Here's how you can lower gasoline prices

Not everyone drives like a jerk and whizzes by at 90 mph in the left lane. It turns out that we wouldn’t have to cut consumption by 40 percent or 30 percent or even 20 percent to send pump prices lower. Try 7 percent.

That’s how much demand fell off last winter. After peaking at 9.7 million barrels in the week of Aug. 4, 2006, U.S. gasoline demand hit a low of 9.0 million barrels during the week of Jan. 19, 2007 — a difference of 7 percent. During the same period, the average U.S. price peaked at $3.083 in August and fell to $2.213 by the end of January — a drop of 28 percent.

Even a 1 percent drop would make a difference, according to Tom Kloza, president of Oil Price Information Service.

One big reason gasoline prices run up is that buyers and sellers bid up prices when supplies get close to demand. Right now, though there's enough gasoline still flowing through the system to meet demand, refineries are running at near capacity and stockpiles are far below normal for this time of year. The market is very “tight.”

When that happens, it doesn’t take much of a supply cushion to have a big impact on prices. Kloza likens this to the difference between a pot of water that’s about to boil and one that boils over — all it takes is that one degree of heat to make the difference.

“Right now, demand is running about 1 percent above last year,” he wrote recently in his blog. “Most professional traders would concur that if the market delivers 1 percent of ‘demand destruction’ in early summer, much of the froth in prices will decompose.”

A 1 percent drop in demand is tiny: Kloza figures if 100 million drivers used one less gallon a month, or 4.3 ounces a day, that would have an impact. Based on average 20 miles per gallon, he figures that would mean shortening your daily driving routine by 3,522 feet a day.

Or you could stop driving like a jerk and slow down. Either way, if you really want to do something about the price of gasoline, it’s in your hands.

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