Why gas is expensive..read before you rant

CreepyPirate · **Posted:** June 30th, 2006, 5:52 am

MasterOfTheVortex wrote:

Ok, So you're whining that you're getting $3 a gallon for your fuel. Look at the prices of English Fuel a second:

At the moment, we're just edging towards £1/litre. There are 4.5 Litres in a gallon, so thats £4.50 / gallon. Now convert that into US Dollars, that makes nearly $8.50.

NOW STOP WHINING.

Ok, i admit, our petrol is a lot better than your gas. Yours has a far lower octane percentage, and just coughs out horrible amounts of gases for the number of miles you do. What do your cars do on your gas? Five miles to the gallon? Ours can easily do 40MPG. Maybe you should switch to using the decent petrol us Brits use.

Also, you might consider WALKING, or maybe cycling or something. Ive heard stories of people getting in the car to drive to their next door neighbours house. Thats just disgusting. You have legs for a reason. I walk a mile to school every day, and a mile back, whatever the weather.

Ha, you have to take into consideration it's an american made car more than likely and would drain 10 times as much fuel as any other. XD

So t hey probably wind up paying more.

Don't get the point of this topic myself, maybe i've just not read it properly.

Adbot · **Posted:** June 30th, 2006, 5:52 am

Christopher · **Posted:** July 1st, 2006, 12:24 am

The reasons why gas is so high are many. Really it is a combination of alot of things...and alot of factors are to blame...

Firstly...we get less than 20% of our oil from the middle east...so that isn't the whole problem.

Second, it is true that we have a shortage of refineraries....infact it costs many billions to build a new one (not to mention many years).

Third (think coke and pepsi), we have an oligopoly of oil companies...meaning we have very few companies controling one industry. There used to be something like 12 oil companies, now there are less than six...that is a very large depreciation in an industry so big (Shell, Conocco, BP, Texaco, Chevron, 76, Exxon, Mobil, Golf, Royal Dutch, phillips...now start adding the hyphins and you can cut those in half).

Fourth, the taxes on gas are absurd...but why should the government do anything about it...they tax on the dollars...so everytime gas goes up, the states get more money. This is why the crissis when the state were running out of money around 2000 (durring the recession) has evaporated. There rolling in money purely because of the rise in revenue from gasoline.

Fifth, the regulations on oil are huge...in some states it is illigal to sell gas at to low a price (that is right instate trade agreements...so the feds get in on it). It is very hard to start an oil company and it is impossible for anyone except the richest companies to build a refinery. Hence the consildation in to an oligopoly.

Sixth, the national reserves and the wilderness area in Alaska are tightly held commodities. One way President Clinton kept gases prices low was by selling gas from the national reserves, for dirt cheap. This made opec and other oil countries keep there prices low to compete. However, we only have a small (relative) amount of gasoline in the national reserves. Draining the national reserves put the country at risk, causes inflation, and leaves the problem for the next guy. So by the time Bush got in there the reserves were depleted...he has spent five year filling them again....this has caused the recent spike. (For all who don't know the National Oil reserves are saved incase of national or regional emergences: natural disaster, invasion, etc...) Also we have between 30 and 50 years of oil in the Alaska wilderness...if we dug it today it wouldn't hurt a fly but the real reason we don't is because...well...it is the ultimate back up plan. The U.S. can sit for 30 year without buy a drop of oil if anything ever went wrong with the world oil supply.

Seventh, perhaps the biggest people to blame are the oil traders...The who? That is right. The way oil is bought is on speculation. There are people (very very rich people) who buy and sell, the rights to future oil. They determine the price per barrel. Then then sell the oil to the gas companies at a healthy profit when the supply shrinks up. Of course if the price of oil actually went down...these guys would loose their shirts...but that isn't going to happen...because they own the real monopoly in the game...(think boardwalk and parkplace).

So in conclusion: we are all screwed thanks for playing.

Ult_Mac_Dady · **Posted:** July 2nd, 2006, 8:46 pm

30 / 25 = 1.2 + $1 = 2.2
Price of 1/2 barrel / Amount in 1/2 drum = Cost per gallon after refinery + tax = $2.2 so that means $.80 gose to refinery, profit, and transportation costs.
So $3 per galon is resonable for gas stations.
$1 gas tax and $30 per 1/2 drum is not.

(1/2 drum is used because

Kyle wrote:

...only about 40-50% of the oil is turned into gas...

)

And $8.50 per gallon... WHAT THE HELL? Thats crazy!

Besadon · **Posted:** July 2nd, 2006, 9:04 pm

Very well researched. People need to buy Hybrid cars.

(too bad they create something more dangerous: SMUG!) :lol:

Christopher · **Posted:** July 3rd, 2006, 6:36 am

Besadon wrote:

Very well researched. People need to buy Hybrid cars.

(too bad they create something more dangerous: SMUG!) :lol:

Actaully hybrid cars don't help as much as you might think...here is why. Generally people who buy hybrids already drive small cars...thus even if all the people driving cars getting 40 miles to a gallon bought cars that drove at 50 miles to the gallon...the gas savings would be the same as all the people who drove 13 miles to the gallon cars (this is an average but you get the point) bought 14 miles to the gallon. Here is the math...what you have to do is flip it and look at gallons per mile. 1/40=0.025. 1/50=0.020...0.005 gallons saved per every mile driven. 1/13=0.076923. 1/14=0.071428. or a savings of 0.00549 gallons per mile driven. Generally things can be modeled on a belle curve...so you get the point. If we make our cars that aren't very fuel efficient a little more fuel efficient it will go further then trying to convince all these SUV drivers to go hybrid. We have made great gains in efficency in the last fourty years there is no reason a V-8 can't get 25 miles to the gallon or greater... you simply have to decrease the horsepowers...that is the problem with most of the gains made in that passed thirty or fourty years is that all the work has been going into making the engine more powerful...when it can just as easilly be assigned to making it more fuel efficient.

So in conclusion, if we want to reduce hour dependence on gasoline...that best solution is to simply drop a few horses and race the fuel economy by a mile per gallon or two....that would save use hundreds of millions of barrels a year and provide for a better transition to fuel cells, biodiesel, or ethanol. :wink: