Falling gas prices
GAS prices are falling faster than a dropping barometer due to an approaching typhoon, and this bodes both good and bad news for us.
The good news is that car- loving Filipinos will be able to travel again to far- flung places, sustained by the cheap fuel that powers their vehicles. The bad news is that it would mean horrendous traffic jams as more vehicles are on the road than before.
There are many reasons gas prices should be reaching for the sky such as the unrelenting war in the Middle East, source of most of our oil imports.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ( ISIS) remain intractable, Israel has not stopped its war on Palestine, Russia and Ukraine are still locked in mortal hatred and North Korea is a nuclear rogue state that had to be militarily watched.
There are many global reasons why gas prices are falling, but the major one is that America has become self- sufficient in energy needs. Thanks to their invention, hydraulic fracturing or fracking, crude oil and gas that used to be out of reach have been successfully exploited.
By injecting high- pressure water deep underground, called a well-stimulation technique, gas or oil- bearing rocks and shale are hydraulically fractured and the trapped oil or gas is released, then sucked up.
With energy production booming in the Midwest, Pennsylvania, and Texas – thanks to the spread of fracking – the US is helping keep the global market awash in crude oil.
In fact, the International Energy Agency has predicted that the US will produce more oil next year than Saudi Arabia. It might even surpass Russia as the world’s biggest producer.
The other reasons oil prices are falling is that Europe, once the engine of economic growth, has stalled.
Fracking is not kind to the environment, though, and some areas in the US, experiencing mild earthquakes, have blamed the injection of water into the ground as the cause of the instability.
We must take advantage of the low cost of fuel and find ways to save it for future use, when cost will inevitably rise again.