All Posts from January, 2011
What’s up with U.S. gasoline prices?
Rising gasoline prices have been in the news recently, and there’s a lot of talk about why this is the case. Rising demand due to a global economic recovery, a lower value for the dollar, supply fundamentals – these are just a few of the potential factors that can drive up the price of crude oil, which in turn impacts the price of gasoline. Crude oil is one of a number of globally traded commodities like gold, corn, coffee and many others.
A specific – not systemic – failure
The release yesterday of findings by the presidential commission on the BP-Deepwater Horizon accident has helped give us a fuller picture of what happened in the tragic Gulf of Mexico blowout, explosion and oil spill. The report concluded that the disaster was avoidable and resulted from a specific series of management failures on the part of the companies involved.