American Gasoline

PRICE OF GASOLINE
Compared with Gasoline Think a gallon of gas is expensive?
This makes one think, and also puts things in perspective.

Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29 ..... $10.32 per gallon
Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19 ..$9.52 per gallon
Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 .... $10.17 per gallon
Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 ... $10.00 per gallon
Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 ......... $33.60 per gallon
Vick's Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 .... $178.13 per gallon
Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85 ....... $123.20 per gallon
Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 ...... . $25.42 per gallon
Scope 1.5 oz $0.99 ......$84.48 per gallon

And this is the REAL KICKER...
Evian water 9 oz $1.49..........$21.19 per gallon?
$21.19 for WATER - and the buyers don't even know the source.

So, the next time you're at the pump, be glad your car doesn't run onwater, Scope, or Whiteout, or God forbid Pepto Bismol or Nyquil.

Just a little humor to help ease the pain of your next trip to the pump

Thanks Brock.
The charts sort of "put things in perspective".

Glenn

That list serves no basis for comparison. Nobody uses 10 gallons or more of those items per week out of necessity. Gas compared to the cost of tap water is very expensive. Gas has almost caught up with the price of milk.

I don't know that it puts things in perspective. If gasoline was sold in 4 ounce, or 16 ounce bottles or cans, it would likely bring those prices too. The smaller the package, the greater percentage of costs goes into labor, packaging and production overhead.

Of course the bottled water is a scam but most of the other fluids are used in such small quantities that, as BF Hammer said, this is not an accurate comparison. At the most, only a few ounces of white out or brake fluid are used per year. Many households, with two long commutes, use 50 gallons of gas per week.

In 1949 the US consumed about 2.4 million gallons of gas per day. Now we use about nine million. Our refineries are more efficient and we use 3+ times the 1949 amount. One might reason that we should see more benefit from these increases.

The rapid increase in gas price when no shortage exists may amount to exactly what is seems. If somebody has a good explanation for the large, quick, increase, I'm willing to read or listen.

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jayflash said:
If somebody has a good explanation for the large, quick, increase, I'm willing to read or listen.

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I'll take a stab at it:

We "need" it. They've got it. We control the demand. They control production (supply). We pay the ransom because we think we have no choice.

OK, that's how the "bad guys" get us. The way the American oil companies get us (better than the bad guys since they're at least American, right?) is because... drum roll please... they CAN. See demand reason above. The phrase "free market" rings a bell.

Look back to the 70's and you'll see the same thing. What was the explanation then?

40 years ago was the time to have done something about the problem. Then 30 years ago, then 20... and of course NOW, again, is the time to do something about it. This black gold is finite, folks. There are alternatives, we (the motoring public) have simply ignored them and continue to do so. Nobody is screwing us. We're screwing ourselves.

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BF Hammer said:
Gas has almost caught up with the price of milk.

[/ QUOTE ]Take another glance at the Chart that Brock linked to. Gas isn't "catching up" with anything. It has been dropping in real dollars. We're paying today the same real dollars for gas as we did in the 70's. And quite a bit less as compared to the distant past. For how valuable gasoline should be to us as an energy source, it is cheaper than dirt. If we compare cost per energy content, I think you'll find gasoline is the cheapest on the list no matter how small the portion. And I mean the cheapest BY FAR.

nice to see the link I posted in the other thread is getting some good use /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

For the record, that's just an e-mail I got.

I found it funny, nothing more. Of course it's unrealistic due to mentioned overheads, packaging, and limited sales, but it's still interesting to compare different fluids.

Eh.

Anyone else here join the gas boycott on the 19Th? Gas went up ten cents a gallon 2 days later. hummm.

The same thing happened in the 70's and early 80's with a little twist. Back then people drove huge cars with large gas sucking V-8 engines and gas started to jump when OPEC came into vogue. People started buying smaller cars and the government created CAFE standards with a loop hole--trucks.
The price of gas fell again but did we learn anything? Hell no! Started buying SUVs, living 50 miles from work and gasoline was being burned at record levels.
China was making trillions off their exports so they started using a lot more oil. OPEC is getting close to maxing out it's capacity and us really intelligent Americans have not built refinery capacity...or alternative power plants.
So, the world is using much more oil and for the first time in decades, the US has to pay a little for gasoline. If you are sitting 50 miles from work in a SUV and whining... I find it funny. You are the problem that caused this.
I hope the price keeps moving upward, maybe stabilize at $3+ per gallon. The price needs to move up since as a country, we are do damned stupid to learn anything. Just use up finite resources, get a 2 to 3 ton vehicles, build roads everywere because we have the "right" to do what we want.
Looks like the jig is up, I hope the price per barrel stabilizes at $40 - $45, maybe after a few years even the idiots will see the light. The great thing is China needs more and more oil, no more $1 gas so everyone needs to adjust.

The "boycott" is a joke. Not buying gas for a day doesn't have any effect on anything if you're still *using* gas by driving around and you merely shift your purchase by one day earlier or later.

If everyone in the US left their cars parked for a whole day, it would cause some disruption by screwing with inventory levels but I don't think we'd see any meaningful price movement.

Additionally, anyone who brings up the idea of tapping the strategic petroleum reserve as a way to lower prices is either ignorant or just trying to pull some bogus political stunt (most likely the latter). The reserve is crude oil, not refined gasoline, and even if it could be dumped directly into the market the amount that could be released without jepeordizing the mission of the reserve would be way too small to have any effect on prices.

I won't even stoop to discuss the idiocy of price caps.

I regularly get dumb e-mail forwards from co-workers about "gas boycotts" - which I regularly round-file. These same people have tremendous vehicles with far more engine volume than they'll ever use 99% of the time. The tone of these forwards is borderline delusional - always sprinkled with things like "exercise our power as consumers," and "send a message to the big oil companies." Feh.

The oil companies don't give those boycotts a second thought, because it's not like people will do anything substantial to change their consumption habits.

So you boycott Exxon, or don't buy gas on the next "national gas boycott day." Big deal. Is the average American going to look hard at fuel economy on their next vehicle, or just buy a trendy SUV - the same American that's delightfully self-righteous about their divine right to buy huge vehicles and consume unlimited amounts of energy?

No, it's business as usual for the oil companies, even if the masses rage against high gas prices. Until large numbers of people start taking individual action to reduce their personal dependency on unlimited cheap energy, nothing will change.

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idleprocess said:
Until large numbers of people start taking individual action to reduce their personal dependency on unlimited cheap energy, nothing will change.

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I don't like this attitude. It reeks of defeatism - it almost assumes that we can't develop the technology to cleanly generate more energy than we're generating now. I want to consume MASSIVE amounts of energy. 10, maybe 20x what I'm consuming now. Of course, I don't want to pay current rates. I don't even know what I'd use that much energy for, but the applications will become apparent once it's available. I don't believe that conservation is the answer. Instead, I'd much rather see more work on solar energy. There's a ton of energy being beamed at our planet every day, we just have to capture it and put it to work for us.

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tylerdurden said:
I don't like this attitude. It reeks of defeatism - it almost assumes that we can't develop the technology to cleanly generate more energy than we're generating now.

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The vast majority of energy generated (or perhaps I should say "released") today is from fossil fuels. Extract, process, then burn to produce heat, motion, or nudge electrons in a particular direction. After fossil fuels, it starts to get more difficult to extract/produce energy.

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I want to consume MASSIVE amounts of energy. 10, maybe 20x what I'm consuming now. Of course, I don't want to pay current rates. I don't even know what I'd use that much energy for, but the applications will become apparent once it's available. I don't believe that conservation is the answer.

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I'm having trouble with this statement. You want to consume more energy for... the sake of sonsuming more energy?

If you don't like present energy costs, just wait until you have to foot the bill for new energy-generating technologies that aren't as relatively cheap and easy as burning coal or extracting/refining petrolium.

I can understand why you're leery of conservation, because many energy-efficiency advocates are environemtalist weenies that would like to see a return to energy consumption trends of the 1850s (ie, each person consumes little to no external energy). These are the same people that want electric cars to be as uninteresting (and low-performing save for efficiency) as possible to discourage ANY excessive energy consumption. However, almost everything you do now or want to do can be done substantially more efficiently, so don't look at "conservation" as a problem.

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Instead, I'd much rather see more work on solar energy. There's a ton of energy being beamed at our planet every day, we just have to capture it and put it to work for us.

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What do you think you're doing when you burn gasoline or use electricity from the local coal-fired power plant? You're consuming stored solar energy.

PV solar tech is nice, but it has limitations. A PV cell has to be running at at least 50% duty cyle for 2-4 years to produce as much energy as it took to manufacture the panel.

It's difficult to imagine any huge energy breakthroughs on the horizon that will yield clean and safe energy "too cheap to meter" for all inhabitants of the world.

I'm glad gas prices are going up, maybe someday they'll reach what Europeans pay.

It's pretty silly when you think about it, watching 100-pound women driving 4000 pound SUVs. What a waste.

idleprocess said:...people that want electric cars to be as uninteresting (and low-performing save for efficiency) as possible to discourage ANY excessive energy consumption.

Actually (Darell could answer this better than I), electric cars can be built for very high performance without sacrificing efficiency; unlike a gas car. With a gas car, you have to have a big honkin' motor to have high performance...and that big honkin' motor won't give very good efficiency. But with an EV, you can have an electric motor with the potential for high performance but still will convert electricity quite efficiently for normal driving.

I don't know about anyone else but for me conserving energy, whether it be gasoline or coal, is much easier financially. My honda accord costs less to fill up and gets me good milage. Sure, its not a speedster but i'm not out to race anyone to the next stoplight anyway. And simply replacing all my household bulbs to fluorescent has significantly cut my electricity cost (by 50% at least). Plus i don't feel so guilty about needlessly wasting precious resources. Then again, i could look at all those people who can afford it and could care less about energy consumption and say, what will it matter if i use less while everyone else uses more? Well, i figure i'll live by example. So far others in my family have switched to fluorescent bulbs and like the cost savings. I also figure if my car gets 20-30+ mpg i won't be as affected by rising gas costs. If nothing else, conservation can save the average person a fair amount of cash at the end of the month.

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idleprocess said:
I'm having trouble with this statement. You want to consume more energy for... the sake of sonsuming more energy?

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I want to BE ABLE TO consume more energy without having to worry about the cost. I don't want to be constrained by the supply of fossil fuel on the market.

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If you don't like present energy costs, just wait until you have to foot the bill for new energy-generating technologies that aren't as relatively cheap and easy as burning coal or extracting/refining petrolium.

I can understand why you're leery of conservation, because many energy-efficiency advocates are environemtalist weenies that would like to see a return to energy consumption trends of the 1850s (ie, each person consumes little to no external energy). These are the same people that want electric cars to be as uninteresting (and low-performing save for efficiency) as possible to discourage ANY excessive energy consumption. However, almost everything you do now or want to do can be done substantially more efficiently, so don't look at "conservation" as a problem.

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Boy, we're in agreement here. I really can't stand those who advocate "returning to a simpler lifestyle" and imagine that peasants in fuedal societies had it made because they were self-sufficent. They purposefully forget to mention the fact that they led miserable lives. Constant toil, early death, etc. Most people who use the term "sustainable" are covertly advocating a return to the "Nasty, brutish, and short" days.

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What do you think you're doing when you burn gasoline or use electricity from the local coal-fired power plant? You're consuming stored solar energy.

PV solar tech is nice, but it has limitations. A PV cell has to be running at at least 50% duty cyle for 2-4 years to produce as much energy as it took to manufacture the panel.

It's difficult to imagine any huge energy breakthroughs on the horizon that will yield clean and safe energy "too cheap to meter" for all inhabitants of the world.

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There's the defeatism. It's not difficult to imagine at all. Organic solar cells are quickly becoming cheaper and more efficient. It's not far fetched to consider rooftop solar arrays mated with home electrolysis (reverse fuel cells) systems to produce hydrogen to power your home and fuel your car in the next 25 years (it might not be the norm, but it may not be unheard of for the common man).

To think that progress won't continue is to ignore human history.