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  • From: Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] price of gasoline
  • Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 16:26:45 -0400

on Thu, Aug 28, 2003 at 04:14:19PM -0400, Ken VanDine wrote:
> I am a capitalist and still hate the oil industry!

I worked for a while in a gas station tax dodge for a fuel oil business
in Maine. You'd be amazed to learn that it is possible to run out of gas.
It is also possible to run out of fuel oil, diesel, L/P, kerosene, and
other products. There are contracts that must be signed for any small
gas station owner to affiliate themselves with a brand such as Shell or
Mobil, etc. and they are usually to the detriment of the owner, as the
oil companies know it costs money to switch the branding, etc.

The guy I worked for would often buy gas from whoever had it cheapest,
as opposed to from the Shell or Citgo or Mobil terminal or wherever he
was supposed to buy it from under his agreements. Sometimes this was a
necessity (the "right" terminal was out of a given kind of gas) and at
others he was just pissed at the "parent company", or thought they were
charging too much. This is why I don't put much stock in wild claims
about how much better Mobil gas is than Shell or vice versa.

That said, it bears mentioning that environmentalists have fought tooth
and nail whenever oil companies tried to improve the situation regarding
having deep water ports for oil and gas deliveries. So, sometimes you
just have to suffer the extra costs involved in having to truck gas from
a state with a weak environmental lobby to a state where such ports have
successfully been blocked. In Maine, this often meant that large
shipments of oil were made to Boston rather than Searsport or Portland
or Bangor, so Boston skimmed the profits off the top. (It's difficult to
say whether the Boston oil ports were backing the efforts of
environmentalists in Maine out of greed or to preserve Maine for when
they retired).

Anyway, most of the cost of gas (In Maine, anyway - I dunno about NC) is
taxes. When I was working (1986-8) and you could still get regular gas,
it cost 99.9/g - 60/g for the gas, when bought in bulk and the rest in
state, federal, road and other taxes. We used to sell fuel oil for
off-road use (in farm tractors and so forth) and I was amazed at how
cheap it was (45/g); especially given that it was 80/g for the exact
same thing (No. 2 fuel oil) when used in a house in an oil furnace.

Oh, OK - here 'tis:

http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/statistics/gas_taxes_by_state_2002.html

In NC, we pay $0.40/g in taxes. I think crude accounts for ~$0.60/g and
refining for another $0.60/g or so.

Here's what the gas tax pays for:


http://www.ncdot.org/transit/transitnet/PublicInfo/TransitFinance/Overview.html

More info on MTBE:

http://energycommerce.house.gov/107/hearings/11012001Hearing407/print.htm


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