lets make bets on how low it does...

my new prediction is 50 dollars a barrel. People are freaking out, even gold is freefalling.

Oil price falling is great news. That means cheaper fuel prices at the bowser.

It also means higher prices in the medium/long term if investment in drilling is reduced.

It's really hard to predict oil prices, they're very volatile.

My guess would be they'll start increasing from tomorrow after OPEC's meeting, reaching $80 or $90. Then everything depends on how the economy does... Massive layoffs and factories closing would reduce demand and potentially make the price fall again. At some point, reduced supply will take its toll again (exacerbated by reduced investment in developing new reserves), and we could see oil reaching the same stratospheric prices we've seen this year. So mine would be a prediction of "slightly/moderately up, slightly/moderately down, radically up".

One thing's for sure... OPEC doesn't want oil to go as low as $50. Some of the members have specifically cited $70 as the bottom price they'd like to see.

This is crazy... OPEC has cut production (as expected) by 1.5 million barrels a day, and the price of oil is still going down (the opposite of what I expected). Stock markets are also down heavily (f.ex. Dow futures down 550 points).

Put two and two together and there's only one reasonable explanation... Investors as a whole are expecting a big recession putting a huge dent in oil demand.

I don't see oil companies throughout the world investing in much exploration or new drilling. That doesn't bode well for future supplies; the more the price goes down now, the higher it will be later (making it harder to rely on fossil fuels to help recover from a recession).

If they will just lower the price of oil to $2, then consumption will go up.

Again, why am I paying $3.25?

I'll buy more gas and travel more if it's $2

You're thinking about it the wrong way. If gas dropped that much, it most likely would be because people aren't buying it (or because there's too much supply, which won't be a long lived situation). If demand increases a lot when it reaches $2, prices would start going up again.

If prices go to $2 and stay there for long, things have probably gone quite bad already.

Oil prices go up, and it is reflected in the gas price immediately.
Oil price go down, and it is reflected in gas prices weeks to months later.

Oil companies sell gas a the higher of :
- the current cost to produce, based on current oil prices,
- the cost to of the gas when it was produced weeks/months ago.

That is why they make so much money when the oil prices fluctuate so much.

I know

I was just thinking about me right now.

I think the biggest draw about being in Dover would be being closer to Jersey/Philly/New York.

DMJ probably can back that up.

I have never actually seen evidence that oil price increases are traslated into gasoline price increases at a rapid rate; I have seen that oil generally has price increases over long periods of time, people (generally) ignore the price of oil until they start to see gasoline price increases, and then they complain about how quickly higher oil prices traslate into higher gasoline prices even though oil began increasing in price months before gasoline's price increased at the pump.