Germany: Gas $8/Gal!
 

Listening to NPR a guy from Germany just called in and said he just filled his car up and paid $8/gal. Wow! Was wondering whether the huge spike here also occured in Europe.

any reports of what gas currently costs in places like France, italy, UK ,etc.?

Eight bucks sounds fair. Gas is too cheap here in the states; it encourages irresponsible use. This "huge spike" you refer to has brought it up to about where it was in 1981.

2 weeks ago in Ireland we were paying $5.70/gallon.

petrol here in SW england is now close to £1 a litre - works out at very roughly £4 per gallon or $8, so same as germany. curiously it appears to be even more expensive "up country".

France is usually a bit cheaper, but a long way for us to go to fill up.

regards, ann

regards, ann

Depends whether he's talking about real gallons or those mimsy devalued things you have in America.

In most of Britain, petrol's in the low 90p's, or £4 a real gallon. Obviously closer to £3-£.40 for weenie ones.

It's been pretty stable here lately, But has Ms Merkel's increase in VAT hit German prices?

Whatever: around £8 a gallon strikes me as pretty god value for drivers, and the world would have a brighter future if certain gaz-guzzling places we won't mention followed suit.

Perhaps this will spur biodiesal improvement.

A few years ago an English chap was touting methane made from chicken droppings.

Perhaps Flanneruk could comment on this issue. There are quite a few natural mammalian sources of methane. I await Flanneruk's contribution with anticipation.

now if only hot air would help out then flanner could contribute better - bring back the Zepelin? suppose there are ample chicken and sheep droppings in the Cotswolds.

Petrol here in Holland is between €1.42 and about €1.50 a litre, depending on where you buy it. In my town its about 1.43 a litre. So that's about $7.21 a US Gallon. You pay much more on the motorways, and in areas without much competition. My town has 8 petrol stations fighting for my custom.

Just over US$6. last week in Italia.
92 Octane is about $3. here in Mexico.
M

Ooops: $6.75/gal (1.31 Euro a liter) in Italia.
M

>Perhaps this will spur biodiesal improvement.
Well, taxed on biodiesel have been increased drastically this year and oil companies are forced by law to add a certain percentage to their standard diesel fuel. It's just about money.

One wonders what would happen to petro prices if the MidEast oil were disrupted by, say, a Cheney-led attack on Iran? prices could double?

PalenQ, does everything have to deteriorate into a verbal attack on the present adminstration? Is there ANYTHING that you don't believe to be their fault?????

bettyk - news flash - there is a flotilla of US warships floating just off Iran right now - does this raise the spector of some action? obviously yes. But also you have a good point, sincerely.

>there is a flotilla of US warships floating just off Iran right now - does this raise the spector of some action? obviously yes

And even if there is no "action" the flotilla costs, costs, costs... and the debts (also foreign) accumulate. Now the easiest way to reduce foreign debt is devalue your own currency...
and the results are plainly visible on your gas station bill. Not to mention on your CC bill after a trip to Europe.

Well with gas $4 here in the US $8 a gallon in Germany is actually cheap. Traditionally european prices have been more like triple the US versus double.

But I guess the european governmentts haven;t been able to raise the taxes on gas as fast as the oil companies here can raise their profit margins.

$8 a gallon in Germany - but the Mercedes I rented last month was getting 30 some miles to the gallon GOING 100 MILES PER HOUR on the Autobahn! Driving on country roads and in the mountains it was getting much better mileage.
This C class Mercedes seemed to be the same model you could buy in the states, but somehow got much better gas mileage.

Dropped my rental car off in Frankfurt, on Tuesday. Spent the last 5 days driving around Alsace, the Black Forest and the middle Rhine. filled up twice. Paid 1.41-1.45 a liter in France and Germany.

From NPR:

The biggest factor in rising costs is the price of crude oil, followed by the cost of refining.

If a gallon of gasoline costs $2.90 (this week's average, according to the Energy Department), crude oil accounts for about $1.60. The cost of crude oil on the futures market has risen about 33 percent in the last year. This reflects supply problems in such places as Nigeria, Iraq and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the threat of supply problems in Iran.

Refining costs add another 64 cents or so to a gallon of gasoline. Refining margins have increased from a few years ago, and are especially high this spring, because many refineries are currently shut down for seasonal maintenance. Refineries are still recovering from the effects of last year's hurricanes. And they are adjusting to more stringent low-sulfur fuel requirements and the phase-out of the gasoline additive MTBE.

The balance of the price is TAXES -- about 55 cents -- and distribution and marketing costs, which account for about 11 cents per gallon.

OK. So the rising cost of crude oil and of refining help account for the spike in gas prices. But at the same time, oil companies are reporting record net profits. They're being accused of price gouging. What's their response?

Big oil companies are making most of their money by producing crude oil. They invested in oil fields when prices were much lower, with the expectation that they could break even at, say, $25 per barrel. Since the market price is now more than $70 a barrel, the extra money is gravy. It's like a farmer who can raise corn for $1.50 a bushel. If the market price is $1.75, he makes a quarter per bushel. If the market price jumps to $2.25, his profits jump as well. (If the market crashes to $1 per bushel, the farmer loses money. That can happen to oil companies as well.) Oil companies, like the farmer, are the beneficiaries of high market prices, but THEY CAN NO MORE CONTROL THOSE PRICES than a farmer can dictate what he gets for a bushel of corn.

Critics would say the oil industry is far less competitive than the corn market, which is certainly true. BUT IF OIL COMPANIES COULD CONTROL THE PRICE OF CRUDE OIL, THEY WOULD NOT HAVE ALLOWED THE PRICE TO FALL TO $10 A BARREL AS IT DID IN 1998.

Oil companies DON'T set crude-oil prices; the global market does. Basically, the market decides what people are willing to pay at a certain moment in time. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that the world is getting richer. Countries like India and China are growing, and that has created more demand for oil and gas. In the US, we're still going full throttle when it comes to energy use. At the same time, there have been supply disruptions and political instability in major oil-producing nations. So you have a situation where demand has been growing steadily and inexorably, and the system of supply is quite vulnerable. That's the basic recipe for high prices.

Leaving aside all the kerfuffle about global warming, gouging oil companies and the - let's be honest here - chickensh*t methane arguments, there still seems a problem.

Petrol has gone up in Germany to €1.45 a litre. But that's less than $7 a minigallon.

Perhaps the NPR caller just isn't very good at sums. Or hasn't twigged we left the rebels to their own devices 220 years ago.