Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Pre-Paid Gas for Everyday Drivers

Gas prices seem destined to keep rising, and many consumers feel powerless to do anything to protect themselves from what they perceive as the inevitable.

Now a new Miami-based company, MyGallons, is offering what it hopes will be a solution: the chance to pre-buy gasoline at the current price and fill up later when prices -- presumably -- are higher.

"Save money by pre-purchasing gas at today’s prices, then fill up with your MyGallons Card when prices rise. No matter how high prices at the pump will go, the price of the gallons you’ve purchased will be locked-in."

MP: Hey, we can all be speculators/hedgers now!

HT: Travis Walker

11 Comments:

At 7/02/2008 3:41 PM, Blogger juandos said...

Now this is some serious, real time speculation...ROFLMAO!

Here the speculators were punished...

 
At 7/02/2008 4:21 PM, Blogger Bret said...

That would be called hedging, not speculating, no?

 
At 7/02/2008 4:28 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

We can all be SouthWest Airlines now. This sort of thing seems to have worked well for them.

Just keep in mind the term "counterparty risk."

 
At 7/02/2008 4:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

We are essentially guaranteed of higher prices in all consumer items in the next few years so it makes sense to hoard as much as possible at todays prices.

Hoarding: The poor mans speculative market.

Fire Department Warns Against Gas Hoarding

Food Chain Hoarding Nations Drive Food Costs Ever Higher

Contractors worried about hoarding of raw materials

‘Hoarding, smuggling caused diesel shortage’

Fire officials say hoarded gasoline led to fire

Wheat hoarders

The Iowa Floods Send America Into a Season of Hoarding





 
At 7/02/2008 6:12 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

As in the stock market, Timing is everything. Increased domestic production of oil is at hand, and there are folks already selling short.

I wouldn't pay $2.50 a gallon for the rights to it in 6 months.

 
At 7/02/2008 6:46 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Then again, Another Opinion.

 
At 7/02/2008 8:35 PM, Blogger OBloodyHell said...

Rufus --

I'd like to know a lot more about the people behind that site.

A commentor stated:
Right now expenditures on oil products as a % of income is at an all time high in the USA (and rising)-somehow this is being spun as "adapting".

You may recall a post in the last week or so which showed what a crock that was. It's only a comment, maybe he's their version of sophist, but it makes me wonder about the attitudes of the rest.

They certainly are deprecating the valuation of the tar sands, etc., which, if prices stay where they are, will certainly be brought online in the time frames they are suggesting a strong downward trend in production -- and those sources are as large as any currently known deposits ever have been.

I can't evaluate that for myself but their attitude doesn't jibe with anything else I've heard about the Sands and Shales as a source for oil. So I'm led to wonder.

The biggest concern at this point is if we elect an idiot like Obama who's already come out and said he opposes the development of them.

 
At 7/02/2008 11:33 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bloodyhell, it's the strangest collection of kooks, communists, malthusians, doomers, end-of-the-worlders, anarchists, and all-around America-hating nutcases I've ever come across.

And, they've been more consistently right on anything concerning geology, flow rate, exports, and future "production" than anyone else on the Planet. My personal feeling is that you can probably take most of their projections to the bank.

I read the comments for "entertainment;" but I take the posts from the authors dead seriously.

 
At 7/03/2008 8:08 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This means that the company is betting that gas prices will fall. AND they are correct. But you guys are not going to like it when it falls. Gas will fall to below 3 dollars but you won't have the 3 dollars to buy it.

There is no such thing as an inflationary recession. The real inflation was caused by Greenspan's 1% interest rate. But it was bottled up in housing. Well, the genie has been let out of the bottle once the housing market collapsed and all that money is reaching havoc on the commodities market.

Eventually, that money will be destroyed, but its a slow process and it doesn't help that the rates are at just 2% now.

 
At 7/03/2008 11:17 AM, Blogger juandos said...

"I'd like to know a lot more about the people behind that site"...

Well obloody hell the The Oil Drum's Mission Statment tells me all I need to know to think long & hard before using what passes for data from these folks...

 
At 7/03/2008 8:41 PM, Blogger OBloodyHell said...

> There is no such thing as an inflationary recession.

You may well be right, but I would not put money on it, if I were you.

There wasn't supposed to be anything called "stagflation", either.

We are entering into a new economy, one of IP & Services, and most of the people involved at every level have shown little grasp of the fact that IP in particular has some very different properties from "Real Property", and how those affect an economy is not the least bit understood.

I believe that this behavioral difference is what is keeping economists so confused about things. They keep trying to apply their Industrial Era modelling techniques and the results they get keep running against the reality of things. Near as I can see, this is certainly driving the Miseans nuts -- I'm not sure what it is doing to the Monetarists but I don't think they're all that clear on the whichness of the why either (If you are still a Keynesian after the 70s in the USA and the 90s in Japan, then you've long since gone off the deep end)

In other words, don't assume anything is really impossible.


> the The Oil Drum's Mission Statement

It does seem to take as a foregone conclusion what is going to happen (granted, eventually) is just around the corner. Not what I consider an unbiased source of data.

I think I'll class them as a form of anti-data site -- i.e., you go to the Brady campaign for stats supporting gun ownership, and the NRA for stats supporting gun control.

 

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