Here are the monthly average retail gasoline prices in the USA since 1976:

Take a few seconds to examine the overall price trend and the points where there are major changes in the price of gasoline.

Now that the price changes are fresh in your memory, consider some basic facts:

• Oil is a finite resource.
• Oil is a fungible commodity.
• Population is increasing.
• Car ownership in China and India has increased dramatically in recent years.

Now, consider the dates of several historic events, including:

• Important revolutions
• Market bubbles popping
• Major terrorist attacks
• Major recessions

This is enough to have a reasonable understanding of the price of oil, without a more detailed look. With this understanding of the context of gas prices, consider:

• Given the information above, how much control does the President of the United States have over the price of gasoline?
• If you had to choose one price or trend to represent the cost of gasoline under President Bush or Obama, what would be the most honest price or trend in prices?
• What points do the Republican presidential candidates reference as the price of gas under Presidents Bush and Obama?
• What (if any) price trend do the Republican presidential candidates mention as the trend under Presidents Bush and Obama?

It should now be clear that the major GOP presidential candidates are either misinformed about the price of oil, or are intentionally deceptive. Which is more probable? Is one of these alternatives acceptable?

Choosing a gas station to attempt to control the source of your gas is moot:

Can I Tell Which Companies Purchase Imported Crude Oil or Gasoline?
While EIA cannot identify which companies are selling imported gasoline, we do collect data on which companies import crude oil and refined products. However, the fact that a given company imported crude oil or gasoline does not mean that those particular imports will end up being sold to motorists as that company’s brand of gasoline. This is because gasoline from different refineries is often combined for shipment by pipeline, and different companies owning service stations in the same area may be purchasing gasoline at the same bulk terminal.
—US Energy Information Administration, “Oil Imports and Exports – Energy Explained, Your Guide To Understanding Energy”

Oil is a fungible commodity, so what matters to price is the world demand. (And world oil futures speculation and local distribution costs…)

Since the forwarded message makes such a point about not supporting Saudi Arabia: ~8.7% of oil used in the US is from the Persian Gulf, including ~5.3% from Saudi Arabia. The top sources of oil used in the US are:

The numbers in the email for which companies import oil from the Middle East are also wrong. For example, it lists Valero as importing no Middle Eastern oil, when in fact the Persian Gulf is the source of 24% of their oil. BP is also quoted as 0%, when it is actually 10 or 44% depending on the region. The email also lists Amoco as an importer from the Persian Gulf, when it is a division of BP, which it lists as not an importer from the Persian Gulf. Several others on the list of 0% each only supply fractions of a percent of US oil. Besides, as shown above, the original source of the oil doesn’t matter to price. Even if we could shift where we get our oil, that just shifts who is buying from where, with the total sold remaining constant.

What matters is the total oil used. A quick calculation shows that to decrease the amount of oil used in the US by the amount we import from Saudi Arabia, all you have to do is increase average fuel economy by a bit over one mile per gallon. Most people can improve their mileage by more than that by just learning to drive their current car slightly better. In fact, we may get there before most people learn to drive properly: last year’s update to the CAFE standards finally started us back on track to improve fuel economy by more than this amount.

Remember, the solution is efficiency, not which gas station you buy from!

After I wrote this, I found that a variant of this particular email has been around for years, and that Snopes debunked it six years ago.

Hmm… maybe I should debunk some of The Heritage Foundation’s claims about oil prices too…

Since they are in the business of selling gasoline-powered automobiles, the manufacturers understandably are reluctant to come out and publicly announce the obvious solution to air-poisoning by the gasoline engine: Get rid of the gasoline engine.

On the other hand, every member of the industry is actively engaged in trying to do just that.

–W.E. Butterworth, Wheels and Pistons

While editing down the number of books I own, I found Wheels and Pistons: The Story of the Automobile, a history written for middle schoolers that my grandmother gave me years ago. It is a 1971 book championing the car and car companies, and how the number of cars on the road and miles driven demonstrates the USA is better than the Soviet Union. The chapter on the future is interesting. It mostly talks about turbine and steam engines, but also mentions electric and hybrid gas-electric cars, showing a couple Ford and GM experimental cars.

From the pictures, you can see that GM was treating electric and hybrid technology as a play technology, for use in toy cars. The examples of turbine engines in the book are installed in production cars. This fits well with my understanding of the history of the automobile, where GM has kept up enough research on modern technology to not fall too far behind, but does so in a way that they never have to actually sell a car that could cut into gasoline car production. The book also shows a similar Ford of England Comuta electric car.

It is worth to noting that Wheels and Pistons was published two years before the first oil embargo, and that GM still does not sell an electric or viable hybrid car. (I’m not counting the EV1 beause they were destroyed at the end of their leases, or their current hybrid options because of sub-par performance.)

This is a good time to put in another recommendation to read Edwin Black’s Internal Combustion, an excellent history of the car.

Sources:

@book{butterworth1971,
	Author = {W. E. Butterworth},
	Publisher = {Four Winds Press},
	Title = {Wheels and Pistons: The Story of the Automobile},
	Year = {1971}
}

@book{black2006,
	Address = {New York},
	Author = {Edwin Black},
	Publisher = {St. Martin's Press},
	Title = {Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments
	 Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives},
	Year = {2006}
}