Originally Posted by Semper Fi

Aside from all this computing the cost of gasoline, I would "sum it up" by saying that it's pathetic that these oil/gas companies lie and say that the cost has gone up significantly and charge us a rediculous price increase when they are producing record profits. One CEO has been in charge since 1993 and has been paid over 1 billion dollars to date...........that's just insane.

Why don't they just have an add on tv that says, "that's right, we can charge you whatever we want and you still can't do sh*t about it.

Originally Posted by kswest

Viper ... I grew up in Bethesda and everytime I go back I can't believe how the city has changed. It used to be a pretty cool place, now more like a non-stop cut-throat rat race.

Originally Posted by Viper31

No doubt about that. You need a six figure income to qualify for a mortgage on a garage in that town.

Originally Posted by kswest

My parents bought in the early 80s for about $100k. Selling now and the apriasial was 1.2 M

Originally Posted by Viper31

That is incredible. The property taxes must suck. I hope they can sell for apraisal and retire comfortably if that is their intension. The sad part is that their property value grew that high because of the growth of government.

Here is an acrobat file I found about refineries and their locations. Notice there are no refineries in the northeast and that is a high population area. I guess they all depend on PA or NJ.

http://biowa.us/BIOWA%20oil%20refineries%20final.pdf

Originally Posted by Viper31

All the wining going on about the cost of gasoline has prompted me to attempt to research the actual cost. I thought that other folks would also like to know this info. It seems as most people you run into on a daily basis are clueless on the costs and just repeat what they hear in the media. For simplicity I will use Department of Energy statistics and per gallon costing. I will use $3.00 a gallon pricing as that is the average in my area this week.

Crude oil cost (47%) = 1.41
Distribution cost (12%) = 0.36
Refining and Profit (18%) = 0.54
Taxes U.S. Average (23%) = 0.69

Taxes in my state are only $0.42 cents per gallon, but current crude oil pricing should make the per gallon cost $1.71 versus $1.41 so the average per gallon cost is actually $0.03 lower using the percentages above.

I do not know how efficient the refining and distribution operations are, but lets just assume they are efficient and are making 50% profit from those operations (12% + 18% = 30% - 15% = 15% profit). I would say that many companies would not consider 15% profit all that great.

Please chime in you have more accurate data so we all can learn about this stuff.

Originally Posted by fountain1998

In my business you are doing average if you show a profit of 6.1% before taxes. I only had a 2.5% profit and I would be happy to repeat it again this year. I could only imagine a 15% profit, wow!

Originally Posted by Havasu Cig

I own 3 gas staions and I make pennies on the dollar for a gallon of gas. I think it is funny that all these people come in *****ing about the cost of gas, when some of them IMO are overpayed for what they do.

Everyone complaining should post what they do for a living and how much they make a year so we can make some judgements on if they are overpaid.

The government is the one that is making the real $$$ on gas.