Hofmeister -- Supports My Myth -- Wow, Already: LA's February Holiday's Highest Price Ever

Updates

February 17, 2012: $4.00 gasoline in Los Angeles.

Just in time for Presidents Day: get ready for the long holiday weekend's highest prices ever in Southern California as $4 gasoline is expected to arrive in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and probably Orange County, too.

That's what energy analysts are predicting as the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area reached $3.996 a gallon overnight, up nearly 2 cents since Thursday. That was also a jump of 15.9 cents a gallon since last week.

Original Post

Former Shell oil CEO Hofmeister just on CNBC. Video here.

His comments support my myth.

Perfect storm:

• This administration and previous administration: "business as usual"
• Iran looking to drive oil prices up; strategy: drive Western economies into recession
• oil spill in Gulf --> moratorium in Gulf
• the west never anticipated the huge growth by China

Fracking?

• In the big picture, oil from fracking represents just a trickle of overall supply. The trickle of oil coming from fracking doesn't impact the loss of oil from the Gulf due to the (continuing) moratorium

Killing the Keystone?

• Horrendous decision; part of the "business as usual" policy (or lack of energy policy)

$5 gasoline?

• In 2010, "they" were predicting $5 gasoline in 2012

Conundrum for policy makers and impossible to understand by Americans:

• demand of gasoline continues to decrease (down 6% in past year) and yet price of gasoline keeps going up; go back up to "perfect storm" 

Recession in the west?

• It's already considered "a given" for the Europeans
• Will it spread to the US?

Something tells me we will be seeing and hearing a lot more from Hofmeister this year, so he gets his own tag/label at the bottom of the blog.