Having just returned from Panama I can tell you that sky-rocketing energy costs is a prime issue on people’s minds right now.
We hosted about 300 attendees at this year’s Total Wealth Symposium in Panama City. It was an intense, week-long conference schedule packed with investment insights and wealth protection tactics from experts around the world. One issue that kept coming up over and over again is energy.
Several of the expert speakers worked energy into their presentations, and I personally fielded many more questions on the subject. As most of us are painfully aware by now, crude oil prices have doubled over the past year. The other two primary fossil fuels on which America is overly dependent are also going through the roof. Namely, coal and natural gas prices are both up about 50% in just the last six months.
And there doesn’t appear to be any end in sight either.
In fact, the “official” start of summer driving season doesn’t kick off until Memorial Day one week from today. Traditionally, millions of American drivers begin taking to the roads in May and June, as summer vacations begin. These road trips throughout the summer months place added strains on U.S. gasoline supplies. I’m not sure we can handle it this year.
Even before summer begins, wholesale gasoline prices in some areas of the U.S. are already above $4 per gallon. In fact, average prices in Long Island, New York, and Chicago, Illinois are already there. Prices in Chicago just notched a new all-time record high at $4.07 per gallon for regular unleaded.
Unfortunately, many more records are likely during the long, hot summer America faces.
I’ll be doing my part adding to traffic congestion Memorial Day weekend. My 11-year old daughter’s travel team has their last soccer tournament of the season at Disney World this weekend. I cringe just thinking about filling up our Explorer for this 3 hour road-trip on Friday, then again on Monday for the return trip. I’ve already calculated that my “magic number” is $4.44.
That’s the per gallon price at which it will cost me exactly one-hundred bucks to fill up the family truckster... my unlucky number is more like it!
Another season begins soon too. Less than one-week after Memorial Day is the start of the North Atlantic Hurricane season on Sunday June 1. Experts are predicting another “active” season with as many as 15 named storms. Any one storm could wreak havoc on offshore oil & gas production in the Gulf of Mexico.
These are potential supply disruptions we cannot afford with oil and gasoline prices already this high.
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