When oil was $2.52 a barrel
CODY SOSSAMON Publisher

A friend of mine forwarded an e-mail to me he received from an acquaintance in Texas, whose father had been in the oil business in the 1900s.

"When they sent Papa to Beaumont in 1903 to start the Magnolia Oil Refinery, oil was six cents a barrel!"

That got me to thinking (always a dangerous thing in my case), so I did a little research and found an inflation calculator on the web. It only went back to 1913, but six cents in 1913 is equal to $1.27 today.

With oil currently around $90 a barrel, that 1903 price is still pretty eye-opening even when accounting for inflation.

So I did a bit more research, and based on what I found, the price of oil was six cents a gallon, not a barrel. At 42 gallons to a barrel that comes to $2.52 a barrel or, using the inflation calculator once again, $53.18 in 2007. Still, a mighty difference in today's price.

In my research, I came across numerous stories about John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil Company, which I believe was the employer of my friend's acquaintance if memory serves me correctly.

There was apparently a lot of ill will towards Mr. Rockefeller and his business practices from his competitors in the oil business. "None of them could understand how he kept pump prices so low," is what one web site had to say about it. I'll bet consumers loved him.

Gas prices - and the price per barrel of oil - are a regular item on the nightly news these days and topics of conversation around the water cooler.

But this isn't a recent trend. What with regular governmental inquiries and laws and trials, don't you think people were talking about Mr. Rockefeller and Standard Oil from the late 1800s until the mid 1900s? The newspapers were certainly writing about him.

And what about the prices at the pump? Ledger editor Klonie Jordan says he can remember gas at 24 cents per gallon when he was a kid and waiting in line in the 1970s just to buy a few gallons.

I don't remember specific prices but I do remember the lines and odd-even days in the 70s. If your car's license tag ended in an even number you could get gas on certain days and vice versa.

Now that was a pain. I think it cost over a dollar a gallon but everyone was glad to pay it. Well, maybe not GLAD, but thankful there was gas to buy.

Bottom line, gas is one of those things we all like to talk - and grumble - about. Kinda like the weather.

And we always have. Can't you just hear our grandparents: "Well, Maude, I don't guess we can go to town today. Darn gas is up to 10 cents a gallon and we just can't afford that nickel it'll cost us to get there."

Or when we were teens in the 60s. "Here's a dollar for gas son. That'll have to last us all week, so don't be wasting any."

One thing about gas prices is that we can do something to control it a bit. We use an awful lot of gas today. Three and four cars to a family tend to use up a WHOLE lot more fuel than the one-car families we used to be. That's just one little example and there are dozens more reasons why we use much more gas than we did 50 years ago.

High demand for a product creates high prices. If you're selling something everyone wants, you'll keep raising the price until demand goes down. Demand for gas in the U.S doesn't appear to be waning, so expect the price to keep rising.

I know it doesn't make paying almost $3 per gallon any easier, but Europeans are paying from $7 to $9 per gallon for diesel fuel. But they're smart. They sell it by the liter, which is about one-fourth of a gallon.

No wonder so many of them drive small cars and take the train. Can't go far on a liter.

Mark my words, the day will come when we'll be wishing for the good ol' days when gas was less than $3 a gallon.

Hopefully, we'll get some rain before then.

Cody Sossamon (cody@gaffneyledger.com) is publisher of The Gaffney Ledger.