Gas Prices, Oil Production, Misleading Numbers, And My Solution...

With gas prices soaring out of control in many countries, and all the talk of peak oil, etc...

I thought I would make a thread discussing some of the prices of gas in some foreign countries for your comparison. Then the thread started taking on a mind of its' own.

***

Venezuela: World's Cheapest Per Gallon Gas. $0.18 per gallon (or $0.05 per liter.)

Saudi Arabia: $0.48 per gallon (or $0.13 per liter.) - SA spends $13.3 Billion in subsidies to keep its domestic oil cost down.

Libya: $0.54 per gallon (or $0.14 per liter.) - Don't worry, this price will go up as soon as we get boots on the ground there.

Turkmenistan: Free. Yes... Free. Citizens are GIVEN 34 gallons of gas per month. Free. If they go through that though, it's $0.72 per gallon (or $0.19 per liter.)

Bahrain: $0.78 per gallon (or $0.21 per liter.)

Kuwait: $0.84 per gallon (or $0.22 per liter.)

Qatar: $0.90 per gallon (or $0.24 per liter.) - Qatar also boasts the highest GDP per capita in THE WORLD. The figure last year was $103,000. Not bad... In contrast, the USA ranks in at 7th... with a GDP per capita of $49,000.

Egypt: $1.14 per gallon (or $0.30 per liter.)

Oman: $1.20 per gallon (or $0.32 per liter.) - BP has expressed interest in Oman, and even went as far as to state, "The project will make a lot of money for Oman; we just need to find a way to get a big enough piece of it for BP to make sense as an investment," Reuters quoted Jonathan Evans, BP Oman general manager, as saying.

Algeria: $1.20 per gallon (or $0.32 per liter.)

***

So where do you stack-up where you live? I know when I filled up today it was $3.62 per gallon, and that was with a Sam's Club card and Wal-Mart gift card (saves an extra $0.17 per gallon when I use 'em together).

Now, domestically the USA produces about 6 million barrels of crude per day, according to one site ( www.eia.gov... ), and 7.8 million per day according to another ( en.wikipedia.org... ).

In comparison, Saudi Arabia in January produced 7.5 million barrels (or 8.8 million according to wiki, above). That's right, only 1.5 million more than the US.

Little known fact is that the USA is actually the 3rd largest oil producer in the world. We produce 5-6 million more barrels of crude per day than Qatar. You know, that country we talked about above?

** This is where the article started turning. The more stats I researched, the more curious I got. **

According to statistics, America uses 18.6 million barrels per day ( www.nationmaster.com... ).

So we are stuck buying around 12 million barrels of oil per day for our own needs. Crude is sitting at $103/bbl right now ( www.bloomberg.com... ). That's about $1.25 billion per day.

Now, there are about 5.5 million gallons of gas sold each day in California alone ( www.eia.gov... ). If there were 50 Californias (the number of states), we would need 275 million gallons of gas per day. But as it stands, the country as a whole uses about 400 million gallons of fuel per day... yeesh!

At the paltry sum of $3.50 per gallon (times 400 million gallons), that would be $1.4 billion. The numbers add up when you take into account refining and transporting, I suppose.

But the question is... where does all that extra fuel usage come from?

Now remember, we were assuming 50 Californias. Fun fact, California alone uses more gas than any country (except the US) in the world. So the 275 million gallons per day is truthfully the Mount Everest of over-estimations. But even if it weren't... where does the extra 125 million gallons go? That is 31% of our usage... that we, the people, do not use. Remember, you can not take into account the ground transportation industry, or any ground transportation for that matter, because our 50 Californias have that covered.

Electricity is mainly coal and nuclear... heating is mainly natural gas or propane... in reality only about 6-7% of our crude usage is for residential/electricity/any other needs.

Let's put it another way. A 767 holds about 20,000 gallons of fuel. It burns about 70-80% of that on a trans-Atlantic flight (JFK to LHR... about 3470 miles). Seems like a lot...

But you would have to fill 6,250 separate 767s... fly them across the Atlantic... and you would STILL have about 25 million gallons left over. That is 21.7 million air miles of traffic, per day, and you still have 25 million gallons of fuel left over to play with.

Even the entire military's usage can't balance this out. The military would have to be the size of 15 Californias...!

I know the statistics they put out with the % of usage, but they never show actual numbers. When you look at the usage of people vs the oil imported and the gallons of gas that the country reportedly uses, it starts to look a little weird.

So why does our government import so much damned oil? Where does it all go? Do we actually know who imports our oil?

So here is my hypothesis, or jumble of thoughts, however you want to see it.

Are they doing it just to drive the futures market up and drive up the price/taxes on gas to the consumer?

Is the government purposely importing unsustainable amounts of oil to kill off the world's reserves while an elite few stockpile what is left?

Are they purposely driving up costs to make money, while simultaneously killing off the oil industry to set-up a collapse and to make money off of the building of a new energy market that they are already aware of?

It doesn't take a scientist to figure out that at this rate, the world's oil reserves will become depleted. It's going to happen. It is just a matter of when.

And so I am not complaining without bringing anything to the table, here are my thoughts...

We import 12 million barrels per day at a cost of $1.25 billion.

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that we somehow managed to ween ourselves off of the oil tit for one day, just one Sunday let's say, per month for a year. Or we double production for a day. That would save us $15 billion in one year.

Let's say we use that $15 billion per year to build an electric vehicle infrastructure here in the States. How much should we say a charging station would cost to install? $250,000 for a large, multi-car charging lot?

If each lot cost $250,000... we could install 60,000 charging stations, per year, into America. Sixty thousand, per year. How long would it take us to use 50% less gas in our daily commutes? A couple of years?

A 2012 Nissan LEAF MSRPs for $37,000, fully loaded. The Government gives out $24 billion in tax breaks to oil companies every year. The government could GIVE AWAY 648,648 brand new LEAFs, every year, to help people transition.

Not only should we be able to cut at least 50% of the countries fuel usage (we would still have to use gas for long trips such as tractor trailers and airliners), but it would also employ thousands of people in every state to help build the infrastructure.

And what would shaving off those 6 million barrels per day (50% of our import) save the US?

$618 million.

PER DAY.

Or, $225 billion per year.

That would help us become less oil dependent. It would shoot us to the forefront of the electric vehicle market. And I'm sure that $225 billion per year would help take a chunk out of our national deficit...

*Out of characters...*

In the last four days I've watched gas here at the station by my house in Michigan go from $3.85 to $4.12 overnight, then the very next day it jumps again to $4.29.

You can't tell me that our usage goes up that much, regardless or spring break or any holiday. The price always goes up .20 and then it might go back down by .02, but it never drops back down to what it was after the "busy week" that it supposedly increased for.

Always up .20, then down a couple, then up .20 and the cycle repeats.


King

This just makes me sick.

I filled up in Brisbane, Australia the other day, it was $1.659 per litre for premium unleaded.

WHY!!

I put it down to the government blatently ripping off the Australian motorists.

a barrel of crude doesn't equal a barrel of gasoline as the refining plant will split the crude oil into its constituent parts from thick sludge for road building to very fine oils if i remember my chemistry correctly so you could lose alot of the volume of crude to by products leaving you with alot less per barrel as usable fuel which would go some way to explaining why you import more crude than seems to be used in vehicles

Originally posted by Maxatoria
a barrel of crude doesn't equal a barrel of gasoline as the refining plant will split the crude oil into its constituent parts from thick sludge for road building to very fine oils if i remember my chemistry correctly so you could lose alot of the volume of crude to by products leaving you with alot less per barrel as usable fuel which would go some way to explaining why you import more crude than seems to be used in vehicles

I wasn't comparing barrels imported to gasoline used, that would be apples to oranges, as you state.

I was comparing the average gasoline usage in gallons that the US estimates the country goes through annually, to the amount that California uses every year as a single state.

What I was saying is that even if we assumed that we had 50 Californias, all using the same amount of gas as China, we still would not get to the amount that the government says we use.

That was my point about the gasoline usage.

i'd imagine that a good amount would be in thinks like large scale quarrying/construction where they have those mega machines that probably drink fuel in the gallons per mile and are probably fueled via deliveries direct from the refineries so don't show up as normal sales, then theres all the buildings that have backup generators that will need refuelling regularly and places like the new NSA spy centre are using about 3MW of power so in the event of a power cut from the main supply it'll drink fuel like a fish to maintain the load for long enough to allow a controlled shutdown

If gas prices vary so much from country to country,

how do those prices compare to the cost of living and general wages from country to country ?

A loaf of bread may be cheaper also.

I would think everything is relative to local economies.

And is gasoline always paid in US$ in foreign countries ?
or do people pay with local money.

reply to post by xuenchen


i would of thought that everyone pays in the local currency and the dollar is more used at the top of the pyramid to settle the costs as it would be a pain having to carry around us currency just to pay for fuel

It's not the government that's doing this. It's the corporations. Remember, America is almost a true fascist state, ruled by the corporations. There is nothing the government can do to stop them.

What any President needs to do is put his foot down and say either cooperate with us or get declared a terrorist by using the USA Patriot Act. If they don't comply then put them in jail. That's about the only way I can see that will stop them.

But even then they'll have their army of lawyers to fight.