(Source: Reuters)

Denise Blackerby is hitting the road again. When retail gas prices scaled historic peaks above $4 a gallon last year, she found she could no longer make monthly trips from the Dallas area to Houston in her Ford Explorer SUV to visit her family.

 “When gas was $4 a gallon, I didn’t go anywhere. Now it’s all good,” Blackerby, who is 44 and works in the information technology industry, told Reuters as she bought soft drinks at a Shell gas station in Grapevine, a town near Fort Worth.

With U.S. pump prices now averaging below $2 a gallon, she’s making those regular Houston trips again.

As gasoline prices surged to record highs last year, drivers in the world’s top energy consumer cut fuel use at the greatest pace since 1983.

For U.S. consumers pinched by the economic crisis, falling gasoline prices have created what some analysts call a sort of “stimulus package” that has pumped billions of dollars in disposable income back into their wallets.

(Source:  Jalopnik)

Another gem from our brilliant folks at Jalopnik/Gizmodo.  Read the article below and don’t forget to drop your comments at the parent site. 

From New York to San Bernardino, drivers in America’s cities live in their cars. Below we use Google Earth to take an in-depth look at the intersections of the nation’s 20 most traffic-congested cities.

The good news is 2008 saw a major decrease in traffic, with drivers in the 100 largest metropolitan areas dealing with a 29% decrease in congestion on average. The bad news is we’re seeing it because of an increase in gas prices, which led to less driving and more carpooling, and a decrease in jobs, which led to more people sitting on the couch hoping their unemployment doesn’t run out so they can afford to keep their benefits. It’s a vicious circle. Much like the pain we’re seeing in these community-by-community breakdowns of the most congested intersections in these 20 most congested metro areas.

Click the images below to view traffic information on each city up close

1. Los Angeles	2. New York	3. Chicago	4. Dallas Fort Worth
5. Washington, D.C.	6. Houston	7. San Francisco	8. Boston
9. Seattle	10. Minneapolis-St. Paul	11. Philadelphia	12. Atlanta
13. Phoenix	14. Miami	15. San Diego	16. Denver
17. Baltimore	18. San Jose	19. Detroit	20. Riverside-San Bernardino

Though traffic does correlate to population rank, with the top four metropolitan areas also in the four worst cities for traffic, there are some anomalies. The Washington, D.C.-Arlington-Alexandria area is only the eighth most populous region in the country but is the fifth worst when it comes to traffic due to its high capacity of employment in the area and the lack of good housing stock for middle class families within “The Beltway” area.

Click here to read the entire article.  

Related Forbes article.

(Source: USA Today)

But the oil industry is quietly sowing the seeds for a sharp run-up in gas prices once demand recovers.

Oil companies are slashing new investment and production far more sharply than analysts projected just a couple of months ago, a strategy analysts say could lead to shortages and higher gas prices when consumption rebounds. And, analysts say, a standoff between the oil giants and their suppliers over the cost of rigs, labor and other expenses could prolong the investment slowdown.

“The turnaround will probably come faster than people expect, and the supply won’t be there,” says Joseph Stanislaw, an adviser to Deloitte’s energy practice.

Oil companies are shaving exploration and production spending 18% this year, including a 40% drop in the U.S., according to new estimates by analyst James Crandall of Barclays Capital. In December, the firm said budgets would fall 12%, 26% in the U.S. Drilling in the U.S. is down 39% from its September peak.