Note: Heating fuel is more expensive in the winter than in the summer, so if you're comparing a bill from May-October now to a bill from November-April last year, the difference would be skewed even further than the above graph would suggest.
And since I always like to throw a little politics into the discussion whenever possible: this is one of the main drawbacks to the United States' refusal to tax energy to any significant degree. In countries where energy is already heavily taxed, economies are set up to treat it like a precious resource, so a doubling or tripling in the price of energy does not have the same impact on people's bottom line. Here in the US where fewer than half of all homes on the temperate parts of the country even have insulation in the walls, and the average car gets well below 30 miles to the gallon, compared to about 40+ in Europe (and not to mention that most people here need to drive to get to work), a wild increase in the price of energy is not only completely "allowed" (to quote from your original post), but it has real potential to bankrupt people in the process...
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Re: The price per barrel of crude oil
Date: 2009-09-16 12:47 pm (UTC)And since I always like to throw a little politics into the discussion whenever possible: this is one of the main drawbacks to the United States' refusal to tax energy to any significant degree. In countries where energy is already heavily taxed, economies are set up to treat it like a precious resource, so a doubling or tripling in the price of energy does not have the same impact on people's bottom line. Here in the US where fewer than half of all homes on the temperate parts of the country even have insulation in the walls, and the average car gets well below 30 miles to the gallon, compared to about 40+ in Europe (and not to mention that most people here need to drive to get to work), a wild increase in the price of energy is not only completely "allowed" (to quote from your original post), but it has real potential to bankrupt people in the process...