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Posted

Gas in Idaho always seems to be higher than anywhere else... must be population based or something. Hardly anyone here... Oop, did I just type that??

I think the real question should be, "What is the real cost of a gallon of gas"?

Google this for a variety of answers... With externalized costs taken into consideration, like taxes, subsidies, etc, the true cost of a gallon of gas in the US is between $10 and $15 according to most estimates.

Where would we be as a nation if we were spending that money on alternatives instead of the status quo?

Pete

Posted

not sure whether I understand you. If the true cost of a gallon of gas would be $10 I don't think that with the current prices the companies involved would stay alive for long.

Someone has to pay for it and most of the times : the consumer ;)

John

Posted

True...and with the oil & gas companies posting record-breaking profits, I'd have to wonder about that also.

As I understand it, the problem with gas isn't the widely-reported "shortage" of oil...rather, it lies in the fact that there is an extreme lack of refining capacity. On the Texas Gulf coast, there hasn't been a new refinery built in at least 30 years. The infamous BP Texas City refinery (the one that blew up a couple years ago) dates from the immediate post-WWII period!

The problem is exacerbated when we have WWII or Korean War vintage refineries operating for extended periods at 95% capacity...something will eventually give, and when it does, it hits us square in the pocketbook.

Let's not even get into the EPA regs or all the local blends of gasoline that are required...

All that cost gets passed on to us. Oh Joy!

Posted

Gas in North America in cheap compared to elsewhere in the world. I have a nephew in the oil business big time and he says get used to $100/barrel oil and it will likely only go up. My son just returned from England where he was working for the last 5 years and petrol there is around $8/gallon. We have nothing to complain about and I think Blueskies is right when he talks about looking for alternative energy. Anyone who thinks gas should be cheaper needs to get his head outta the sand. It always kills me when people driving Hummers, huge 4 wheel drives trucks, Lincoln Navigators, etc, complain about the cost of gas as they drive around the city.

Posted
Looks like FINLAND is leading the race with a handsome margin to the runner up for now...

May we get the numbers from Norway - Hello, Norway, this is Finland calling...

Aaaaaaaand the funniest guy of the week award goooooes to PEKKA:D

Smells like Eurovision...

I just red from another forum that in middle east the gas is something like below $ 0.10 per gallon:eek:

Posted

I was in the middle east 6 times in the late 80's and early 90's...gas is nowhere close to that cheap..matter of fact they were way higher than us even at that time..now I thnk Chavez was selling local at that place in S.A. but you got to get the people's love or support anyway you can when you dishing up the same plate everyday.

Posted

wow..color me red for not checking...that is a huge huge difference from when I was there (Bahrain) at that time I think on the open exchange rate for US dollar put the cost to 71 cent for regular and 76 for high test per liter of fuel.

I stand corrected...

Posted
How in the hell is gas in Colorado and New Jersey cheaper than Texas...we refine most of the dang stuff.

Must be something to do with the added-on state taxes.

That may be true. However, there are refineries all over the country. There are some pretty large refineries in the New Jersey area and also the midwest in southern Chicago, Illinois and northern Indiana. That could explain why it's cheaper in New Jersey than in Texas.

Posted

Maybe...but I think the refineries along the gulf coast from New Orleans to Corpus Christi produce something like 60% of the nation's gasoline.

I'm all for alternative fuel...but I'm tired of the myth of 'exhausted supply'; there's enough oil in the ground in West Texas and the Anadarko basin in Oklahoma to last us at least 60 years (yes, even at the current rate of consumption), and it's generally considered a better crude than the stuff we're getting from Saudi. Problem is, there hasn't been a refinery built in this country in my lifetime (30 years). Supply and demand...we can't get it refined fast enough.

Time to build some refineries!

Posted

$2.95, and I could have saved another .03 if I would have paid cash. They are planning a refinery to be built about 15 miles north of here. There is some fighting against it but like everything people want the gas just not the refineries. Same goes for nuclear, wind , you name it. Just not in my backyard. I think they'll get this one built. Erichttp://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2007/06/15/news/local/a031093b40faefab862572fa0082e63b.txt

Posted
not sure whether I understand you. If the true cost of a gallon of gas would be $10 I don't think that with the current prices the companies involved would stay alive for long.

Someone has to pay for it and most of the times : the consumer ;)

John

You are right, the cost is paid by the consumer, but the true cost a gallon of gas is not paid at the pump. We are paying for it through government subsidies, taxes, etc. (the externalized costs). The net effect is an artifical price at the pump, making consumers think that they are paying less, and that gasoline is the cheapest solution.

It also makes alternative energy sources seem way more expensive, but if the subsidies, taxes, etc were not spent on gasoline, the alternatives would have a more equitable chance of being affordable.

Why is gas twice as expensive in Finland? I think it has little to do with the cost of making the gas in the first place, it's just that European governments aren't subsidizing the cost like the US. And the result is that Euro cars get better mileage because the fuel costs so much at the pump. There is no point in building gas guzzlers if no one can afford to fill them with gas. Would you buy a Ford Extinction that gets 12 mpg when gas is $10 bucks a gallon? Probably not, you'd be going for the most effecient rig you could afford, or driving much, much less.

There is plenty to read on the net about this, it's nothing new... do a search.

Pete

Posted

Google this for a variety of answers... With externalized costs taken into consideration, like taxes, subsidies, etc, the true cost of a gallon of gas in the US is between $10 and $15 according to most estimates.

Pete

This is pretty much contrary to every thing I've read and heard my entire life. I think you may need to move that decimal point a few spaces to the left. Maybe in Jamaican dollars would a gallon of gasoline REALLY cost $10 to $15.

Supply and demand along with excise taxes seem to be the driving forces on the price of a gallon of gasoline. Please answer me this. If the oil industry is so heavily subsidised, then why are we paying an excise tax on fuel to pay for roads, etc? If bureaucrats and politicians haven't learned any thing in the last 300 years, they have learned that hidden taxes are more readily accepted by the citisenry than direct taxes. Remember the Stamp Act?

Tell the avg. idiot American voter that he can get some thing for nothing or that it will affect the other guy more than him and he will support it. Benjamin Franklin said, "Democracy is little more than 5 wolves and 3 sheep voting on lunch."

More modern refineries will do more to lower the cost of a gallon of gasoline in these united States of America than any "government investment" in alternative energy. It is my understanding that the Greenies and "not in my back yard" types have successfully blocked any new proposed refinery project in my lifetime.

We are refining petroleum with the same technology that our old Plymouths and Dodges run on. We'd be better off with the same number of refineries on the same amount of land if only they were running with modern technology. I suspect the price of a gallon of gasoline would be cut in half by competition with even greater oil company profits if the bureaucrats don't just add more excise taxes to gasoline.

Posted
This is pretty much contrary to every thing I've read and heard my entire life.

Here's some interesting reading for you...

and an excerpt:

Is $3 gasoline expensive? Only when compared to its former price. Taxpayers -- nondrivers included -- subsidize gasoline purchases in a huge way. Here is a particularly critical passage from Chapter 3 of Salopek's report, on the Iraq war.

What are the hidden costs of America's imported oil? The answer is complex. It may ultimately be unknowable. But this hasn't daunted the likes of Milton Copulos.

A tenacious economist with the National Defense Council Foundation--a right-of-center Washington think tank--Copulos spent 18 solid months poring over hundreds of thousands of pages of government documents, toiling to fix a price tag on America's addiction to global crude. He parsed oil-related defense spending in the Middle East. He calculated U.S. jobs and investments lost to steep crude prices. He even factored in the lifelong medical bills of some 18,000 U.S. troops wounded in Iraq as of March. (About $1.5 million each.)

Copulos is a highly respected analyst in Washington. And his exhaustive findings flabbergasted the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this spring.

The actual cost of gasoline refined from imported oil, according to Copulos?

Eight dollars a gallon.

When he isolated the hidden costs of Middle Eastern crude in particular, the price jumped to $11. This included a war premium that swelled the Pentagon's spending to protect all Persian Gulf oil to $137 billion a year. In a truly transparent economy, by Copulos' math, filling up Rodriguez's Jeep would run about $230.

Consumers don't dodge the bill for all these masked expenditures. Instead, they pay for them indirectly, through higher taxes, or by saddling their children and grandchildren with a ballooning national debt--one that's increasingly financed by foreigners. The result: Unaware of the true costs of their oil habit, U.S. motorists see no obvious reason to curb their energy gluttony.

Outside of Saudi Arabia, the United States has among the lowest gasoline taxes in the industrialized world. After decades of this car-promoting policy, the average American now emits as much carbon dioxide in a day as the average non-American emits in a week.

It's easy to shrug off all of this as liberal drivel, but I don't think so.

I took this picture with my cell phone in Vegas a couple of weeks ago, and I think it illustrates quite a lot about American gluttony and denial...

whatswronghere.jpg

Pete

Guest rockabillybassman
Posted

Our costs here in New Zealand are high because our wonderful gubmint chooses to tack on about 40% taxes "for the improvement of our roads". :rolleyes:

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