Question: I know I might sound like an idiot, but...

[battleknight24]

... why PRECISELY do gas prices rise during times of war? Why exactly have gas prices rissen so high so fast recently?


Peace,

[galadrium]

1. Bush and his big oil buddies

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. Threat of supply interdiction.

And the fact that a significant amount of production goes to supply the military (for tanks, helicopters, fighter and bomber aircraft, et cetera) in time of war. These two factors combined generally lead to price instability and lower availability of petroleum for civilian use.

[BeyondGeography]

3. War means uncertainty, uncertainty is risk

Oil traders hedge against the risk by raising their prices. So we wind up paying a risk premium.

As for the scale of the increase, there are many other factors, most notably China's unexpectedly high levels of energy consumption, which no one at the White House was counting on.

[WilliamPitt]

4. Attacks against the Saudi royals + good old-fashioned price-gouging

[Ksec]

5. all of the above

and its bound to start killin the "great" jobless economy .

I havent seen a big gas increase yet that didnt kill growth

[EstimatedProphet]

6. In this case, IMO price gouging pure and simple

I've heard that the barrel oil price is the same right now as it was a year ago, when the average price was $1.45/gal rather than now. I think that what's going on is they are using all the media nonsense to cover price gouging.