How much is oil?

October 30, 2008 7:36 AM

How much is oil?
I've always been frustrated with the lack of an easy way to find the current price of oil (Nymex Crude Futures, which seems to be the most commonly-cited number in news stories). How much is oil? shows you in a nice big font, and includes graphs of the price movement during the current day and the last five trading days.
posted by Godbert (17 comments total)

It'd be great if you cited what index you are using on the page, and not just here.
posted by Pants! at 9:10 AM on October 30, 2008

Thanks for the suggestion. I've stuck a note at the bottom mentioning that, as well as my source for the prices. I think it might be good to mention it near the top too, but I'm not sure where I want to put it.
posted by Godbert at 9:19 AM on October 30, 2008

It'd be great if you had a graph that went back, say, one month, six months, and a year.
posted by valkyryn at 7:19 PM on October 30, 2008

Not bad, bookmarked it. Nice job!
posted by empyrean at 9:38 PM on October 30, 2008

SO FAR SO GOOD, BUT IT WOULD BE NICE TO SEE IT OVER LONGER PERIODS AS WELL; 2 WEEKS, 6 MONTHS, 5 YEAR ETC.

whoops, capslock, damn it, and I'm too lazy to edit it :)
posted by SocialChili at 3:09 AM on October 31, 2008

I intend to add graphs for longer intervals, but the problem is that I don't have access to historical data, only the (nearly) current price, which I grab every five minutes or so and stash away. I've only been collecting the data for about three weeks, so there's not a huge amount of data to work with at this point.
posted by Godbert at 5:48 AM on October 31, 2008

Here's data back to 1983.
posted by Pants! at 8:41 AM on October 31, 2008

Cannot believe this has not been created before. Excellent project.

Here are some links of graphs and images you might consider including.

Oil Price News

A long term graph image of the price of oil from 1861 to 2007.

Oil Price History and Analysis

Monthly Price Chart for Light Crude Oil from Trading Charts with a bunch of options, like daily, weekly, historical.

Some other related statistics.

Still, nothing as simple, direct and satisfying as your site.

Bravo.
posted by nickyskye at 12:38 PM on November 1, 2008

Very cool. I'd LOVE to see this be more dynamic, though!
posted by earnwhatyouspend at 6:48 PM on November 3, 2008

And maybe a graph comparing it to average gas station price?

Cool idea.
posted by destro at 3:04 PM on November 5, 2008

Yes! And I came in to suggest a graph comparing it to gas station prices too.
posted by mightshould at 1:35 PM on November 12, 2008

The problem with comparing it with pump prices is people don't factor in their own driving to the graph, so it ends up freaking people out. I compared the two on my site and ran into that problem. I'd rather see a running total of how much Joe/Jane Doe can expect to pay per week in gas at the prices on the graph. As I said in my post, AHS says the average commute is 26.8 miles. Get a average gas tank size and you'll know how much gas is needed per week and there's your data to chart.

Maybe you could let us input our own commute distance and gas tank size and redraw the graph with that data.
posted by jwells at 8:05 AM on November 13, 2008

I like the style of this. Your frustration with the lack of clear data elsewhere is evident. It feels like the big bold number should have a tiny ", dammit" after it.

Nice job.
posted by Xezlec at 5:45 PM on November 15, 2008

$51.15 for one oil? Units would be nice.
posted by Citizen Premier at 12:44 AM on November 26, 2008

I've added yearly graphs and monthly graphs going back to 1983. Thanks to Pants! for the link to the historical data.
posted by Godbert at 10:58 AM on December 9, 2008

Wonderful!
posted by Pants! at 10:39 PM on December 23, 2008

Thanks for this! I'll definitely be using it.
posted by marsha56 at 12:07 AM on March 28, 2009