USA Petrol Prices !!! We are so Ripped Off!!!

[russellw]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

Can someone explain why, if the "logic" we have been told for years by the petrol industry is true, we aren't paying around 50 cents a liter...?

Go back and read my earlier post in this thread for an explanation. Like any business there are fixed and variable costs. In this case the fixed costs include:

Tax at roughly 50 cents per litre (the answer to why it isn't 50 cents a litre);
Refining costs at about 8 cents per litre;
Metropolitan transport costs 1.5-2.5 cents per litre (2.5-4.5 cpl rural).

So without anyone actually making a $ the fixed cost amounts to about 60 cpl give or take a bit based on country or city transport costs.

Refinery and retail margins are also fairly fixed. They would both like to make more but they don't and between them these add up to 5.5-6 cents per litre. For this purpose we can consider these fixed costs so the total is now between 65-69 cents per litre.

The one variable is the price of the raw material. I won't repeat the maths here but effectively at the current US$40 bbl price this translates to 40 cpl at the refinery and each US$5 movement (while our dollar is around 70 cents) translates to about 6.5 cpl.

Cheers
Russ

[vztrt]

Originally Posted by daturtle

Premium 98
UK $2.39 (1.50 EUR)
France $2.12 (1.33 EUR)
NZ $1.76 ($1.89 NZD)
Prices for Jan 2016 average.

We aren't too bad globally.

Petrol could be 30cpl and people would have a sook.

Australia land of sooks.

[Roman earl]

I was in a servo and a women was complaining about the price of petrol while buying a litre of water for $4.00

[2011G6E]

Originally Posted by SYZ

Unfortunately, the "supply and demand" principle breaks down for the supply and pricing of petrol. At a practical level, nobody can choose not to buy petrol; therefore the demand is fixed, and never variable.

Exactly right!!! Like the morons who call for a "Everybody don't buy fuel on Thursday" and it will somehow break the back of the oil companies.
Why would it?
They know you're just going to have to go in on Friday and buy fuel anyway...

[SYZ]

Originally Posted by 2011G6E

Exactly right!!! Like the morons who call for a "Everybody don't buy fuel on Thursday" and it will somehow break the back of the oil companies.
Why would it?
They know you're just going to have to go in on Friday and buy fuel anyway...

The only way this could possibly work is if all motorists in Australia targeted one single oil company for an extended period—say one week. So... Shell this week, Mobil the following week, BP the next week and so on.

This could impinge on their stockpiling and/or delivery programs. It'd also put pressure on servo owners and sub-contract tanker drivers who'd then put pressure on the oil companies. No sales, no income for either owners or drivers.

[whishy]

I dont understand how we can go from $100+ per barrel to $20 per barrel and only see a 20-30% drop at the bowser....

Sure there is probably science to it but I dont get it.

[commodorenutt]

Originally Posted by whishy

Sure there is probably science to it but I dont get it.

Science can't decide on global warming, or global cooling, so they call it climate change to cover all bases.

Science would have no hope with petrol prices.....

[GXL078]

Originally Posted by commodorenutt

Science can't decide on global warming, or global cooling, so they call it climate change to cover all bases.

Science would have no hope with petrol prices.....

Even the best climate science is plagued with errors and falsified results.
http://principia-scientific.org/mich...urt-case.html/

[Windsor220]

Originally Posted by whishy

I dont understand how we can go from $100+ per barrel to $20 per barrel and only see a 20-30% drop at the bowser....

Sure there is probably science to it but I dont get it.

Its already been mentioned. The oil price is only a portion of the cost.