Economy, Oil | featured news

A sharp decline in the price of oil this month is making gasoline cheaper at a time of year when it typically gets more expensive. It's a relief to motorists and business owners and a positive development for the economy. Over the past three weeks, the price of oil has fallen by 9 percent to $89 a barrel.

U.S. gasoline prices crept up by about 2 cents per gallon over the past two weeks, but higher crude oil prices are likely to mean more small increases on the horizon, the latest Lundberg Survey concluded Sunday.

In its quest to increase oil production, Canada is lobbying job fairs and air waves for laborers. California has become a prime target... With a daughter to feed, no job and $200 in the bank, Detroit pipe fitter Scott Zarembski boarded a plane on a one-way ticket to this industrial capital city.

Africa will continue its economic growth into the next year, but faces increasing threats from continued political instability, youth unemployment and the global recession dragging down oil and commodity prices, a leading economist said Tuesday.

Import prices fell last month by the most in more than three years mostly due to a plunge in the cost of imported oil, further icing inflation pressures... The decline last month was even more than analysts had expected, and could give the U.S. Federal Reserve more scope to ease monetary policy if policymakers think the economy needs it.

What only weeks ago was seen as a serious threat to the economic recovery could now turn into a stimulus everyone can love. Oil and gasoline prices are sinking, giving relief to businesses and consumers who a few weeks ago seemed about to face the highest fuel prices ever.

For the majority of the country, $4 gas isn’t going to doom us or our economy. Here’s why.

A big shift is happening in Big Oil: An American giant now ranks behind a Chinese upstart. Exxon Mobil is no longer the world's biggest publicly traded producer of oil. For the first time, that distinction belongs to a 13-year-old Chinese company called PetroChina. The Beijing company was created by the Chinese government to secure more oil for that nation's booming economy.

How much are Americans freaked out by the prospect of paying $4 a gallon at the pump? A whole lot ... and not at all. Like a lot of carless New Yorkers, I am generally confused by bursts of populist outrage over high gas prices. But I have always assumed that the anger is genuine — that hard-working Americans, who already spend a lot on gas, are thrown into turmoil when they have to spend even more. After all, 63 percent of Americans insist that these price increases have caused them some financial hardship.