Those Gas Prices Keep On Rising; Great!

People act like all they can do is whine and moan about gas prices going up. There are plenty of strategies that one can use to take advantage of the prices going up or at least keep yourself from paying too much for gas. I guess it’s easier to bitch about the whole thing. It’s someone elses fault then.

The easiest way to take advantage of the rise in gas prices is to buy stock in the companies that sell the product. That would seem to be the most logical way to capitalize on this situation. One could also trade in and get a smaller car thereby using less gas. People could carpool. That’s a good idea. You could ride the bus. That’s a good one.

I buy stock in a large energy company. I have been rewarded handsomely. It’s not hard to do and I use some of my 401K money to do so. You don’t have to complain. You can do something about this.

The United States has not allowed a refinery to be built in a very long time. The oil and gas industry is so highly regulated that a refinery would be much too costly to build. Even if an energy company decided to take the plunge to build a new refienry can you imagine the uproar from the enviromental crowd? The refiners have invested billions of dollars in upgrades and new technologies to get more out of the refineries they have online right now. At some point they want their investment back.

The price of a barrel of oil may fluctuate a bit, but high prices are here to stay. And demand continues to grow. So there is little hope of prices ever going down, at least in the near future. As China and India and other developing countries use a greater share of the world’s oil the price will continue to rise. If the United States does not keep pace there will be a day when we won’t be able to get all the oil we need to run our country.

High prices are here to stay. There are many factors that drive the market. Bashing the oil companies may make us feel better, but it does no good in solving the problem of high gas prices. There are things we all can do to take advantage of high gas prices. There are things we can do to help ourselves use less gas and save money. They require action; not whining and crying.