The Oil Drum: Local

Mea culpa. Drove 900 mi round trip in an SUV with only one passenger. Total fuel consumption: about 64 gallons of gasoline (over a barrel of the black stuff.) Total cost: about $205.

Highest price paid: $3.64 for regular unleaded in Baker, CA in the Mojave Desert.

It was a trip from the unsustainable megalopolis built (literally) on crude oil (now completely depleted), Los Angeles, which arguably will be among the hardest hit by PO given the long commuting distances, lack of public transportation and collapsing real estate market, to a very survivable locale: southern Utah, rich in natural resources, where a significant percentage of the population has a year's supply of food in storage, small towns in which few things other than the best hiking and backpacking are more than a few miles away.

Interestingly, the freeway was packed between LA and Las Vegas, literally packed with large inefficient vehicles (like mine). Despite the price of fuel, the freeway between LA and Vegas is so crowded that many people have begun flying instead. The days may be numbered for these two forms of transportation, but no one seems to have noticed yet. They are too distracted by the 50K their home has declined in value in 2007 to notice an extra $100 per month fuel cost which is still seen as a nuisance more than anything else.

$150 oil will not be enough to force conservation, it will have to be $250 and up.