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NEW YORK?? It’s been 30 years since gasoline took such a big bite out of the family budget.

When the gifts from Grandma are unloaded and holiday travel is over, the typical American household will have spent $4,155 filling up this year, a record. That is 8.4 percent of what the median family takes in, the highest share since 1981.

Gas averaged more than $3.50 a gallon this year, another unfortunate record. And next year isn’t likely to bring relief.

In the past, high gas prices in the United States have gone hand-in-hand with economic good times, making them less damaging to family finances. Now prices are high despite slow economic growth and weak demand.

That’s because demand for crude oil is rising globally, especially in the developing nations of Asia and Latin America. But it puts the squeeze on the U.S., where unemployment is high and many people who have jobs aren’t getting raises.

The trap has caught Michael Reed of Charlotte, N.C. He hasn’t been able to find work since he lost his computer-support job in 2009. Now high gas prices are claiming more of what he has left. He and his wife won’t exchange gifts this Christmas.

“I try to drive as little as possible so it doesn’t take such a chunk out of my wallet,” he says.

In 1981, when the economy was sliding into recession and oil prices were high because of Middle East turmoil, gas ate up 8.8 percent of the typical family budget, says Fred Rozell of the Oil Price Information Service.

Over the past decade, gas has taken up 5.7 percent of the family budget. If families had spent only 5.7 percent this year, they would have saved $1,300.

For this year, gas should average $3.53 per gallon. That’s 76 cents more than last year. It’s 29 cents per gallon more than 2008, when gas last set an annual record, $3.24. That year, the price of oil hit a record in the summer but collapsed when the financial crisis struck in the fall.

Besides leaving families less money to eat out and go to the movies, high gas prices take a disproportionate toll on consumer confidence. People are more aware of small changes in gas prices because they drive past the signs all the time.

And a buck spent on gas has less bang in the economy than, say, a dollar spent at a restaurant. The U.S. is an oil-importing country, so many of the dollars spent on gas ultimately leave the country instead of being invested here in new ventures and jobs.

The Bottom Line: In role reversal, US on track to be an oil exporter

James Hamilton, an economics professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies energy prices, estimates that high gasoline prices reduced economic growth by about 0.5 percent for the year ? a substantial hit for an economy only growing at an annual rate of about 2 percent.

Still, it could be worse. The U.S. economy is much more fuel-efficient than it was during the oil spikes of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1980, for every $1,000 of economic output, 1.07 barrels of oil were consumed. By 2010, it took half that ? 0.53 barrels, says Judith Dwarkin, chief energy economist at ITG Investment Research.

Today, the U.S. uses almost no oil to generate electricity. The percentage of households using heating oil has fallen. And vehicles are less thirsty than ever ? 20 percent more fuel-efficient than they were in 1980.

Also, the low price of natural gas has kept heating and electricity costs down for the same households spending more on gas.

Relief from high gas prices is nowhere in sight, though. Ed Morse, head of commodities research at Citibank, expects oil to average $100 per barrel next year, which would eclipse 2011′s average of about $95 per barrel.

Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at OPIS, expects gasoline prices to approach $4 per gallon again next spring.

Drivers are keeping gas guzzlers in the driveway, combining trips and buying more efficient cars. Compared with the year before, American gas consumption has been down every week for more than nine months, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse, a spending survey.

But that only helps so much. Hunter Collins, a software support technician who lives in Richmond, Maine, commutes 40 miles each way to his job in Falmouth. He has started to carpool with a colleague and to take his wife’s more fuel-efficient car to work when it is his turn to drive.

It’s still not enough. He says he’s going to sell his beloved 8-cylinder Dodge Charger. “She’s my baby, but I’m going to have to switch to something more economical,” he says.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45727067/ns/business-oil_and_energy/

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VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (Reuters) ? Rescuers on Monday said it would be a miracle if they found anyone else alive after a drilling rig sank with 67 people on board in the icy seas off Russia’s far eastern coast, although the rig’s owner said a raft had been sighted in the water.

The Emergencies Ministry, which usually coordinates rescue operations, declined to confirm a raft had been spotted and it was unclear whether anyone could still be alive after more than 24 hours adrift in the depths of winter.

The Kolskaya rig, working for a unit of state-controlled gas export monopoly Gazprom, sank 200 km (125 miles) off Russia’s Sakhalin island, sending a distress signal at 2224 GMT on Saturday.

Of the 67 people on the rig, 14 were saved by vessels accompanying the rig, but 6-metre (20 ft) high waves and temperatures of minus 7 degrees Celsius (19 Fahrenheit) hindered rescue efforts. Rescuers said 16 bodies had been found.

That left 37 people unaccounted for in the Sea of Okhotsk, a vast expanse of water more than twice the size of France.

“Until all the people are found the rescue operation will not be concluded,” Natalya Salkina, a spokeswoman for federal transport investigators in Russia’s far eastern city of Khabarovsk, said by telephone.

Asked how likely it was that anyone would be found alive at sea in such icy temperatures, she said: “You can always hope for a miracle.”

The seas on Russia’s far eastern coast often freeze in winter and such harsh conditions – including freezing air temperatures and biting winds – would leave any survivors badly exposed unless they could find dry cover on the choppy seas.

The slim hopes of finding survivors were raised when the owner of the rig said navy aircraft had spotted a raft floating with people on it although state rescuers played down the information and it was impossible to confirm with the navy.

“Aircraft from the Pacific fleet have found a raft. There are people on it,” said Andrei Bobrov, a spokesman for the owner of the rig, Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka (AMNGR), a unit of state-owned Zarubezhneft.

Asked whether any of the people were alive, Bobrov said by telephone: “It is impossible to say. Have you ever been on an aircraft? You cannot see from that height.”

The rig, built in Finland in 1985, was owned by Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka (AMNGR), a unit of state-owned Zarubezhneft, and working on a minor gas production project in the Sea of Okhotsk for a unit Gazprom.

Russian prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the incident.

Russia’s prize offshore gas and oil fields lie northeast of Sakhalin. Two major offshore projects are already producing oil and gas off the island: Sakhalin-1, operated by Exxonmobil and Sakhalin-2, in which Gazprom has a controlling stake.

(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Ludmila Danilova in Moscow, Editing by Tinothy Heritage)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111219/wl_nm/us_russia_platform_raft

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CAIRO (AFP) ? Saboteurs bombed an Egyptian gas pipeline in the Sinai peninsula on Monday for the third time since February, cutting supplies to Israel and Jordan.

Officials said a car had parked near the pipeline in the Bir al-Abd area, 80 kilometres (about 50 miles) from the northern Sinai town of El-Arish, shortly before the explosion.

They said the bomb was activated remotely.

North Sinai governor Abdel Wahab Mabrouk condemned the bombing as “terrorist act meant to jeopardise the stability and security of Sinai,” the official MENA news agency quoted him as saying.

A second device was found near the bomb blast “but the army has dealt with it before it exploded”, said Magdi Tawfiq, the head of the Egyptian Natural Gas Company (GASCO).

He told MENA the fire was now under control and that a committee had been set up to investigate the explosion.

“The company will work to fix the pipeline in Sinai as soon as the fire is completely out,” he said.

Emergency services were deployed to the area to try to bring the fire under control, an official said.

Witnesses said the flames reached as high as 10 metres (32 feet). There were no immediate reports of casualties.

It was the third attack on the gas pipeline since February, when an uprising toppled former president Hosni Mubarak and saw power handed over to a military council.

On April 27, the pipeline in Al-Sabil area of north Sinai was also attacked, cutting off international gas supplies. In February, attackers used explosives against the pipeline in the town of Lihfren in north Sinai, near the Gaza Strip.

There was also a failed attempt to attack the pipeline in March.

Jordan, which buys 95 percent of its energy needs, imports about 240 million cubic feet (6.8 million cubic metres) of Egyptian gas a day, or 80 percent of its electricity requirements.

Jordanian officials have been in talks with their Egyptian counterparts “to determine the damage and discuss solutions,” Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency said.

“Jordan will face unusual problems this summer if this issue continues,” Abdul Fattah Nsur, director of Jordan Central Electricity Generation Company, told Petra.

Egypt also supplies about 40 percent of Israel’s natural gas which is used to produce electricity. In December, four Israeli firms signed 20-year contracts worth up to $10 billion (7.4 billion euros) to import Egyptian gas.

In April, Egypt’s Prime Minister Essam Sharaf asked for the revision of all contracts to supply gas abroad, including to Israel.

Sharaf said the contracts would be revisited so the gas “would be sold with deserved prices that achieve the highest returns for Egypt.”

The controversial gas deal with Israel has been repeatedly challenged in Egyptian courts on the grounds of its secretive clauses and because it was sealed without parliamentary consultation.

A court imposed an injunction on the deal, in a move ignored by Mubarak’s government. A higher court overturned the freeze in 2010, on condition the government regulate the quantity and price of gas exported.

Israel’s government viewed the ouster of Mubarak with alarm.

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace deal with the Jewish state in 1979, but the public has remained hostile towards Israel over its policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.

After the military took power following Mubarak’s ouster, it pledged it would respect the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

In May, Jordan said Egypt was withholding its contracted gas supply to energy-poor Jordan unless a new deal was signed at a higher price.

Under a 14-year deal signed in 2002, Egypt used to sell gas to Jordan at a discounted price — half of the market price, or $3 (2.16 euros) per million British Thermal Units (1,000 cubic feet of gas equals 1.027 million BTU).

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110704/wl_afp/egyptunrestgasisraeljordan

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