Fuel cost breakdown?
 

I was just reading an AOL article where a Senator quoted the price per barrel of oil at $75.

My question here is:

How much does it cost to produce gasoline from crude oil?

If at $75/barrel, that's 42 gallons which comes to ~$1.79/gallon. So.. most of us are paying somewhere in the $2.80 to $3.25/gallon (or more) for premium fuels and where the regular fuels aren't too far behind.

I know there's a production cost, then there's the delivery cost, then gas station percentages. So in that extra $1 of more of price bump, what's the breakdown? Or is it true that the large oil companies are price gouging?

Dough

Oil companies are having records profits. I think gouging is on :bash

not sure, but my statistics teacher gave us an analogy on the price we pay per gallon vs average salary.

in like the 60's the average salary was somewhere in the $3k range, and people were paying about .30 cents a gallon. that is about .0001 of their salary.

average salary today is about $60k (all these figures are what she said, she gets them from somewhere). if we paid .0001 of that, gas would be about $6 a gallon.

Well, yea, my dad was saying something similar to that as well, but still, before 9/11 and around the time I started to drive, my cost/gallon was in the $1.60 to $2.25/gallon range for premium (from 1998 to 2001). The cost per a barrel was well below $30/barrel (before 9/11). So that would be roughly $0.75 (at most) per a gallon cost to the companies.

I'm just curious to know what it would cost to go from $1.80 cost to $3.00 retail.

I am in an Internation Finance class at the moment and there is evidence that for every $10 a barrel of oil increases in price the whole economy decreases by .05%. It may not look like much but the US has a multi-Trillion dollar ecenomy! Oh ya, and it has gone up about $10 in the last 4 weeks.

And sorta on the same lines (and this was true back before 9/11) that whenever the $/barrel reached $30, the US was going to go to war. That happened in the Golf War, and again when Afganistan occured.

Now that we are at $75... WWIII?

Dough

Correction bro - 55 gals per barrel - want something more shocking? What are you paying for a quart of motor oil? (Don't give me crap because it's syn that it's higher - sure because of additives, but they're still raping us. Know why? Because the average American is an IDIOT and can't fathom the idea of conservation or consolidating errands. "It's someone elses' problem" or they buy it at $10 increments - that's a savings :doh -{e-sarcasim}. They need their fix and they'll starve or move before using the brain to do simple math.

This should get me flamed pretty good - Bring it on - LOL

Oh, 55gal/barrel? I was using http://www.onlineconversion.com/. Well, then that just makes my point even greater. So now we're down to $1.37/gallon.

Dough

yea, they're 55 per barrel - supposedly some companies say after is refined it's less but I have my suspicions. I KNOW exactly how you feel.

"I was born at night, NOT LAST NIGHT"

Here is a project for someone.

Who sets the price of a barrel of oil?

Probably not the Oil companies directly but which set of Speculators in which market is actually setting the prices?

Then comes the real question--Who is manipulating the Price setters? and to what end? The Oil companies for extra profits? A foreign government such as China? Some Political cause?

Supply and demand could not cause the ramp in crude prices we are seeing. (IMHO)

OPEC - Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries

Well, I'm just going to throw this out there. What about fear? Fear of petrolium being cut off from the mid-East area. Iran. The "war" in Iraq.

These could raise tensions in that industry, hence raising the price of fuel, lets not forget that we are all highly dependent on gas and are willing to pay for it.

So cost and demand indeed.... but that doesn't answer how much it costs to produce fuel. :)

Dough

its the buildaburg group. watch the history channel. youll see.

well you all are forgeting that each state also tacks on taxes per gallon of gas. New Jersey has some of the lowest taxes in the US.

^man, that doesn't mean shit. I"m paying the same price that FL is paying +/- a few pennies.