Record High Gas Prices?

[Arragonis]

Found this earlier, which seems telling.



EDIT - remember the capacity is based on official figures, which are the subject of some dispute.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

If you look at it from a cost/mile perspective, though, I DO have 99 cent gas. In fact, I do even better. I average 71.2 mpg in the Insight, a typical SUV gets say 15 mpg. So at $4/gal, it costs him $4 to go those 15 miles, but it costs me only 84 cents :-)

Even for a smaller American car getting 25 mpg, I'm still paying only $1.40 for what costs them $4.

When I was in school and would come home with my grades card, I would give a similar excuse about how many kids had worse scores than I did. But I would always hear that I "should never compare myself to those who are worse, but always aim to catch up to, and pass, the better ones".

There's always someone in a Hummer or Veyron that gets less mpg, but that is no excuse to rest on your laurels.

[Odin]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

Found this earlier, which seems telling.



EDIT - remember the capacity is based on official figures, which are the subject of some dispute.

looks like most are about at peak oil

[darcane]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

p = 1 pence, 1/100 (0.01) of a pound. Think p = cents, £ = $ in terms of units. Obviously exchange rates mean they are worth different monetary amounts.

So each litre has duty of 58.95 pence, and then VAT (sales tax) is added to that + the production cost + the retailer portion (5p).

For all the US-centric members...
So, Duty + VAT = 80.1p/L
*3.785 = 303.2p/US Gal
Google currency conversion gives me about $4.92/Gal

So, UK is hit with $4.92 per gallon of gas in taxes. Compare that to an average $0.48 for the US:
Gasoline_Diesel_Summary

Does that mean we have no right to complain? Well, of course not. It's a fundamental right to be able to speak your mind. Even with US taxes being relatively low, government monetary policy is devaluing our currency and driving up costs on many commodities, not just petroleum. But, that's a discussion for other forums.

[cfg83]

Arragonis -

Originally Posted by Arragonis

...

So did we - the Europeans. The Japanese advantage was that what they built was better engineered, better designed and up to date. I read a book written by a tech executive from the 1970s fuel squeeze when he parked his Cadillac and bought a Nissan (or Toyota or Subaru, can't recall exactly).

What amazed him was that the Nissan never failed, everything worked every time and apart from servicing he never had to visit the dealer for anything compared to the Caddy which rattled, smoked and would regularly go out of tune or wear some service part out very quickly and was requiring constant attention. He sold the Caddy and kept the Nissan.

Same over here - as soon as people got used to Honda, Nissan (Datsun) and Toyota reliability they never went back to British cars which by that time were so badly built that the rear windows would fall out when they were jacked up.

Mind you even Honda cock up sometimes. I was reading about the Civic Hondamatic last night - 2 speed MANUAL gearbox and torque converter. Or maybe it was a joke.

Those are excellent points. Reminds me of the Top Gear episode where they bought the used 1970's UK cars and filled them with water. VW beetles were pretty reliable back then too, but I still think that what got the Japan auto companies foot in the door was the MPG. I remember watching the American attempts at "small" fuel efficient cars like the FWD Chevy Citation and they were still bloated when compared to my (Dad's) VW Karmann Ghia.

I agree that there would be market erosion from superior Japanese quality, but at least US car companies would have been closer to Japan in terms of "small car engineering". My question is, if the USA had always had the equivalent of inflation-adjusted $5 gallon gas prices, would the USA car culture have evolved into the land-yachts of the pre-1970's oil-shock? I'm thinking no.

CarloSW2

[UFO]

It's almost warm enough for the biodiesel to come on line again. Can't complain at all when the materials cost is $0.50 a gallon.

[redneck]

Originally Posted by Odin

looks like most are about at peak oil

Peak production perhaps, not peak oil.

>

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by darcane

...Does that mean we have no right to complain? Well, of course not.

Our fuel tax doesn't just go on roads, it also pays for state pensions and a universal health care system as well as useless vanity projects for whichever party is in power of course. We were told recently that our government had made loads of cuts - they haven't - they have just slowed the increase in spending. At the same time as we scrap our only aircraft carrier and its aircraft just when it may be useful (e.g. Libya) our Defence Ministry is still buying lightbulbs for £20 each - £0.60p in B&Q.

Originally Posted by cfg83

Arragonis -...CarloSW2

Carlos - it gets worse - we managed to create the premium market for Japanese cars by having a "gentleman's agreement" with the japanese makers to limit their numbers to 10% of the UK market for most of the 70s. They kept to it and it meant that demand outstripped supply so it drove up prices of their products. It wasn't until the Koreans and Malaysians started to make the same cars that they had competition.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by redneck

Peak production perhaps, not peak oil.

I'd be curious to know, though, exactly how peak production is defined, and why the Saudis especially are producing much less than their peak. Seems like peak can be defined two ways:

1) The amount of oil they can actually pump out of the ground & ship;

2) The amount of oil the pumps &c are theoretically capable of pumping.

If it's #1, then the Saudis could produce more oil, and we have to wonder why they're not, when everyone else is running close to capacity. If it's #2, then they're sucking the wells dry, and can't really produce more even though they theoretically have capacity.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I'd be curious to know, though, exactly how peak production is defined, and why the Saudis especially are producing much less than their peak. Seems like peak can be defined two ways:

1) The amount of oil they can actually pump out of the ground & ship;

2) The amount of oil the pumps &c are theoretically capable of pumping.

If it's #1, then the Saudis could produce more oil, and we have to wonder why they're not, when everyone else is running close to capacity. If it's #2, then they're sucking the wells dry, and can't really produce more even though they theoretically have capacity.

As I understand it the capacity figure is not a real one - as in not a real, physical limit. It is the OPEC limit or quota on production based on the declared reserves for each of the members. This regulation was designed to protect members from overproducing to fund their economies too highly to pay for vanity projects - like Dubai World for example.

The problem is that a lot of the key members of OPEC, such as the Saudis, wanted to keep production at previous levels to maintain their income so they 'adjusted' their declared reserves to maintain the previous output.



Note that the estimation of reserves doesn't seem to fall with output at all. That can't be correct ?

Saudi Arabia is also a 'swing' producer - they normally step in to replace lost production in the event of an emergency - for example the Kuwait invasion by Iraq. In this case they made sure we didn't have an oil shock when the oil of Kuwait was no longer available in return for us (the West) doing the military work of actually removing the Iraqi army from Kuwait.

They have been able to replace up to 8% of world daily output by just turning on their taps a little more but it seems they may not be able to do this for much longer if their reserves are started to dwindle.

The problem for the Saudi government is that if they declare that they are in decline, or even at peak, then the ruling family will have a very hard time keeping control of the country. SA's population has grown by 10x since the 1950s and a lot of them are unemployed and poor and living off government handouts as there is no industry really apart from oil.

When they learn those handouts may reduce or even end then who knows what they might want to do. I suspect that leaving the Bin-Saud family free to reap the remaining cash available before moving to Switzerland is unlikely to be their no.1 choice.

Another graph, oil prices.



I take nothing from this except why didn't we adjust and learn here in the west ?