Gas prices in your area

[SS MAYFLOAT]

Re: Gas prices in your area

The gas prices are crazy, but the heating oil has got out of hand. Oct was 79.9, Nov 89.9, Dec 89.9, Jan 1.49, Feb 1.59! Guess I will be cutting wood more this year than fishing.<br /><br />When I burn wood, I use about 30 gallons of oil, when I'm outta wood it is about 110 to 135 gallons to heat per month. It has really screwed up my budget.<br /><br />Gas at the pumps is always higher in Mansfield than anywhere else in the state, $1.78 in town, out of town 1.62. Now the state is going to raise tax by .06.<br /><br />Oh well, I guess we have got to grin and burn it!......SS

 

[magster65]

Re: Gas prices in your area

I'm confused. Why is it when the price of a barrel of crude goes up so does fuel but when the crude prices drop (as in recent days) the gas doesn't?

 

[plywoody]

Re: Gas prices in your area

To keep the units consistent, everyone in the US at least is talking US gallons. The metric conversion for 1 liter to a US Gallon is 3.78 liters/gal.<br /><br />So for our Canadian Friends, if you are paying $1.00 a liter (Cdn) you are paying $3.78 a US Gallon. At an exchange rate of .65 US per 1.00 Cdn, you are paying $2.45 US dollars per US gallon. Still a lot, but not quite as bad as originally reported.<br /><br />As far as why gas does not follow directly the cost of crude, it is simple supply and demand. We have had a cold winter in the east, which increases the use of heating oil--refineries have had to spend more of their refining time making heating oil, which decreases their time making gas, which lowers the gas stocks and increases the prices.<br /><br />On top of that, if I am not mistaken, we also imported refined products from Venezuela, as well as crude, and the recent political problems there have decreased supply, and therefore increased price.<br /><br />In Canada, it could be argued that the sheer vastness of the country, coupled with the relatively small population, requires more money to build and maintain roads, per capita, and therefore a larger tax per liter to pay for it all. It's logical, if not precisely true.<br /><br />I know in Northern Ontario, it was not unusual to pay 10 cents a liter higher for gas than Toronto, and the usual justification was higher transportation costs. Yet from a friend I know the cost of shipping a barge from the refinery to a tank farm in the north was less than a 1/4 cent more per liter than to ship to Toronto.<br /><br />The real explaination is that the price is as much as the market will bear, without building inventories too high, and the amount of real competition in the specific marketplace. In Northern Ontario, for example, no matter what brand of gas you bought, it all came out of the exact same tank at the tank farm. And the prices reflected that amount of competition.