Re: gas prices - in the US and worldwide (archive)

I would like to see the 93 octane stuff too. Stan, I spent a year in the SF area and I know what you mean. The minute the Tosco refinery in Richmond blew up and was shut down a while back, gas went up the next day at the station level as if they paid the higher price for what was in their tanks.

Since then, I have moved back to the San Diego area. The day I left town, I had to fill up in Walnut Creek at a Shell station. The price paid was about 30 cents a gallon higher than what I paid at a Shell station later the same day when I refilled the tank in LA.

Since returning to San Diego, I typically go to LA once or twice a week for business. Here, we pay on an average 20 cents a gallon more for the same grade of gas for the same brand of gas as they do in LA. (For those of you taht don't know, it is about 80-90 miles away.) I really can offer no other explanation for it thean greed on the part of the station owners. They have to have some sort of local cartel going. I have been in the La Mirada/Brea area of Orange county and seen countless street corners in a row where the 87 octane stuff is at $1.65/gallon. Doesn't matter what brand it is, it just doesn't move from that mark from corner to corner. Good, name brand stuff like Shell or Texaco or cheap mom and pop station crap. It is all the same up there. As for the 20 cent difference? Beats me. The difference between San Diego and LA is nothing. It all comes from the same refineries near Long Beach. It doesn't cost anymore to bring it by truck to San Diego than it does San Bernardino. Understand that here in California we pay more tax on the gas than any other state. I saw that first hand on a trip to Phoenix. You could actually sit at a gas station in Blythe (right on the CA/AZ border) and see advertisments for the same gas that was 30-40 cents per gallon less!! Some of the difference was tax, some of it was greed.

In the end, the real reason behind all of it is greed. Artificial supply/demand issues are created to hike prices and create profits for the oil compaines. What the assholes don't realize when they do it is that they totally screw with the economy. Watch CNBC during the day and you will know what I mean. Gas prices go up aand Exxon stock kicks ass. Everything else that is oil/gas/fuel dependent crashes. What do you think root of the recent problems on Wall Street were created from?

So we all know what the problem is and the cause of it. What is the solution??

GregT
'91 850i (14 mpg avg.)

First of all, I'd love to see 93 octane gas. Here in California the highest street gas is 92 octane. As a kid, I remember Sunoco 260.... 102 octane street gas (my Chevy Vega GT loved it). I've been paying over $2 a gallon for the last year (up to $2.20/gal at the cheap stations). I've seen premium as high as $2.39/gallon at a ripoff Shell station. The San Francisco Bay Area has the highest gas prices in the US, although with a number of refineries in the area, we still can't figure out why (the gas companies just say it's what the market can bear). Part of the cost here is the addition of MBTE to lower pollution (yeah, it lowers air pollution.... and poisons our water supply - smart thinking from our government). But we are still not paying as much as our European friends. I've heard that the cheapest gas is either Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.

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Re: gas prices - in the US and worldwide Kurt.G 13:14 10/15/2000 (1)
- Re: gas prices - in the US and worldwide GregT 15:07 10/15/2000 (0)

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