Oil is failing $70!
$66 is a 40% (strong) retracement from the $110 top we saw just over a year ago but this time may be different as OPEC ended their meeting with no agreement to reign in the massive over-supply of crude that’s spilling out onto the markets, even in the face of continuing declines in consumption.
This is good news for consumers on two fronts – especially in the US, which has been miles behind the rest of the World in fuel economy. What we’re seeing in play now is the lasting effect of the Obama Administration’s Aug 2012 mandate that has required automakers to double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks by 2025 to 54.5 miles per gallon and, already, by 2016, we are on track to hit 35.5 mpg on the average.
As the biggest guzzlers of gasoline in the World, the US was consuming 10.5Mb of gasoline per day when Obama took office in 2009 and already we are down 14% to 9Mb/d, which is a 14% decrease in oil consumption. 1.5Mb/d is 1.7% of the entire World’s 88Mb/d oil habit but that number too is shrinking as it doesn’t pay for auto manufacturers to make high-mileage cars just for the US, so the entire global fleet has been using less and less for 4 years now.
Getting to our goal of 54.5 mpg over the next 10 years will cut another 53% off our current consumption. If that feat is replicated Globally, we’re taking about knocking back another 15Mb/d – at least!
And it’s a double-win for consumers as their cars not only consume 14% less gas but that gas itself is now less expensive. During the Bush era, for example, gas was $4.00 per gallon and cars were getting 22mpg so the average citizen driving 15,000 miles a year was using 682 gallons of gas for $2,728 in fuel costs. Now, even at the early stages of the Obama Fuel Act, at 33 mpg it’s only 454 gallons of gas and, at $2.85 per gallon, it costs just $1,294 to drive for the year – a $1,434 annual savings PER CAR!
