Gas
You will never find me whining about the price of gas, nor will you ever hear me bashing the oil companies or gas stations. As a famous economist* once said, “Prices go up, prices go down.” Filling up the gas tank in my Explorer is just a routine part of day-to-day living that I absorb. Coffee prices have gone up a bit lately, too, but you don’t see me complaining about that, either. And really, how can you take someone seriously who is complaining about paying $3.00 for a gallon of gas, when that same person likely purchased a Mocha-Latte-Grande-Skim-Frothy Thingie at the local beanery for $4.25? Still, having said all that, it’s still pretty cool to be living in one of the “green” counties listed on the Gas Prices Map (which I first saw over at GeeGuy’s place).
* Famous Economist was, in fact, a retail clerk my wife encountered 10 years ago who was trying to explain why the price of a blouse had gone up a dollar…when my wife asked her about it, the clerk flipped a palm and said with authority, “You know…sometimes prices go up, prices go down,” and then walked away.
I don’t really complain much. Of course my two cars are a 97 Escort and an 04 Focus, so my mpg aren’t bad. The idea of paying 31 dollars to fill up an Escort does seem a bit unnatural to me, though.
Although I live in the “less green” area of the country (Dallas/Ft. Worth 2.93 a gallon), I look at it this way. I pay 3.09 for a gallon of milk. The way my son drinks the stuff, I am spending more filling him up than my gas tank.
I’m still trying to comprehend putting more than $40 worth of gas into my Mustang.
What puzzles me about the map is why the greenest areas are in Montana and Missouri. These are not areas with lots of oil wells or refineries (as far as I know). Maybe the gasoline taxes are lower, but there are other states with low taxes. Any ideas?
MarkFL, I’m not sure about all the reasons, but I do know places like Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and other big metro areas are required to switch over to reformulated gasoline during the summer months. Thought not like L.A., the polution gets intense here in the summer. We have plenty of red ozone days. The reformulated gasoline burns cleaner, but costs more to reformulate, hence the higher price. I know places like San Antonio and Oklahoma City don’t have these EPA requirements, and gas prices in those cities are generally 20 cents a gallon or so cheaper. Plus, beginning Monday, at least here in DFW, large cities and even medium metro areas are required to start using an ethanol blend of gas. They say there is a shortage of it, which also causes prices to shoot up, along with shortages, which we are already experiencing in some suburbs here.
Mark, Montana gets its gas mostly from Wyoming. I think why it’s higher in metro areas is the fact that it’s in high demand and there isn’t enough supply to meet that demand. Yes, we have oil underground our country as we speak, can we get to it? Thanks to the environmentalists and what not, we haven’t built a new refinery (like in the “4 corners” area, there is enough oil to last us 400 years) since the 1970s and this is hurting us.
I think the thing that is frustrating is that we HAVE to pay those prices for gas to go to work and run errands. Now if one chooses to pay that $4.25 for a fancy coffee then that’s their perogative but to have to pay so much for something that’s a necessity is what is chapping peoples’ asses. It’s a situation where the common person feels helpless and like the oil companies are holding them hostage to a point. Just my $3.00 worth. ~,^
I think the oil companies’ take on a gallon of gasoline is around the $.10 range, give or take. Unca Sam takes almost $.50/gallon of gas in taxes, and that is just federal tax. So no, it’s not “big oil” holding you hostage, it’s your own guvmint. And yet still roughly have of the country voted for Kerry in 2004, and he wanted to raise gas taxes by about $.30/gallon MORE. But I bet more people knew his position on abortion or gun laws than that.
Common people aren’t helpless. . .just lazy. Less than half of us vote and 99% who do vote continue to choose the “lesser of 2 evils” and vote either Dem or Rep. There are other options out there folks. . .but you’re not going ot find them sitting on your chapped asses whining about “evil” oil companies.
The oil company that catches the most grief, probably because it’s the largest and therefore generates the biggest numbers, is ExxonMobil, which earned something like $36 billion last year - not quite a 10-percent return on its investment. I did almost that well on my 401(k).
The Federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon; states levy taxes of their own, from the 15-cent range to more than 30 cents. (Total tax on a gallon does indeed approach half a buck.)
Let’s see…10 cents for the oil companies, 50 cents for the government. Even if gas is, say, $80 per barrel (I think it’s more like $70, but I’m not sure), that’s $1.45. There’s still almost a dollar left, some of which is local and state taxes.
If we go by CGHill’s numbers, taxes account for only about 50 cents total. Add in 10 cents for the oil companies, between $1.25 and $1.50 for the barrel cost, and you still have nearly a dollar unaccounted for. I understand gas prices being higher in metro areas, because most things are, but the map doesn’t necessarily correspond to metro/rural areas. Meanwhile, the oil companies are getting federal subsidies and their profits go up, as do their executive compensations. Is the money really going into exploring new sources of oil or alternative sources?
But any way you look at it, pump prices often go up when the barrel price doesn’t (and sometimes vice versa), and the prices definitely don’t fluctuate in relation to taxes. As Jon Stewart said, “The real reason gasoline prices fluctuate is that they are controlled by a secret cabal run by Jews, Magic Johnson, and the severed head of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Well, that makes as much sense as any other explanation.”
There are a few other things which add to the tab: transportation costs; additives and oxygenators and such; markup at the wholesale level; actual service-station profit.
EIA numbers through March: price of crude, 55 percent; refining, 22 percent; distribution and marketing, 4 percent; taxes, 19 percent.