving season begins in May, “but refineries are already running flat out.” Analysts say this is a recipe for still more price rises in he near future.

Conservation is one avenue and the purchasing of hybrids and smaller cars can help. Hydrogen fuel as an alternative is a long way off, according Tucker, so right now these choices are all that people can choose from in order to conserve the available fuel.

Still, while some people are aware that this problem is as widespread and as dooming as it actually is, they, like the US, may not be willing to change their actions or they simply may not know how.

“I don’t know what there can be done to lower them, but we need to do something,” said Brandon Reilly, ’07.

Teig Lynster, ’05, spoke realistically about the current energy issues. “If you drive around a lot, I think this problem is kind of unavoidable.”