Less than two years ago, the price of a barrel of oil was fetching well over $100. It’s a level the commodity had been hovering at for most of the previous four years.
But it wasn’t always that way.
From the mid-1980s until late in 2003, a barrel of oil changed hands at around $25. Consumers were stunned when the price surged above $60 a barrel in the summer of 2005. By 2008, oil traded at around $145 a barrel and there were predictions that $200 a barrel was just around the corner.
Oil was among the most expensive liquids on the planet.
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But it didn’t last. In the depths of the financial crisis, oil plunged to about $40 a barrel. By 2011, the price was back above $100.
With increased production, prices began to fall again in late 2013. For most of this year, the price has been under US$50 a barrel. Early in December, the price slipped below US$35 a barrel. Analysts expect the doldrums to continue through 2016.
The price of oil may have humbled the cost of some household commodities in the past, but that’s no longer necessarily the case.
The Canadian Press has prepared this interactive quiz for you to guess which common household products are more or less expensive than a barrel of crude oil.
— With files from The Canadian Press
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