The Price of Diesel

[Op-Ivy]

How much is diesel in your area?

I know there have been a few posts for this but let's start a new one!


I just filled up and it was $1.24/Litre which is $4.69/US Gallon. Yuck.




Matt

[CoolAirVw]

3.79 a gallon

[JRM]

Portland Oregon $3.65 a gallon at smaller slow stations and $3.75 at the truck stop- must be increasing so fast they cant sell it fast enough
My friend in Oxnard CA just paid $4.05

[Pu241]

$3.85 in Bridgeport, OH
$4.09 in Washington, PA

[JRM]

wow, takeing in account of the average income some of us are really getting hosed! $4 a gallon for the commuter in LA vs the same $4 for the poor sole in rural america. yeah, this sucks

[surfcam]

Last time I filled up with tar sands diesel it was 1.055 a liter in Fort Macleod Ab. Its like $40 to fill it now. The up side is the rates just went up to fix oil and gas equipment. Its a bit of a mugs game when you have to fork out more to get to bum blast Alberta just to give an estimate on putting the pieces back together.

[JamesW]

WOW. Thank G.W. Bush in part, what a wonderful self serving *sshole.

Aside from that, my research will be in oil sand like area, the only thing that seem constant is that the price per gallon will go up and up...
Canada and the oil sands saga will only unfold, they have a world of issues to deal with.

Nothing like an impact that so big it an be seen from space, i.e. their tailing ponds, full of heavy metals and other toxin ready to seep into Canada's water resources.

I dont know what the ppg is but I will keep an eye out.

~james

[Fatmobile]

Diesel is close to fuel oil so it the winter the price goes higher.
Would be a good idea to buy some gallons on contract during the cheaper summer months.
It seems like they don't like to piss us all off at the same time, when gas is high diesel is low.
I figure when they are done reaming us, they will let the gassers have their turn.

[Ziptar]

$3.89 here on the North Shore of Massachusetts.

Even though I have the two Jettas and they both get excellent MPG, I am so glad I left my old job an it's 1000 mile weekly commute and moved up here to take this one. I have been using the commuter rail and last week I put all of 24 miles on the 03 Jetta. The monthly rail pass cost me $250 because where I am staying is so far out but, I found a house that is in the closet zone into Boston while not being in the city proper and it will run $135.

That's a big break from my old fuel costs of ~$500 month when diesel was $3.35.

[82vdub]

Stations around town are going to $3.89/gal

WOW. Thank G.W. Bush in part, what a wonderful self serving *sshole.

Honestly, I don't think the sitting president has much (or even anything) to do with the price of oil. Oil demand here and especially globally has certainly changed in the last few years.

Diesel is close to fuel oil so it the winter the price goes higher.
Would be a good idea to buy some gallons on contract during the cheaper summer months.
It seems like they don't like to piss us all off at the same time, when gas is high diesel is low.
I figure when they are done reaming us, they will let the gassers have their turn.

I heat my home with fuel oil, and just yesterday filled up my tanks at $3.57/gal. I've had two 275 gal tanks in the garage since the first year I've owned my house (17 years). I burn two full tanks in an average winter and would save lots of money by not having to buy a tank load during the winter, so I got a second tank and installed it in the garage. I could always expect that the price of fuel oil (and diesel) will drop in the winter, so I would fill both tanks up in the summer months. However, in the last 4-5 years, this whole idea has been long gone. The last few winters I've filled my tanks up as much as I could sometime in the middle of winter as I didn't think fuel was going to get any cheaper as summer came.

I see what's happening globally with the economy in China and India exploding and expanding at double digit rates. China is actually developing parts of India at China's expense, as China is needing more resources for their economic expansion and they have run out of capacity in their own country. I would personally like to see the US drill as many holes in the ground and pump 110% of the oil that we need instead of buying most of it from the countries that seem to hate our country. Drill as many holes as we need, build as many plants as we need to sustain our own demand. That's my .02!

[Pup Tentacle]

#2 = $3.899
#1 = $3.909
North Central Minnesota

Just had a friend come back from England, he rented a diesel car, prices varied but diesel was $8 - $9 a gallon.

China has surpassed America as the largest consumer of oil, and it's consumption continues to increase at an alarming rate.

If you were an oil company and you could sell diesel in Eurpoe for $9 a gallon or sell it in North America (America and Canada) for $4. Where would you like to sell your product? When I was stationed in Scotland in the late 70's and early 80's, gas was $4.80 a gallon US. This was at the same time that gas in America was less than $1. They (the oil companies) are closing the price gap. Soon we will be paying the same as the rest of the world. Anticipate $9 - $12 diesel (#2 fuel oil) in the next few years. To a large extent, America's economy is fueled (no pun intended) by CHEAP energy (oil and gas). As the cost of energy (oil) escalates a trickle down increase in cost of everything else will occur.

I challenge anyone reading this to look around the room they are sitting in and find just one object that doesn't have oil as a cost component. Oil is in, literally, everything we buy, build, own, ship, and operate. This qualifies as an addiction.

I'm old enough to remember regular leaded gas at the Deep Rock station in Wayzata, MN in the early 70's was $.19 - $.20 a gallon and diesel at the truck stop on Hwy 94 was $.05 - $.07 a gallon. Like any savy dealer / distributor of an addictable product, you offer the product at a low cost until the client is addicted and then raise the cost. In the case of oil, the addiction process has taken 3 decades as opposed to weeks for a chemical addiction.

It's going to be a very different existence in the next few years. It'll be interesting (challenging) to see how it "shacks out".

Pup

[hagar]

Op-Ivy ----kiddo wake up ,And smell the diesel and Danish. ---do some " Hillbilly-TUNING " your mileage is BAD .

As luck has it 2008 may be the year for hagars Tuning Academy. I just bougt a 1983 Turbo Rabbit ---sight unseen for 2400 US dollars. 2 door. Will try to hold it for this years lectures..

It is now in Anacortes WA .

You have been here --SO? you know I got lots of parking and room for campers,

hagar.

[Pup Tentacle]

Regarding American oil production. prior to Katrina, American refineries were at 95%-96% capacity. Katrina knocked out 12, 9 were repaired and brought back online. Don't have precise numbers, but I'm guessing refinery capacity is at or very near 100%.

In America we have an abundance of capped oil fields. They are typically deep wells. The cost to extract the oil exceeds the cost of importing oil (including the cost of war and loss of life) from elsewhere. Add to that the quality of oil imported from the middle east is of a higher quality and hence requires less processing to yield the same product and there are less non desirable waste products.

I might add that for many quarters after Katrina, oil companies posted record retaind earnings. They have learned from the DeBeers diamond cartel how to control supply to maintain price and consequently profit margins. It is unlikely that they will flood the market with their product which would reduce unit revenues and accelerate the depletion of a fixed quanity resource. The oil companies are driven by the requirement to continue to grow earnings for their share holders. It's a simple equation, if the cost of production is relatively fixed, vary supply to increase unit price and grow the profit on a per unit basis.

Pup

[82vdub]

If you were an oil company and you could sell diesel in Eurpoe for $9 a gallon or sell it in North America (America and Canada) for $4. Where would you like to sell your product?

you're not actually comparing apples to apples. The US tax policy seems to be the idea to tax something at a low rate, and it's consumed more, but Europe's tax idea is to tax something heavily and it's consumed less. It's pure economics on how taxes effect how a product is used.

Total Fed and State taxes here in the US is somewhere between $.40-$.60/ gallon. The taxes on fuel in Europe is much higher, I believe in the several $/gallon range. There's countries that have value added taxes (VAT) to the price of gas plus their other fuel taxes. Last I knew, Germany had a VAT tax of 19% on the price of fuel, plus all their other regular high fuel taxes.

So, if you think $4/gas US gas equals $9/gal European gas and the gas companies are pocketing the difference, go read your economics book. The US government is making more money on a gallon of gas than the oil companies and the gas station retailers are - and they didn't do anything to actually make the product either.

[surfcam]

What gets me about this whole gas price is the amount of money that has been spent and is being spent on R&D. Billions of dollars have been spent on oil extraction technology. If you compared it to alternative energy R&D it would hardly even show-up. I figure when diesel hits 15 to 20 a gallon there will be another Klondike Gold Rush of sorts to alternative energy. Europe will be ready for it North America won't. I'm not including Hagar in this though.