OT: Gasoline Cost in Europe

What about diesel?

-- Paul Hovnanian mailto: snipped-for-privacy@Hovnanian.com

------------------------------------------------------------------ You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. -- Eric Hoffer

What makes me mad is we have a lot of good young people dying over there in Iraq and we havn't nationalized their oil industry to pay for our "liberating" their country, in fact, they are still members of OPEC. Sometimes the folks who manage "Pax Americana" don't think about cost recovery. I know the production is small there, but jeeze, selling that oil here cheaply would have to offset some of the cost we are adding to our children's debt and taxes. Afganistan was justified, but Iraq is a mess. too much bitten off much too soon. Oh well. I voted for the BIG OIL Veep and Prez hoping they would jump start the economy using traditional Republican techniques, but now I'm getting my just reward.

Own opinions only.

Steve Roberts

They hose us (literally :-) around here with the boutique gas blend required by the smog laws... specific percentage of ethanol required in Arizona is different than in CA.

And the Democrats play this crap for all it's worth... NOpolitaNO vetoes any legislature bill that would standardize blends.

She's up for re-election this November... let's hope... but we're almost over-run by Mexicans and they vote Democrat, citizen or not :-(

...Jim Thompson

Reminds me of the good ol days when the US tried metric enforcement for a while, with freeways measured in kilometers and gasoline in liters. Gas was so cheap (bout 40 cents) that I drive 100 everywhere.

months.

According to the news, light sweet Brent crude is up to about $75 a barrel for delivery in June. Light sweet Brent crude comes from the North Sea.

By my best estimate of how So CaL refineries work, no North Sea oil goes in, and it would have to have gone in over a week ago to be at my local pumps today.

So how did OPEC get my dollar?

All the OPEC countries concert to set prices.

...Jim Thompson

In case you missed it, The Best Government on Earth recently allowed the merger of Exxon and Mobil. Exxon was born as Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Mobil as Standard Oil of New York. Both of those births were required by regulatory action splitting up the Standard Oil Trust monopoly over 100 years ago.

I understand it completely.

Nearly £1 litre in the UK ( $1.80 )

Graham

US Octane is different ( like everyting else in the USA ! ). The USA uses PON - rest of the world AFAIK uses RON

Graham

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Yep, the problem with people is that they vote because of there heart and not there brain. People vote for someone cause they like there looks, cause same race, or has same last name, etc... This is why we are in the trouble we are in. Back when this country was working its way up I'm sure this problem wasn't as rampant. This is the same problem why politicians as partisian. If we could abolish parties then people would have to win based more on merit then anything else(well, one would have to figure out a way to make everyone get a far shot(i.e., remove hard/soft money issues).

What I truely believe is that the reason we have so many problems is mainly because we allow people who don't have any common sense and an education(not necessarily a formal one). i.e., you can be the dumbest f*ck in the world but if you have the money you can be a politician. You should be required to have basic knowledge in science(math, physics, chemistry, electrical, geology, etc...). These people who are making potentially devastating laws usually don't have a clue about these things. They should have a school for politicians that teach them all about science, philosophy, ethics, law, etc... Its not going to happen though ;/

The problem I see with the democrates now days is that they are willing to say anything if they think it can score them political points. They hate republicans so much that it doesn't matter if what they say is total garbage... they know that there base will believe it. Republicans do the same thing but not nearly to the extent of democrates.

I get the feeling that the democrates and republicans are playing this big game. But the game is actually with the american people. They are actually working together to create conflict and try to confuse the american people so they will have a nice job for a very long time. If there was no conflict we would need very few people to run the government(if any). Note that even if they do not do this intentionally it have the same end result. (sorta like if two businesses work together to destroy another. They don't know they are working for the same cause but the end result is that the third business gets ganged)

I feel that it will get much worse before the american people will have to do something about it. Then it will get better... then we will fall in the same trap. Until we learn that we have to make permanant laws preventing this kinda childish behavior by people who run our government we will always have kids in there(because the kids are attracted to it). (although when the next wave of illegals come it, it makes it just that much harder to do anything)

Jon

That's because it doesn't damn well belong to you and it's none of your business !

Graham

Well, I have conflicting views on iraq. I'm not just going to say it was a bad idea because it maid prices go up or people died because of it(those are stupid arguments because no one can prove them and more people might have died because of it). I think your real issue is that you don't believe that bush did it for the "right" reasons.

I'm not a military strategist so I cannot say for sure if it could have been handled any better. I do think that there are some big problems but there are always problems. Its very easy for anyone to sit back and criticize the administration but its very well possible that if they were the administration they would have done the exact same thing.

Whats more at the heart is figuring out why we went to war(the real truth). If bush did this because he totally thought it was the right thing and thought they did everything possible to do it right then we cannot fault him unless it was incompetence. If it was then obviously its our own faults for putting him there. Al Gore could have done the same exact thing if he won and you know the obvious results(would be identical but reversed(well, atleast for the most part)).

The problem you are overlooking, and many americans and politicians, is that if we somehow reduced the price of gas just to satistfy people and make them happy(like removing the tax, etc...) we are only ignoring the real issues why it is expensive. Lets suppose the real reason it is expensive is because there is just not much more gas.... no matter what we do to make it cheaper will make more gas. Instead of focusing on temporary fixes we should focus on the long term and see just how we can avoid these problems(which we should have already done the last time this happened).

If its not because of limited supply then its because of something else. The problem is because of all the conspiracies, stupid people, politics, etc involved we can't get at the real issues why this is happening. Its the american peoples own fault for the way they treat problems. Always putting it off until the last moment. We could have prevented these problems long ago by making sure only those in government are only after the truth and the best way. (and one would have to avoid incompetence too)

I don't know the real issues but sometimes I feel that this might be a good thing. Maybe when prices hit 10$/g the american people will stop acting so stupid and then admit they have a problem(because we do). Then they might just try and implement some method to insure against these things happening.

What you see now is people's, and americans in particular, major problem of instant gratification. When just about every american has this need to get everything cheap and fast and you multiply it by 500M then you get these huge potential problems.... eventually they are realized and you get anarchy. You see the effective reflection in our politians... They don't have a clue whats going on and are running around like chickens with there heads chopped off. They've been playing these games all there life and don't realize its not a game and things are getting serious. I hope I'm wrong but I think its quite possible that the current major issues today could ruin america tomarrow(in the near future... 10-20 years). I desperately hope that there are enough politians that will realize they need to step up to the plate before its to late. I think we do have a few but a few is not enough.

Ofcourse all this could just be a huge game played by the oil companies and politicians to trick us into giving them more money... I surely wouldn't doubt it. If thats the case then either way(if they are or arn't) we still screwed.

lol.

Jon

Jon

The longterm average profit for big US oil companies runs close to the overall corporate average, a bit above 5% of sales. 5% of $200 billion is a lot of money, but it's still 5%. Short-term, it can spike.

And the applicable definition of "profit" includes capital investments, which can include things like pipelines, refineries, and holes in the ground... not purely cash in the bank.

We need higher gas prices in this country, not lower.

John

I agree. That's why I've been gathering stats on world gasoline prices.

...Jim Thompson

And then let's kill the people who say we should kill the lawyers, and then........

Bull! Let us all head for the nearest micro-brewery and drink to better days.

Make mine a McMenniman's Terminaqtor. A pint, please, and a couple Scotch eggs.

Don

How would you go about deciding how high they should be? Clearly you could raise taxes to the point where gas usage had decreased, say, 20% but total consumer expenditures on gasoline were still the same as today (i.e., by adding roughly 20% in taxes). So effectively you've shifted the money from going to an oil supplier to the government instead... is that your goal? Or are you after helping the environment? Or...? What should the money be spent on?

Just curious...

Me too.

If you follow the leftist weenie crowd, just raise them until everyone switches to mass transit. Makes the transition to a two-tier society easier... keep the paisanos in their place ;-)

...Jim Thompson

For comparison, in Oz right now I'm paying ~$A1.36/litre, or close enough to $US1.00/litre. Obviously varies from state to state.