I love the small of napalm in the morning,
that smell
You know that gasoline smell,
it smells like wealth transfer!
You know someday this war’s gonna end…
The myth of the victimized, over-taxed, virtuous, and morally superior OIL billionaire would be laughable were it not accepted as religious truth by the majority of GOP~TeaBaggers.
Yeah, if the gas market wasn’t manipulated it’d cost around $8 per gallon, or more.
Your tax dollars at work.
The picture from 2013 seems a little misleading on this post. I know I clicked through just for the shock value. The story is certainly interesting but does not quite have the impact of seeing prices twice what we have here in the Midwest.
So, are higher gas prices a good thing, or a bad thing??
I will be so happy if this backfires and the high prices drive more to Electic Vehicles and they end up without customers! mwahahahahaha
For those us who think gas is massively underpriced – what’s the problem?
I would prefer a straight-up carbon tax that flowed into public coffers, but since environmental regulations 1 are what made this monopoly possible in the first place this strikes me as at least a step in the right direction.
Also, funny that no-one griped when LA gas prices were held artificially low by government market manipulation. Unlink other commodities, it is illegal to export Crude Oil from the United States. Thus, Alaska’s crude has been force-fed to the US west coast instead of flowing to it’s natural market in East Asia, measurably lowering gas prices in California for decades.
1 As a breather of LA air, I am heavily in favor of these regulations. However, as Arco (now BP) realized in the 80s, these regulations gave a competitive advantage to the largest refineries. Some clever ARCO exec took this a step further, and became a big public supporter of “clean air”, stopped fighting (some of ) the regulations, and happily watched the regulations effectively drive Arco’s low price competitors out of busisness.(the Santa Fe refinery, for example)
Petrol in the UK is, what, $7 a gallon?
Aren’t these prices similar to 2008?
Ask the person next to you at the gas station pump, if you have the courage…
If only the higher prices would serve to keep the crappier drivers off the roads…
If you care at all about future generations of humans, you want gas prices to be as high as possible. That way your great-grandchildren won’t have to be in the .000001% in order to gain access to clean air and cheap, effective lubricants.
The US government colludes with other, similar entities to keep gas prices nominally low through tax and market manipulation. But the people who steer the US government quite openly say they believe that Jesus is coming back, and if that happens of course the world is ending anyway, so they don’t really have any reason to care about long term issues. Right now, in the short term, they like low gas prices… and they like pollution, because pollution enables and empowers them.
Energy gouging California is nothing new (see Enron). But CA also requires special fuel which requires special blending stock that must be put on a boat and sent through the Panama Canal. Additionally, low refinery capacity makes the west coast fuel more expensive.
I wouldn’t have a problem if we paid a lot to make the world a better place - in this case, we’re paying a lot (and only some of us based on where we live) because the companies are jacking the price and making all the money.
Let’s see:
Uk average unleaded price- 116.75p /litre
there are 3.78541 Litres in a US gallon, so 441.95p / US Gallon
ÂŁ1 currently buys $1.55636, so the answer is:
$6.87 a gallon. So yeah, you’re about right.
Honestly, it would still make the world a better place (by balancing out at least a little of the market distortion, and making cleaner alternatives more cost-competitive) if it wasn’t for what those companies are likely to be doing with that money. Like buying legislators and regulators, for example.
Even if you just focus on branded (or on unbranded) stations, the variability in gas prices in California is very high. Right now the branded stations in Berkeley are $3.40-3.50/gallon, while in nearby Vallejo the same brands are around $3.20. That is unlikely to be due to manipulation at the level of refinery.
That and they are literally gouging people.
Everywhere else in the world - like western europe - that has high prices compared to us, all that has been built in for many decades as opposed to gouging. Also built in is plenty of mass transit. Those of us that live in Southern CA don’t have that option when we need to get to work. I’m not having to give things up because of this, but there are those that are less fortunate for whom this is a major play in their life when all of a sudden prices skyrocket.
Hydrocarbon-based lubricants can be made from plant materials. Or from any carbon-rich materials, from waste biomass to coal, via the Fischer-Tropsch route.
They won’t be cheap. The embodied energy costs of making them will be far higher than drilling through 70 feet of Titusville shale was. Once the cheap oil is gone, all other energy costs go up too…
