A fantastic chart to easily see how much you're being gouged on gas

[radwriter0555]

and oil prices.



http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/margins/

There is a far more comprehensive chart at this link, I can't figure out how to post the chart.. it's brilliant and just really explains how ALL the rising costs are in the marketing and profits, NOT in actual fuel costs OR taxes....

[wtmusic]

1. Who's really getting gouged are the dealers

That yellow bar doesn't shrink a bit with rising crude prices, does it? It'd be interesting to see a chart of average CEO salaries alongside this one...

[Warpy]

5. No, the little guy is getting screwed, and that means

the gas station owner and probably the distributors, since the two weren't separated on this chart and both saw their profits decline as the prices escalated.

Don't blame gas station owners when that price keeps jumping. Put the blame where it belongs, on the shoulders of a raving lunatic who keeps waving his weenie at oil producing countries and threatening them with more wars against them. He's making the futures market very nervous, and that's driving that red part of the graph, the crude oil costs.

It's not the Arabs. It's not the refiners. It's not the distributors. It's sure not the guy who owns the gas station. It's HIM.

[Jim Warren]

9. Yer prolly right with that

Anyone else notice gas stations closing? In the greater area around me I've seen maybe 4 or 5 little guys out of business in the last couple months.

[MadHound]

2. I don't get where you're seeing that the costs are in marketing, profits

Looks to me like what is going up is the cost of the crude oil. That would be consistent with the fact that we're running out of cheap, easy to recover oil:shrug: Looks like the other costs are either staying the same, or even decreasing.

[mr_hat]

3. Same here - I don't see it.

[havocmom]

4. Yet, independent producers in MT, WY, ND are getting < half the price

that is being paid to overseas producers of sweet crude! Rates from $20 to $32 a barrel for sour crude and sweet crude pulled from the ground close by! People are about to turn their drills back OFF because they are not getting a fair price based on what the Oil Companies are claiming is the price of crude they are being charged! How is that for an interesting little tidbit?

Refineries in CO are not paying the going rate of $72 + per barrel for oil from this three state area. Their reason? THEY HAVE ALL THE CRUDE THEY CAN STORE!

The governors of those three states had a little meeting last week. Haven't seen what came outta that.

[MadHound]

7. While the reason for that spot price is unclear

It seems to be a combination of factors, the fact that most of that oil is sour crude, or tar crude, along with bottlenecks at the pipelines and refineries in the area:shrug: I'm guessing that the prices will go back up relatively soon<http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/03/11/news/state/20-oil-prices.txt>

[havocmom]

8. They wre paying $32 a barrel for SWEET crude

[MadHound]

10. Link please.

From what I'm looking at, it seems that they were paying $58.00 for sour crude:shrug:

[havocmom]

12. Reported in Eastern Montan Ranch & Farm weekly, which is not online

Billings Gazette carried story about the three govs meeting with oil co execs because of the situation: http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/04/20/news/state/33-gov.txt

[MadHound]

15. Thanks for the link

It seems to back up what I was saying earlier, that the problem is revolving around the fact that this is high sulphur crude, a bottleneck at the pipelines, and a bottleneck at the refineries.

""We take no joy in the differentials," he said. He did explain his company's refining situation and the $400 million investment the company made to refine high-sulfur crude and meet government demand for ultra low-sulfur diesel. He said that in recent weeks regional oil prices have come up. He suggested fair pricing would be there in the long term and that his company was committed to the business."

And frankly, even if they were to move this discounted crude like they want to, at 80,000 to 110,000 barrels a day, those discounted prices would barely make a blip on the price radar. Remember, the US consumes 20 million barrels daily:shrug:

Is there some sort of gouging going on here, quite possibly. But I seriously doubt it is that much, and now that these govenors are raising a stink about it, regional spot prices are going up, and according to the article, should be on par with global prices by July.

[havocmom]

16. The weekly I mentioned had producers of SWEET CRUDE

talking about the $32 a barrel they were getting. Wish I could have some of my neighbors show you their checks along with the anaylsis of the stuff they are pumping in many places. We have some sweet around here. The refineries don't wanna pay market price for it. People are turning off their drills.

My point is, the oil companies are pleading that they are starving for oil and the fault is with the brown people who have it in the ME. Facts seem to show there is also a problem at the refinery level> Big Oil won't build refineries to keep up so long as we have EPA rules they have to address.

They tell the locals here they can't pay more for their oil, sour AND sweet, because they have all they can handle right now. MSM tells consumers the price of gas is high due to the per barrel price of crude. Can't be both and be really accurate.

Big Oil is managing the realities to suit their agenda to be sure.

[FlaGranny]

6. Look at the yellow bar

it's size has more than doubled. Yes, the price of crude has more than doubled, but that is NOT a reason for more than doubling profits. A nice 10, 20, or even 50 percent profit increase would be a lot more palatable.

[MadHound]

11. No breakout on that chart for refinery costs and profits.

That yellow bar indicates both refinery costs and refinery profits. It would be nice to see the profits part broken out of there, it would be the only true way to determine. I imagine that since refiners are now having to deal with a lot more sour crude, oil shale, etc. that refinery costs have gone up also:shrug:

Don't get me wrong, I think that we're getting gouged by oil companies also. But I think that the root problem is that we have reached and exceeded global peak oil, and our supply of cheap oil is in rapid decline:shrug: Of course the oil companies are going to make theirs while they can, because I imagine as things get tighter in the upcoming years, their profit margins are going to be thin as a razor. But blaming it all on oil company greed is overlooking the underlying root cause of all of this, the fact that we're rapidly running out of cheap oil.

[radwriter0555]

18. Click on the link and scroll down to the second and third table it's all

right there in black and white in a very user friendly form.

http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/margins/

The cost of oil has NOT gone up recently, and in fact, it's gone DOWN if you look at the table for January and February 2006 on branded AND unbranded crude oil.

[nonews]

13. Worthless

What is the take from all of the taxes that we pay? At least 1/4 of the cost that we pay at the pump goes to all kinds of taxes.

[antigone382]

21. Worthless how, exactly?

Could you pinpoint some of these "all kinds of taxes"? I'm looking at the chart, and I'm seeing that the taxes haven't gone up at all...the price of the oil itself has gone up. When Limbaugh made this same talking point about our gas taxes being nothing but a way for the government to get money out of us, DUers brought up that the taxes we pay for gas go to a lot of essential services related to our use of cars, not the least of which is maintenance of the roadways. Besides, if 25% of what we pay for gas is taxes--which isn't consistent with the chart posted above, at least not at today's prices--there's still another 75% that isn't. Sorry, but conveniently scapegoating our incredibly low gas tax for the rising price of gasoline just doesn't fly.

Americans pay incredibly low taxes for gasoline compared to what they pay in the vast majority of modern, industrialized countries...do you propose that we pay no taxes at all? How, then, is our society supposed to pay for the damage that our vehicles do, both to the infrastructure and to the environment? How do we deal with the public health issues related to air pollution in cities like Atlanta and LA that deal with heavy traffic, and smog so severe that kids can't even play outside in the summer anymore?

[deaniac21]

14. World consumption is increasing (demand)....take a look

http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/mainpages/consumption.html

[jsamuel]

17. WHY!!!! Why do they always start their graphs in 2002?

2002 was the lowest crude has been in 20 years! That makes it seem that prices have been 1.62 or more for the past 20 years, but we all know that prices were in the 1.00 range 7 years ago or so, when crude prices were HIGHER than they were in 2002.

[Pobeka]

19. The cost of producing crude oil hasn't increased, but the price went up.

There's your gouging. The owners of the wells are just charging more (look at the red bars).

[Guaranteed]

20. K & R. Extremely important. nt