DudeMan

good site great read...

Apophis

Table 1 shows that the US produced an enormous amount of oil in 1995 in comparison to the UK. At first glance I made the assumption that production of that level would be good reasoning for the difference in pricing. If the US produces a lot more, it makes sense it would be cheaper here.

When you read further down and then look at consumption levels of the US vs. UK, it clearly washes away that assumption. We obviously consume a hell of a lot more than we produce. I'm not much of a math guy, so someone else could probably figure out how it all correlates together.

End result, I'm still at a loss why gas prices are so much higher in the UK than the US. Even if you have an 80% tax on gas at the pump vs. our ~30% tax, it doesn't justify the 350% increase in costs over there.

I would also assume that transportation costs from middle eastern OPEC countries would be substantially cheaper than they are to the US. I wonder what the difference in refinery capacity is between the two countries.

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Diplomacy is the art of saying "good doggie" while looking for a bigger stick.

=DdogG=

simple economics.... buy in bulk, get a discount...... the us uses 80% of the oil productsconsumed in the whole world. when you have that much of the market, you can almost tell the seller the price, and thats what the us does. "don't like what we want to pay, there are a ton of other countries we can go to......."

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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. -Albert Einstein
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity. -Harlan Ellison

If all else fails: "rm -rf /"

USN_Squid

This chart is interesting. Less than half our oil comes from Arab OPEC.

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jex

I never fill up my car - I only put in 2/3rds of a tank and that lasts me 4 days.

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Jex

DeRanger

I understand that 50-60% of people in Europe drive diesel automobiles, correct me if I'm wrong.

DudeMan

then you drive a gas guzzler or you just drive fast....


2/3rds of a tank....


my brother used to drive a nissan 200sx with a turbo charged 2 litre engine and a slight fuel leak.... £10 lasted him the week

and apophis the extra money and why we pay more is tax... we pay a ridiculous ammount of peterol on tax... same with ciggarettes and alcohol...

something like every litrre of peterol 90% of the money goes to the governemnt..

DudeMan

it has nothing to do with drinky cars or buying in bulk we dont pay alot for petrol comming in i dont know the exact figutres, but its the governemnt taxing people who drive.....

in london at the moment there is a congestion charge of 5 pounds.... that means every time you want to go into london (central london) you have to pay 5 pounds every day you are intending to go in there... thats on top of road tax, and peterol is highly taxed..... deranger i should thi9nk the number is slightly lower than that but yes alot of people drive deasels.... i want a diesel......because they are alot more fuel efficent and thanks to the japanese they actually run very very well now and extrememly quiet...

you can do like 1 and a 1/4 times the millage in a diesel as apposed to a peterol
and ytou dont really loose alot of performance as long as you get a tdi (Turbo diese injection)

Emanon

Cant compair time and volume without a distance.

I could fill up everyday, doesnt mean i have a gas "insert word" just means I drive alot.

I fill up every 3 days and get 30 mpg cause I commute to Bean town every day.

Fractions of a tank say nothing really, 1/2 of an SUV gas tank is 110% of my car's.

GhostintheShell

That was a good site Apophis posted. Its exactly what I have been saying for months. As far as oil goes we are all screwed. (And in short order.)

That site didn't even compound the problem by factoring in China and East India's rapid economic development. If you think 750m (North American and European) people use lots of oil, wait until 2-3b Chinese and Pakistani's want all the comforts we have. A huge percentage of people in both of those countries don't even have electricity.

I'm also very aware that people consume less than 25% of all oil produced. Industry consumes the vast majority of all electricity produced and oil as a raw material.

As humans we consume far too much energy and buy far too much commercial crap that companies want to sell us.

Fait_Maker

I'm not sure we have to worry about China's people so much as China itself. They are buying up so much of everything as they get mass manufacturing going, it's incredible. We <my company> are having trouble getting aluminium because of it. Several of us went in February for a fact-finding mission for GE. They want us as suppliers to help get them sources in China or at least for us to start getting sources in China to lower the cost of goods sold to them.

While there, we noted that one small factory of 300 people had about 75 people on staff with Phd's. Those people made about $300 a month in wages while the laborers made only about .50/hr. They are on the same latitude as we are in America and share the same weather as us. While there it was 20 degrees F, and people had their windows open. They wore their coats in the factory because it wasn't heated either. While sitting down in a conference room, we would accept the tea they offered just to warm our hands. The tea was not what we are used to here. They don't use tea bags, but put the grounds right in the water. Wow, we are spoiled.

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Overlag

89p per litre.... going up 1p per week for the next 4-6 weeks tesco "think"

thats $1.7 per LITRE

1 gallon = 4.546 L

possible blockade action again soon... YAY no cars on the street!

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From Adam Webb

GhostintheShell

I probably misstated the problem with China and East India. The problem with increased economic development demanding huge amounts of oil only lies about 25% in the people. The other 75% will be used by their industry.

Already, the US and Canada (and Mexico I'm hearing) is losing thousands of low tech manufacturing jobs to China, and high tech programming jobs to India. Why? Because of the low wages and high quality of work. When Mexico can't compete at $3 / per hour with China how will our low-tech and labor-intensive industries here survive? When all that industry goes to China they will need several times the amount of oil that North America is using. Plus, as I said before maybe for now the Chinese people comsume far less resources than a US comsumer, but eventually most of those people are going to want nicer houses and cars, and a generally higher standard of living.

LegionPaulL

Yeah, whatever. Do you realize who you are talking about? COMMUNIST China! There is no such thing as "higher standard of living" until the Communist government falls. We are safe for another 200 years.

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If it is stupid but works, then it is not stupid.
-Murphy

DeRanger

Hate to break it to ya' buddy but the world as we know it will literally be over long before then at this rate.