Gasoline Price History is an important chart as it may indicates future gasoline price trends. Gasoline plays a very big and important part in world economy especially when economy crisis. Some people look for impounded cars for sale or cars under 500 dollars to cut down their cost when buying cars, while some look for low fuel-consumption car to cut down their expenses in gasoline. Gasoline is a deep study in our life, and almost everyone depends on it in our daily life now. In this post, we will talk about where gasoline comes from, how many grade it has, the price history, and the role it play in global economy.

Where does gasoline come from?

Gasoline is made from crude oil which is a black liquid that pumped out from earth ground usually from sea or ocean. This black liquid called petroleum. Petroleum contains hydrocarbons. The carbon atoms in petroleum usually link together in chains of different lengths. The different chain lengths have gradually higher boiling points and this points can be separated easily by distillation. The process is called Oil refinery where crude oil is heater and the different chain are pulled out by vaporization temperatures. Refinery process produce difference types of product such as Gasoline, Diesel, lubricating oils, engine oil (normally can run all day at 250 degrees of F 121 degrees C), gear oils (thicker), motor oils, semi-solid greases, Vasoline. All these are made from crude oil and the only difference is the length of the carbon chains.

Gasoline has an international price which calculated per barrier. Every country has a different gasoline price, and from there, each region, states, and cities has a different price as well. Let’s take Thailand for an example, the country follow daily gasoline price, you can see the price is different everyday from petrol station. If you pump petrol to your car in Bangkok is cheaper than you pump petrol in up country area. Besides, gasoline price changed from time to time according to daily global trade. Here is some of the information collected from the web, some sites did update the price daily while some update it weekly or monthly.

Chart from Official energy statistics from the U.S. Government website at http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_w.htm

The graph above shows gasoline price from 1979 to 2009 this year. There are 3 curves shown above where the upper black curve indicates the actual price paid for every gallon of gas. In the history, there was once the “CPI-All Urban Consumers for all items less energy” was used to regulate the data using monthly average data interpolated to the actual purchase dates. Therefore you can see the lower curve on above chart is the data adjusted for inflation and the period is known as “April 1979 dollars”. The third line which is the lowest line is showing the average gasoline price for entire U.S and it is from BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics).

The graph above shown the prices have been adjusted for inflation. The price is based on the CPI (Consumer Price Index) during the time of the most recent gasoline purchase. You can clearly see the inflation adjusted data. Both of the graphs above are from randomuseless.info.

Gasoline Grade

Gasoline has it owns grade and hence different grade is having different price. The grade or classification of gasoline is based on the octane ratings. Octane rating is a rating method used to rate the volatility of gasoline. If the rating is lower it means the gasoline is easier to burn where higher rating means the gasoline is harder to burn. These grades are such as:

• Regular (87) – Octane rating is greater than or equal to 85 and less than 88.
• Midgrade/Plus (89) – Octane rating is greater than or equal to 88 and less than or equal to 90.
• Premium (92) – Octane rating is greater than 90.

Top Ten Oil Importing Countries (million barrels per day)

• United States (11.8)
• Japan (5.3)
• China (2.9)
• Germany (2.5)
• South Korea (2.1)
• France (2.0)
• Italy (1.7)
• Spain (1.6)
• India (1.5)
• Taiwan (1.0)

Top Ten Oil Exporting Countries (million barrels per day)

• Saudi Arabia (8.73)
• Russia (6.67)
• Norway (2.91)
• Iran (2.55)
• Venezuela (2.36)
• United Arab Emirates (2.33)
• Kuwait (2.20)
• Nigeria (2.19)
• Mexico (1.80)
• Algeria (1.68)

Greatest Oil Reserves by Country (2005)

• Saudi Arabia (262 billion barrels)
• Canada (179)
• Iran (126)
• Iraq (115)
• Kuwait (102)
• United Arab Emirates (98)
• Venezuela (77)
• Russia (60)
• Libya (39)
• Nigeria (35)

Problems with Gasoline

­There are some problems when car engines burn gasoline. When car engines burn gasoline it will produce a lot of carbon dioxide, water (in the exhaust), nitrogen oxides, unburned hydrocarbons. All these will cause smog and air pollution in cities where it has a lot of cars running everyday. Another problem is greenhouse gaseswhere gases in an atmosphere absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range.

Will gasoline prices go up as soon as the recession ends?

During recession, gasoline demand keep on reducing and this reason cause the gasoline price goes down, but once the recession ends, the price will be back to stage when the demand is rising.

Gasoline price history trends have indicated to not only the financial professionals, the price is likely no end in sight to the rising gas price due to resources in the world is limited and it will finish one day. As we can see from the chart the price has always fluctuating, but it is not a surprise if it hits $5 per gallon in future.

The price is totally out of our own control, but we do can control our trip, plan well our journey, and off course our right foot not too heavy every time we drive! If everyone works together we can be strong enough to save money on gasoline or crude oil and save the world from being polluted.