heavyboostin

what is the tax on diesel fuel since the war? like how much per gallon over pre war? just curious...

ramlovingvet

I think this belongs in the politics forums.

Timmay2

Nothing politics about this, but we do have a fuel prices subforum!

The federal gas tax has been at 18.3 cents since 1993.

It has been under debate to raise it for things such as road repair, especially after the Minneapolis bridge collapsed last summer, but nothing has been done.

graphitecumnz

The combined government(federal/state/local) garners far more income from fuel sales than do the 'evil' oil companies.

Gas Tax Map

Diesel Tax Map

kawi600

yeah the taxes are pretty low, most of this is inflation and people jumping on crude investment due to an unstable dollar.
A silver lining is it might spur more alternative fuels development. Wed do real well in this country if we had something packaged and ready to sell once petroleum dried up.

bansh-eman

We ( those of us living today) will not be around to see petrolium "dryup" there are so many deposits of crule oil still abundant on the earth today that we will have oil for many 100's of years to come. its a matter of the countries that have it (the U.S. being one of them) to start pumping the oil by the masses rather then sitting on it. We (the world) will see new developments in alternative fuels before the supply drys up.

kawi600

google 'peak oil' and check out info about the number of new oil finds over the last few years. Lots of evidence says we hit peak oil back in the 70's.

Nor_Cal_Angler

i am sooooooo glad someone knows this.....far to often people blame BIG OIL for the problem and that just isnt the case.

there are a lot of factors hitting the problem right now, blend change due to the season, price per barrel, opec not helping, dollar weak, us production plants NOT SET UP TO PRODUCE DIESEL. etc etc (and people dont say diesel is cheeper to produce it ISNT TRUE...not here in the states in EUROPE yea but our production isnt designed to produce diesel it is designed to produce GAS so diesel drivers are GONNA SEE IT at the pumps.)

NCB

BTM

Does anybody really believe that if an alternative fuel came out, that it would be cheaper? If we started to drill off of Florida or Alaska, it would still be the same high price. Rich

austin1972

Great question Rich. I imagine there will be a slew of competing alternative fuel technologies that are/will hit the market. Electric vehicles, hybrids, hydrogen, renewable flex fuel etc. It'll depend which one hits critical mass first. Hybrids seem to be winning right now and GM is coming out with Lithium Ion storage for theirs which will significantly increase the storage capacity on them.
The best solution does not always win though. Look at Betamax vs. VHS. Once economies of scale are reached, I would hope prices would come down from their current levels.
Or we may see infrastructure changes. Can you imagine pulling onto the expressway where your vehicle basically rides an electrified rail or somesuch and traffic management is automated? You don't drive, the car receives driving data from a centralized computer etc...No accidents or traffic jams again? I think we may see something like that in the future.

kawi600

That all depends on whether we allow real free market competition to drive prices down, or whether we allow a few big companies to monopolize the industry.

TOM R

right now a few big oil companies monopolize the industry and the smaller companies cannot afford to go against them or would be driven out of buisness

stinkindiesel

I was reading that diesel is cheaper than gas in Europe because they distill fuel using hydrocracking of the crude, where we use catalytic cracking. Our way makes something like 35% gas, 10% diesel and the balance in jet fuel, light fuel oil, home heating oil, heavy fuel oil and some other stuff I can't remember. The Europanese use hydrocracking, and it produces @ 25% gas and 25% diesel and blah blah other oil we don't burn in our trucks blah blah, which is a better ratio for us oilburners.
The guy who wrote the article said if we had green lights across the board, it'd take a minimum of 5 years to retrofit our refineries to do it the European way.

Hannibal

Good links! However, the opinion is flawed. Our government provides national security and infrastructure. We have to pay for it somehow. Pretty good price for our freedom and interstate highways, law enforcement and so forth. Oil company profits are just that. Profits. We the people don't gain much from someone else's wealth out of our pockets besides the product we're buying. Gotta cut the sensationalist hype and keep things in the perspective of reality.

Raspy

I can't see how an increase in the supply will really have very much to do with the price. Some, sure, but just consider that if fuel went down to about a buck and there was good reason to believe it would stay there. The usage would probably at least triple. More airplane rides, more power boats, more fuel to developing countries, bigger and more powerful cars, more building projects, cheaper products. On and on. It seems we could easily ramp up to three times the use and overwhelm the supply again and prices would have to climb.

These days there are more factors driving the cost than supply and demand and there are some unusual situations. Even Cal-Pers is speculating on oil futures. Iraq could be producing a huge amount, but isn't. Opec won't ramp up production. The psychological impact of taking oil fields off the market that the US owns. US refineries are hated and at near capacity. The dollar is slipping as we are going bankrupt and becomming more dependent on overseas investors. And, of course, general hysteria. People are expecting $5.00/ gallon and they'll likely see it or more.

Eventually something will give and the price will come down. It might be sudden with a change in perception. It might be gradual with a sustainable change in the direction of the stock market and general confidence in our economy. Or it might be gradual as we end the wars. Whether you agree with the Iraq war or not, it is clear that we cannot spend this way forever. And until we get that spending under control and stabilize the dollar, we are in for a very bumpy ride. I'm not debating the war. I'm only talking about the financial books. We cannot spend the dollar into collapse and expect cheap fuel. We're not even spending money we have. We're borrowing it to spend.

The US consumer attitude is a big one too. We, as Americans seem to think we can always have all we want and pay no hiddedn costs. More, more, more. Sometimes more is really less. If we all got a clue that we could be more stable, more independent, richer and live in cleaner air by changing our ways from demanding the fulfillment of our rights to burn more, to using what we need and spending the left over money on something better. If we could see that a richer more stable life was better than burning every drop of oil we can afford to buy, and feeding our enemies to do it, we'd be a lot better off.

Even if you don't see the value in saving fuel, just look at the value of added money. Everyone is complaining about the cost and making a few adjustments as needed. Now let's just say you start driving twice as much, take a driving vacation, or get a less fuel efficient car and drive that even more. How much extra money are you spending in that situation? So what if you had all that and more back each month by cutting back and getting better mileage. What if we set a trend toward more efficiency. Began to steer away from blatant over use. Soon we're talking several hundred dollars or more per month. No less driving, just more efficient driving. Not burning all you can in the worst way but doing all you want to in a more efficient way. Would it be nice to have several hundred bucks a month free to spend on other things? Of course. And the perception to the oil suppliers might be "hey, those Americans are serious, maybe they don't need us as much as we thought". Maybe the refineries could stay caught up with a margin for safety. Maybe oil would start looking like it was a worse investment than something else, and money would stop using it for speculation. Now, that would be a good thing in my book.

Meanwhile, as things are now, up goes the cost of metals, trucking, consumer goods and everything that needs fuel in it's production or delivery. Food especially, as corn gets used for fuel, tractors run on diesel and trucks deliver it. Oil is a much better investment than the dollar because "everyone" believes it will go up as the dollar slips. Everyone wants higher pay to make up the difference and the inflation snowball rolls on.

Would it be worth trying to use less to show our independence instead of hand ringing and being forced, through cost, to use less? Yes. Is it worth being mad at everything and everyone we can think of about the high costs? No. Do I want to keep pouring money into the hands of others overseas and watch our sacred dollar take hit after hit? NO. So, use what you need, have a good life, show your independence! Then start looking for light at the end of the tunnel.


John