One more thing to be thankful for — affordable transportation. While I bicycle and take mass transit for daily trips related to work and basketball, my wife and I are renting a car to get down to family in North Carolina for Thanksgiving. It’s always a trip we’re excited about — to be with sisters, brothers, parents, and the rest of our wonderful family and friends — and to enjoy their delicious contributions to the annual feast. This year will include another treat, one that helps us weather the recession: lower gas prices. Today, gasoline has fallen to $1.99 per gallon nationwide — less than half of its ~$4 price much of this past summer.
That cuts our trip’s fuel cost in half to $80 for our ~1,200 mile trip. But like I’ve said before: these fuel prices are not to be counted on for long. The 7 cents per mile rate can only be preserved in the future by using more efficient vehicles. Instead of this year’s 30 mile per gallon vehicle, hopefully we’ll be able to use a 40 mile per gallon vehicle — preserving the 7 cents per mile rate even with a fuel price at $2.67 per gallon. Then in 2010 and 2011, $3.35 and $4 per gallon gas can be kept at 7 cents per mile with a 50 and 60 mile per gallon vehicles, respectively.
Another way of looking at our travel cost is $ per mile per person. This Thanksgiving trip will only cost 3.5 cents per mile for the two of us. So we can preserve this low per person cost by giving someone a lift part of the way (and they would contribute to gas costs), allowing us to upgrade our vehicle’s mpg at a slower rate than described above.
More information from Mexico’s national oil company, PeMex, is another reminder that these low prices are temporary. PeMex’s October production is 7.9% below last year’s level, with Cantarell producing only .9 million barrels per day (Mbd) — from 2.19 Mbd a few short years ago. I plan to write a blog next week detailing the difficult years ahead for Mexico as their net oil exports fall toward zero within five years. This has been a key source of government revenue (~40% the past couple years) and will disappear within five years.
In other news, the global recession is finally significantly lowering traded coal’s historically high price. It has fallen ~50% to less than $4 per MMBtu, almost as much of a drop as oil and natural gas prices. These demand-led price reductions lead me to wonder whether global greenhouse gas emissions may fall in 2009 for the first time in several years. I’ll share more details as they emerge…
Onwards to the sustainable energy transition-
Tags: climate change, gas prices, Mexico, Oil, Thanksgiving