What will trigger the gas price getting higher?

Question

Is OPEC a monopoly? Are they manipulating the gas price? The price of gas is rising up because the demand for gas surpasses the supple, what will make the gas price continue rising up? How would it get criticle?

will the gas leader company Exxon Mobile monopolize gas supplying?

Answer 1

Is OPEC a monopoly? Close, but not exactly; OPEC controls (provided that members don't cheat, and they do) a little less than half of world's crude oil production.

Are they manipulating the gas price? No they (attempt to) manipulate the price of crude oil.

Is the price of gas is rising up because the demand for gas surpasses the supply? Yes, but this time around it has relatively little to do with OPEC. The current bottleneck, interestingly enough, is not crude supply or its interruptions, as it was during 1970s and 1980s; it is refinery capacity. Oil companies have not built or expanded refineries for a while now, so the demand has caught up with supply, and there is not a lot of idle capacity. So the most likely way of it "getting critical" would be a major refinery going offline for reconstruction or due to an accident.

Answer 2

The rules of economics apply to everything but gas. Demand goes up, so does the price. Demand goes down, the price goes up. EVERYTHING can make gas prices rise. I learned that on my first day of economics class - the teacher showed us this article meant to make us laugh, but it holds true.

Answer 3

Leave it up to beaurocrats to figure something up. They raise gas prices for the heck of it.

Answer 4

War will trigger it. That or another Katrina like hurricane.

Answer 5

In America people run their cars on gas, here in the UK we run our cars on petrol, far more sensible.