Diesel prices

Living in the city we don't drive all that much. It was maybe a month since I had topped off the tank on Der Klunker (1981 300SD). So yesterday we filled 'er up. $4.14 per gallon! We will be driving a lot less in future. Just decided an open house this coming Sunday is not worth $20 in fuel costs.

Reply to
Gogarty
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Boy, that's cheap, in the UK it's nearly 3 times that (See

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for acomparison of US to Europe). Richard See
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as I'mselling my caravan and all of my caravanning equipment.

Reply to
Richard Cole

But we don't live in the UK and we don't drive a car sized to UK fuel prices.

Reply to
Gogarty

Reply to
John Schofield

None the less we (collectively) drive huge diesel pickups that haven't got a scratch in the bed and and might get used twice a year to tow a boat they can't afford to put fuel in either. The rest of the time we're driving them solo. The Ford Ranger with a 2.5 turbodiesel is made in the USA and YOU CAN'T GET IT HERE.

Reply to
JD

That's very old figures (August 2005)

Here in Germany a typical price today is 1,37 Euro/litre for Diesel and

1,45 Euro/litre for Premium (Super).

In UK currency that's 1.04 pounds resp. 1.10 GBP.

In US terms that's 5,19 Euro per gallon Diesel and 5,49 Euro per gallon Premium.

Based upon the high Euro and the weak US Dollar Germans on vacation in the US would pay Euro 2.70 per gallon Diesel, that's 0.71 Euro per litre. In other words: Fuel in the US today is half of the German price.

Reply to
Juergen .

Sorry, I realised now that that data was completely out-of-date.

The current UK price average according to the AA

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is 112.1 pence per litre, so 1us gallon = 3.78541178 litres = 424.34p per US gallon = $2.12 per gallon at$2=£1 which isn't to bad compared to the price in Kansas of $3.54 pergallon
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Richard See
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as I'mselling my caravan and all of my caravanning equipment.

Reply to
Richard Cole

The telling side of the equation is how much of the price is taxes. According to this (

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) you guys in Europe are getting screwed royally by taxation while we apparently pay more to the oil companies. I guess that revolution paid off. Now to do the same to the corporations. JD

Reply to
JD

I bought an older Mercedes (84 300sd) to run biodiesel and WVO(waste veggie oil) in. For that year of car it costs $500 US to convert and the WVO is free from a restaurant that gives it to me. The biodiesel costs the same as diesel at the pump. Plus, I sleep better at night.

Jeff

Reply to
Rooster

that is because your government uses fuel taxes to fund it's socialist policies, the price of fuel is about the same in any country that is an importer of fuel, the differences in price is because of taxes imposed __________________________________________ Never argue with an idiot. They'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Reply to
jdoe

I don't think any one would sleep well at $4.00/g, soon it will creep up to $5.69. I'm glad I fixed my new C280 to be 2X fuel efficient, roughly speaking, I spent $1.62/g for the same distance you burn on a $3.40/g or $4/g.

Reply to
JakTheHammer

And I guess rising world demand and the fact that oil went from $20 a barrel to $100 in a relatively short period of time has nothing to do with it? If you want to place blame for high prices, start with the governments that form OPEC, ie Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Indonesia, etc. And then I'd also blame the environmental extremists that won't allow drilling in many areas of the USA, like offshore, ANWR, etc.

Reply to
trader4

The high oil prices are at least in part due to the manipulation of the futures market and manipulation by the big international capitalist oil corporations in cooperation with their OPEC partners. When the Saudis split 50-50 with Exxon, which is what the deal is, do you think Exxon thinks about a kid freezing in an apartment in Chicago, or their billionaire buddies in Saudi Arabia when they make pricing decisions?

For example, about a month ago the media here in the U.S. was full of stories for about a day about the record high gasoline inventories which they were arguing would bring the cost of gasoline down by $0.50 U.S. per gallon over the next few months.

Then, only a day later, Exxon filed its lawsuit to freeze $12 billion in Venezuelan assets over a dispute over $712 million worth of Exxon property that Venezuelan law expropriated based on historic exploitation of the Venezuelan economy and people by Exxon. Chevron/ Phillips and other big oil companies had reached agreeable terms with Venezuelan oil, but Exxon chose to fight in court. Then the media was full of stories that Chavez threatened to cut of oil supplies to the U.S., which Chavez promptly denied. The denials didn't hit the news for about a week, however, and in the meantime, the futures market bid oil up over $100 per barrel based upon the "uncertainty of supply" because of the comments of Chavez that he actually had not made.

Then when the Chavez speech where he denied the comments finally broke through the iron curtain and got in our media, the media started a story that OPEC was probably going to cut its output at its upcoming meeting in May, which conveniently coincided with the futures market decisions, and, again a story that was a pure speculative fabrication, sending oil to its current record levels.

Now the money to pay for roads and schools and health care (which, by the way, is the most expensive in the world in the U.S.), has to come from somewhere. There is no free lunch, as the capitalists like to say, so when a citizen in Germany or England pays taxes at the pump, it replaces taxes or other expenditures that have to come from somewhere. In other words, we pay for our low gasoline prices in bumpy roads and collapsing bridges and lack of health care, etc.

When we spend money on things using borrowed money at the Federal level that money also has to come from somewhere. It comes from the same people who are not paying their fair share in taxes. That increases the National Debt, which means that more and more of the tax money taken out of the wages of working people goes straight into the bank accounts of the same rich people who have had their taxes cut. Those monies go into their bank accounts in the form of interest payments on the National Debt because, obviously, when the Federal Government has to borrow money because the rich are not paying their fair share, they have to get the money somewhere, and the only place is from people who have money, the rich, so then the rich get back interest payments on the money they should have been paying in taxes in the first place, raising the taxes on you and me and just about everybody else. (Most people are not rich and have no chance of becoming so.)

When we pay more at the pump it all goes to Exxon/Mobile and their executives and stockholders so they have more money to lend the Federal Government so we can pay them even more in interest on their money.

Wake up people. The common man is getting completely screwed under this system and will continue to get reamed out as long as the current mass ignorance of what is actually happening continues!

Reply to
heav

You misunderstand me, all of my WVO fuel is free. It doesn't cost me a penny. It is filtered and poured straight into the car. Pure and simple.

As long as you live in a mild climate year round you can do it this way.

In the winter, where I live, you have to add a little diesel, biodiesel or kerosene to thin the mixture.

So, in the winter, the fuel averages about 50 cents a gallon and in the summer it costs ZERO cents a gallon.

All the Best, Jeff

Reply to
Rooster

So, the Saudis split their oil revenue 50-50 with Exxon? According to whom? Reference please.

do

No. Do you think Intel thinks about kids when they decide how much to charge for a CPU chip? Does Kellogs when they decide how to price cereal? Do you when you go to sell a car? Of course not. According to well understood economics, in free markets prices get set by the individual participants to maximize profits. Been going on for hundreds of years and first well documented by Adam Smith in the

1700's.

The gasoline inventories were at 14 month highs, not record highs. Here's one analysts take that I think is a lot closer to reality than all the claims of manipulation:

"In many ways the recent rise in gasoline prices reflects the fuel playing a bit of catch-up to oil, which has been above $85 for more than four months, said Ken Medlock a research fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. Based on the historic price relationship between crude oil and gasoline, Medlock said, retail gasoline should be priced closer to $3.63 per gallon if oil remains at $100."

That's about where prices are right now. Clearly not that far out of line. And oil is a worldwide commodity, with production relatively fixed and worldwide demand from countries like China and India growing.

Cool, a two bit communist dictator seizes Exxon assets and they should just roll over. Sounds like your views about "exploitation" fit right in with Chavez. With all the oil Venezuela is pumping, if there is exploitation, it's within their own country. So, Exxon stand up to a commie and you view that as part of some conspiracy to raise oil prices?

Chevron/

Yeah, why should anyone doubt Chavez, a guy who won;t allow free elections in his own country? He came to the US and made speeches declaring our president to be the devil. Even the King of Spain had enough of his claptrap at a summit in South America and told Chavez to shut up. Chavez's response was to demand an apology or he would nationalize Spain's assets in Venezuela. Hmmm, sound familiar?

The denials didn't hit the news

Welcome to how free markets work. Of course they react to news. They reacted when OPEC, which BTW Venezuela is a member of, stated they would not increase production. They reacted when it looked like Venezuela might get into military conflict with Columbia. They react when a refinery catches fire or a hurricane heads for the Gulf of Mexico.

The story of possibly reducing the target below that of Q4 was reported by multiple news organizations and was based on OPEC SOURCES. What do you expect reporters to do? BTW, if OPEC wanted to deny the story or increase the quotas, they are free to do so. What is this a worldwide conspiracy? Let's see, it's Exxon, Saudi Arabia, the media which can range from NY Times to Fox news, wall street, .... who else is in on this big conspiracy?

Spoken like a true liberal that see higher taxes as the solution to all of life's problems.

Here in NJ federal and state income taxes top out currently at 44%. Social security taxes take another 13%, split between the employer and employee. We have a 7% sales tax. I pay 10,000 a year in property taxes on a 3200 sq ft house. So, tell us, how much more money do you want to take to fix problems. Want to go back to 70% federal rate, like we had in the 70's and the economy that went with it?

=A0That> increases the National Debt, which means that more and more of the tax

Taxes were cut at all levels. It's a blatant lie that they only went to the rich. The top 1% of incomes pay 39% of all the federal income tax. The top 5% pay 60%. Guess how much the bottom 50% paid? A whopping 3%.

BTW, in 1980, when the top fed rate was 70%, guess how much of all income tax the top 1% paid? Answer: 19% That's right. With today's rate that is close to half of what it was in 1980, the highest income folks pay twice what they did back then.

The class warfare argument that you're making goes like this. Guy A pays 30,000 in income tax. Guy B pays 3,000. So, we give everyone a 10% tax cut. Now, A pays 27,000 and B pays 2,700. Guys like you try to maintain it's unfair, because the cuts are only percentage wise equal, and both guys didn't get a $2700 cut.

Try that argument next time your in a store when they have a 10% off sale. But a $10 item and tell them you want the same discount that the guy who pays $100 for something gets. Tell them you should get your item for free.

The unfairness issue was crushed above.

they have to get the money somewhere, and the only place

As if the "rich" are the only ones investing in US govt securities. US debt is widely held by people across the board, around the world. Bond funds that little investors are in own them. Individuals own them through savings bonds. Institutions around the world own them as do foreign central banks.

You really do sound like Hugo Chavez. Maybe even worse. The biggest contributor to the cost of oil is crude. Sure Exxon is making money on the oil they produce themselves from wells they paid to drill. But that doesn't equate to the lions share of the money we are paying for gas going into Exxon's pocket.

Yep, keep railing against a system you don;t even understand. Try taking an economics course or two.

Reply to
trader4

I think your description of your own financial situation indicates that you may want to reconsider which side of the class war you belong on.

Reply to
heav

I'm not the one engaging in class warfare, so I have no side. I'm also not even sure what your comment above is supposed to mean. Are you suggesting someone living in a 3200 sq ft house in NJ meets your definition of rich? Or are you just so shocked that the people in the top 5% of incomes currently pay 60% of all US federal income tax that you fell off your chair?

Reply to
trader4

Check out the history of ARAMCO. It's a 50/50 split

Yes they react with astounding efficiency at the chance to raise prices but seldom are so assiduous about passing on savings to consumers.

Now there's something to be proud of. Look at the numbers a different way; the top 10% control 72% of the wealth leaving 28% for the majority 90%. Now even if you're at the top of that bottom 50% you mentioned that pays only a piddling 3% of the revenue, your income for a family of four is $40,000. Not much left to pay taxes on, is there? And that's at the TOP of that bottom 50%. The way I see it the rich aren't paying proportionately to their wealth

Your argument only works in a flat tax situation

Do a little research. I think you'll find that that top 10% is far more heavily invested on a per capita basis. Never mind the idiocy of selling so much debt to the Chinese that they could sink our enonomy with a mass sell off.

How else do you explain the absolutely obscene level of profits they reported this year? With an administration so heavily vested in the oil industry don't you think it's a little strange that we can build a Ford Ranger turbodiesel pickup that gets 30mpg in the US that you can't buy on these shores? Who stands to gain the most by high fuel consumption? Both the oil companies and the government would lose billions in revenue if CAFE standards were in place.

How about a course in economic history. You might find that wars and revolutions are nearly never about ideology but about money. This from my PhD SIL who teaches economics at Georgetown.

JD

Reply to
JD

Wow, this is the first time I heard this. So you don't mix your wasted oil with other ingredient like Methanol and other ingredients? Methanol is expensive $7-$10/g.

Reply to
JakTheHammer

One small point; WVO used as a fuel is sometimes still subject to state tax (it is in my state) and they have ticketed and fined people for not paying "road use" or "fuel taxes".

YVMV, but I *think* this is true in all 50 US states and probably in Canada. I would imagine that it would also be true elsewhere too.

Reply to
me

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