Oil company math

Five years ago. Oil, $47/barrel. Premium gasoline, $0.559/litre. Today: Oil, $48/barrel. Premium gasoline, $0.909/litre.

It's nice of them in this time of economic problems to really pitch in like this.

Reply to
Get lost
Loading thread data ...

Don't forget to factor in the effects of a Fiat currency. As it depreciates, the prices rise. You are blaming the wrong establishment. Our leaders are stealing us blind and no one seems to care.

Reply to
columbotrek

Some people care. They are labeled 'kooks' as they have been for decades. Sane and normal people believed in the fed, the regulators, the state, etc... only crazy, paranoid, and otherwise mentally ill people thought they were all stealing from us.

Anyway, his analysis eliminates much of the devaluing of the money by looking at the ratio between raw material (oil) and finished product (gasoline). Something is still afoot besides the fed.

Reply to
Brent

I may be wrong but I'm assuming that the oil giants have grown to point where share holders and others are expecting a healthy return on their investment. If this can't come from crude, it has to come from retail. I've heard enough BS from top oil types to realize it is unlikely the consumer will ever get a straight answer. The $ is the bottom line.

Reply to
Mach1

The most likely suspect is the consolidation in gasoline refining. In the 1990s big oil companies decided that capacity (relative to demand) had to decrease to bring up margins on gasoline. They achieved this by buying up independents and shutting them down or otherwise reducing the number of refineries concentrating production. That's why the slightest blip sends prices up when it didn't do that 15+ years ago.

Reply to
Brent

Well, they like the tax percentage they take from gasoline sales (about 60% of it) in Canada. Which means all those farcical "investigations" into oil company prices by the government end up going nowhere.

Reply to
Get lost

Imperial/Exxon/Esso still has the record for the highest profit in one year of any company on the planet, ever. Meanwhile, the station owners still get zippo.

Reply to
Get lost

they are trying to squeeze the station owners out as well from what I've read. the goal being to have company owned stations instead.

Reply to
Brent

I thought the goal was to establish electric recharging centers coast to coast.

Heh.

dwight

Reply to
dwight

I dont see how electric recharging stations are ever gonna work. If you want to recharge in under 10 minutes, recharging stations have to have multiple mega watts to recharge several cars at once.

Recharging at home overnite or at work during the day works. But cross country trips and such seem to be out of the question. You need to wait an hour or more to recharge.

G
Reply to
Gene Wagenbreth

Swap out the batteries with a set that is fully charged. Assuming there is a design for this....slide out/in tray??

Reply to
Mach1

The problem is that you either have to own two batter 'packs' and go home to get the other one or you have to use one that comes from some sort of charging station.... you give up your good battery pack and get something of sketchy/unknown origin.

I can see it now... teenagers disabling safety circuits to get rapid discharges of large amounts of current for quick 1/4 mile thrill... they swap the battery pack at the recharging station and get another one... some unsuspecting car owner gets the modified one and it fries his car's motor controller....

The stations respond with a system to check the packs so the teenagers wire 'em back up stock to turn them in and fool the check, but they do it half-assed and eventually it falls apart stranding someone at the side of the road or damaging their vehicle or both. Even with tracking who had what pack it could make it through a half dozen or more vehicles before it craps out. Everyone points at everyone else.

Eventually most of the problems will be worked out but I doubt it will ever get down to the level of the accidental diesel fuel in the unleaded tank frequency.

Reply to
Brent

Well, buy their stock then and get rich. Simple, right?

Imperial/Exxon/Esso still has the record for the highest profit in one year of any company on the planet, ever. Meanwhile, the station owners still get zippo.

Reply to
Brad and Karen

The plan is to put a wind turbine on top of every electric car. Then it can recharge itself as it motors down the highway. It is the elusive perpetual motion machine coming to us all. ;)

Reply to
Michael Johnson

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.