GOT GAS?

[Matt_22]

I heard a report that gas companies are purchasing gas for about 72 cents a gallon and slapping us with a 300% markup. Just what I heard.......

[f.sciarrillo]

I heard a report that gas companies are purchasing gas for about 72 cents a gallon and slapping us with a 300% markup. Just what I heard.......

This isn't true, if you are talking about convenient store or gas station companies .. I spoke to Steve Sheetz one time and asked him what the profit is per gallon - This was during a college trip to the corporate headquarters - He said they only get between 1 and 2 cents a gallon profit. I told him I find that hard to believe, but he insisted it was true ..

If you are talking about the gas industry. Then it is somewhat true. They pay 4.00 to produce a barrel of gas .. Then sall it at 2.89 a gallon: Lets figure this one out ..

• 4.00 to produce a barrel
• A barral is 55 gallon
• Sold at 2.89 a gallon
• Total is $158.95 a barrel profit

So I guess the mark up could be there, but, it is more than 300% in those standards .. I don't believe it's feasible to charge what they charge ..

[JeffLeeper]

You left out transport , delivery....especially tax....there are a lot of hands out when you pay for a gallon.

[lonewolf]

Wholesale regular unleaded is traded daily on the CBOT and other commodities exchanges.

This morning was the 1st time I saw it below $2 since before Katrina, at $1.93/gallon.

For Pennsylvania, you add 65 cents to the wholesale price to see what the low-end price should be at the pump. If it stays at $1.93 (or thereabouts) it should translate into a Sheetz pump price of around $2.59 within the next few days.

[f.sciarrillo]

I guess 2.59 is better than 3.19 a gallon .. As far as transport. A lot of it is trnsported threw the pipline. And with that, what goes in isnt exactly what it coming out. When it gets ordered the gas company starts to pump it through, they tell he people who ordered it to go ahead and get it. Seeing that it takes a couple of days for it to get to where it needs to go, they give them the o.k to get it that day. So if someone orders premium and they go to take it out they are necessarily getting premium. This is why I always buy regular.

Tax I think is rediculous on the stuff also. With all that gas that gets sold there could be a 1 cent tax on it and that would still give the state/government millions of dollars in kick backs ..

[bassist_25]

And keep in mind, the tax on gas, like all sales tax, is regressive, which means that the people who are really paying through the nose are the ones with lower incomes.

But again, the tax on oil products is a nessesary evil. Since the supply is finite, there needs to be some sort of incentive to make sure that people are economically responsible. If gas were cheaper, I'd have a cool big-ass hippie van for sure.

Wasn't there a proposal somewhere in Europe that people would have "black boxes" installed in their vehicles and they'd be taxed by the miles that they drive? Talk about big brother watching over you. I'm still confused on whether that'd be the libertarian thing to do or the facist thing to do. *LOL*

[bassist_25]

Seeing that it takes a couple of days for it to get to where it needs to go, they give them the o.k to get it that day. So if someone orders premium and they go to take it out they are necessarily getting premium. This is why I always buy regular.

I always wondered if there was a significant difference in performance between regular and the higher octanes. I never felt like shelling out the extra money just to find out. Besides, my car is suppose to run 87.

I know that I've avoided some stations in the past due to them watering down their gas. Nothing sucks more than dogging while going up a mountain like Skytop because you have crappy gas in your tank.

[lonewolf]

Seeing that it takes a couple of days for it to get to where it needs to go, they give them the o.k to get it that day. So if someone orders premium and they go to take it out they are necessarily getting premium. This is why I always buy regular.

I always wondered if there was a significant difference in performance between regular and the higher octanes. I never felt like shelling out the extra money just to find out. Besides, my car is suppose to run 87.

I know that I've avoided some stations in the past due to them watering down their gas. Nothing sucks more than dogging while going up a mountain like Skytop because you have crappy gas in your tank.

Back when you could get Sunoco 260, the ratings really meant higher performance. Now, the 87-95 "octane ratings" (lol) are nothing but levels of anti-knock compounds. Everybody should look in their owner's manual under "fuel" to see what anti-knock level rating their motor was designed for. If you put anything higher than that number, you are just wasting money. Most cars have a rating of 86 or 87, so "regular" 87 gas works just fine. As long as the gas isn't "stepped on" or watered down, you won't get one more horsepower or one more mpg from premium.

[YankeeRose]

If gas were cheaper, I'd have a cool big-ass hippie van for sure.

Wasn't there a proposal somewhere in Europe that people would have "black boxes" installed in their vehicles and they'd be taxed by the miles that they drive? Talk about big brother watching over you. I'm still confused on whether that'd be the libertarian thing to do or the facist thing to do. *LOL*

A "hippy van", you say? Sort of like the "Mystery Machine"?
ZOINKS!



As far as the "Black Boxes" being used in the manner you're speaking of, "watching over you" - you don't need anything of the sort.
There's already something in existance called "ONSTAR".

[f.sciarrillo]

I remember reading about the black box in europe. They claimed it was for safety reasons, kinda like a block box in planes. And yes, I believe onstar is used for more than just safety and help of the driver. Which is why I refuse to get it ..

[bassist_25]

Yeah, I never thought about it, but you're right: The Onstar stuff is pretty creepy.

I keep an extra set of keys in my wallet for if I ever lock myself out of my car and a cell phone for if I ever break down. Do people really need the Onstar stuff?

[lonewolf]

Everything you probably didn't want to know about gasoline:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/autos/gasoline-faq/part1/

Part 3 midway down is about octane ratings.

[f.sciarrillo]

Everything you probably didn't want to know about gasoline:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/autos/gasoline-faq/part1/

Part 3 midway down is about octane ratings.

This is what I read:

4.3 What is the history of gasoline?

In the late 19th Century the most suitable fuels for the automobile
were coal tar distillates and the lighter fractions from the distillation
of crude oil. During the early 20th Century the oil companies were
producing gasoline as a simple distillate from petroleum, but the
automotive engines were rapidly being improved and required a more
suitable fuel. During the 1910s, laws prohibited the storage of gasolines
on residential properties, so Charles F. Kettering ( yes - he of ignition
system fame ) modified an IC engine to run on kerosine. However the
kerosine-fuelled engine would "knock" and crack the cylinder head and
pistons. He assigned Thomas Midgley Jr. to confirm that the cause was
from the kerosine droplets vaporising on combustion as they presumed.
Midgley demonstrated that the knock was caused by a rapid rise in
pressure after ignition, not during preignition as believed [9]. This
then lead to the long search for antiknock agents, culminating in
tetra ethyl lead [10]. Typical mid-1920s gasolines were 40 - 60 Octane [11].

Because sulfur in gasoline inhibited the octane-enhancing effect
of the alkyl lead, the sulfur content of the thermally-cracked refinery
streams for gasolines was restricted. By the 1930s, the petroleum
industry had determined that the larger hydrocarbon molecules (kerosine)
had major adverse effects on the octane of gasoline, and were developing
consistent specifications for desired properties. By the 1940s catalytic
cracking was introduced, and gasoline compositions became fairly consistent
between brands during the various seasons.

The 1950s saw the start of the increase of the compression ratio, requiring
higher octane fuels. Octane ratings, lead levels, and vapour pressure
increased, whereas sulfur content and olefins decreased. Some new refining
processes ( such as hydrocracking ), specifically designed to provide
hydrocarbons components with good lead response and octane, were introduced.
Minor improvements were made to gasoline formulations to improve yields and
octane until the 1970s - when unleaded fuels were introduced to protect
the exhaust catalysts that were also being introduced for environmental
reasons. From 1970 until 1990 gasolines were slowly changed as lead was
phased out, lead levels plummetted, octanes initially decreased, and then
remained 2-5 numbers lower, vapour pressures continued to increase, and
sulfur and olefins remained constant, while aromatics increased. In 1990,
the US Clean Air Act started forcing major compositional changes on gasoline,
resulting in plummeting vapour pressure and increaing oxygenate levels.
These changes will continue into the 21st Century, because gasoline use
in SI engines is a major pollution source. Comprehensive descriptions of the
changes to gasolines this century have been provided by L.M.Gibbs [12,13].

The move to unleaded fuels continues worldwide, however several countries
have increased the aromatics content ( up to 50% ) to replace the alkyl
lead octane enhancers. These highly aromatic gasolines can result in
in damage to elastomers and increased levels of toxic aromatic emissions
if used without exhaust catalysts.

That is interesting, but, you still don't know what you ar getting at the pumps. My personal opinion is that the best thing to do is buy a bottle of actane booster and use it. Don't waste your money on the expensive gas.

[RobTheDrummer]

I have a cool ass idea...I say we carjack a tanker truck and hide it somewhere. Then we'll have enough gas to last for a while. Kinda like in the Mad Max movie that Moondoggy was referring to earlier. How bout it!?

[lonewolf]

That is interesting, but, you still don't know what you ar getting at the pumps. My personal opinion is that the best thing to do is buy a bottle of actane booster and use it. Don't waste your money on the expensive gas.

There's a lot more about additives on the later pages...there are 4 pages of info. This guy says that additives are not cost effective, but this was written sometime in the 90s when gas was cheap. If the additives didn't go up in price much, it might be cost effective now. If you look on the additive's active ingredients, there is probably a paragraph on it somewhere on one of those 4 pages.

[lonewolf]

I have a cool ass idea...I say we carjack a tanker truck and hide it somewhere. Then we'll have enough gas to last for a while. Kinda like in the Mad Max movie that Moondoggy was referring to earlier. How bout it!?

Then we'll end up with a bunch of ugly australian bikers chasing us on riceburners. It might be easier to take over a refinery...ker-chunk, ker-chunk.

[Ron]

Well... practically everyone who posts here lives well within 100 miles of an operating 2MW fusion reactor. On August 15th it celebrated it's 50 year anniversary.

The Breazeale reactor at PSU went online in 1955, and it's used to train reactor operators and to generate radioactive isotopes for research, not to generate electricity. It was the first nuclear reactor built to be used for research and training only.

Ron, the Breazeale is a small fission reactor similar to the ones used commercially today. I'm not sure if there are any 2MW fusion reactors yet, but there's talk about soon building a 5MW research reactor in southern France--that would be the largest one to date. There are no commercial fusion reactors at this time and probably won't be for many years. Superconductor technology isn't quite where it needs to be yet, but its leaping faster than chip technology. Once we see superconductors running at room temperature, it will open a lot of other doors.

DOH... I meant fission. I've been putting up too many posts lately in the midst of compiling code, and my fingers get too far ahead of my brain.

[f.sciarrillo]

Unleaded has been floating around 1.89 for the past couple of days ... more info here: http://money.cnn.com/markets/commodities/

[ThrashKillsYou]

I recently purchased a small bottle of octane booster (the bottle that says off-road use only) and a bottle of Fuel injector cleaner. Both said to treat 4-20 gallons of fuel per bottle. I personally felt an increase of power as my car peaks at around 25 mph in first gear, now to 35mph with the octane booster. At $1.88 for the small bottles i'm paying for about half a gallon of gas. My car gets 26-29 MPG so half a gallon would get me about 13 or 14 miles. I noticed about a 2 mpg difference. The bottle I added acted as if i added over a gallon of gas or so it seemed.....

[f.sciarrillo]

I got a bottle of octane booster myself today. I noticed a diff pretty much right a way .. Also, has anyone noticed that gas is down to 2.67 a gallon ?? It is dropping. Last check it was at 1.70 a gallon wholesale ..

Something else that was out of the ordinary. The gas station in Port Matilda was cheaper than in town Tyrone. They are always higher. it was odd seeing that ..

[ThrashKillsYou]

Sunoco in Dale is shut down. I wonder if it was because they stopped selling gas for awhile.

[the herald]

HERE WE GO AGAIN!!

[lonewolf]

Yep. unleaded was trading above $2 again this morning.

[Blain]

You'd be better off buying 92 octane for .20 or .30 more per gallon instead of buying the octane booster, and then only if your owner's manual specifies high octane fuel. If not, the gains you receive by using high octane are marginal at best.

Even vehicles that require higher octane (usually they specify 91 octane, which they don't sell here, but you can get 92 or higher) have a knock sensor that retards the timing if lower octane fuel is used. Most of the improvments that people think they get with high octane fuel are mental, though it's not hard to run a few tanks through and check the mileage. Then it's just simple math to see if the gain in mileage is worth the added cost of the high octane or octane booster.

[lonewolf]

You'd be better off buying 92 octane for .20 or .30 more per gallon instead of buying the octane booster, and then only if your owner's manual specifies high octane fuel. If not, the gains you receive by using high octane are marginal at best.

Even vehicles that require higher octane (usually they specify 91 octane, which they don't sell here, but you can get 92 or higher) have a knock sensor that retards the timing if lower octane fuel is used. Most of the improvments that people think they get with high octane fuel are mental, though it's not hard to run a few tanks through and check the mileage. Then it's just simple math to see if the gain in mileage is worth the added cost of the high octane or octane booster.

The only benefit today's higher octane fuel might provide for a low-octane car is to clean the injectors (or carburetor & intake), cylinders and the top of the piston. The rating is not a performance or combustability rating. It is a rating of the quality of anti-knock additives in the gas. If you continually put 87 in a car designed for 91, you could do a lot of damage to your engine over time. The knock sensor is only there for short-term correction of knock due to inconsistancies in fuel, not for continuous long-term correction of knock due to improper fuel usage.