Fuel Prices . Rip off pricks
 

Shell, BP and Caltex have raised the price of their 91 unleaded petrol to a New Zealand
$2 a litre - Govt told to act on petrol prices

5:00AM Wednesday April 23, 2008
By David Eames

The price of high-octane petrol topped $2 a litre for the first time yesterday, prompting the Automobile Association to call for the Government to intervene.
BP added 3c a litre to its prices, in a move that took 98 octane petrol to $2.03 a litre yesterday afternoon.
The "boutique" fuel was previously $199.9c a litre

The company lifted 91 octane from $1.86 to $1.89 a litre and 95 to $1.94.

Crappy.... thats $7.58 per gallon, right?

Damn...and I thought I was having trouble making it to and from work.

Good thing you don't own a Hummer.

Not sure it's Shell and BP who are the pricks. Your Govt. gets about 50c out of you for each litre purchased, and with crude at $120 USD per barrel, most of the rest goes to our lovely friends at OPEC.

True , but i bet the oil company execs and the polititions never drive around in 4 cylinders or car pool , aye

Bigger problem or reality is that more developing nations (china, india, etc) are now being mobile with autos and higher lifestyle so the global market is being pressured with tighter supply and sources that are in more HOT zones.

Also, atm the terrorist alert on refineries and drilling locations is at an extreme alert.

All that make speculation on the world markets all that much more edgy.

Edgy markets means $$$ to be made or lost by people with money and that is what is driving the oil price higher.

Don't cry about the price of gas, worry more about the billion people that have yet to buy a car to use more enegry.

lowell brings up some good points.

Another one and this is a biggie is the weak ass US dollar. Other contries but mainly china have typically invested in the US but with the mortgage credit fiasco, etc they are now sinking billions (per day!) into something with a much better return. So what is it?

Oil.

The markets are flush with cash and there's only so much oil so it's really just a matter of supply/demand. Too many investors with too much cash looking to buy a relatively scarce product=price goes up.

I don't know if supply and demand is a good term to use when discussing a commodity that is and has always been controlled by a cartel. The monopolist's (cartel) stock-in-trade is artificial scarcity, and oil is certainly no exception to this rule. The price of oil may be based on demand relative to supply, but the supply is tightly controlled by a cartel of monopolistic oil producers colluding with the governments of the world; this is a manufactured crisis.
200 dollar a barrel oil was one of the stated goals of last year's Bilderberg meeting, and those plans have been put into play.

The fastest way to chaos, war, and change is to control the need.

If you really want an OIL war, $200 a barrel oil should be a method to make it happen.

If you really want a food war, start with alternate fuel consumption grains.

If you want a religious upheaval, just say GOD (Pick one Allah, Budda, The One, etc.) told you to kill the non-believers and get fanatical about it.

I got lucky & bought into an energy sector mutual fund back in December. That thing has kicked ass while all my other 401K stuff has dropped like a rock. I'm still ahead thanks to the energy sector purchase.

No doubt we here in North America have it good comparatively to other nations. The last time I checked, it was somewhere in the neighbourhood of $7 per litre in HK.

Obviously, the players are making more and more more money due to the market fears. No one that have control are willing to make any adjustments when the consumers are willing to continue to suppport the high prices. Yeah we bitch to our goverment about how ridiculously high the fuel prices are as we filled up our SUVs but our elected officials are not going to do anything when 1) they are reaping the rewards as well 2) are highly swayed by the oil lobbyist. The minority that cry out are not going to sway them.

Governments are too short sighted to make changes unless a serious dotrine is adopted because of overwhelm public outcry. I don't think we are at that stage yet. They fail to see the ramification of how high fuel costs effect the whole economic structure. Fuel are so entrenched that it affect every single aspect of our lives. Higer food costs, manufacturing costs, living costs, etc. This does not simply affect our mileage.

The thing that really bother me is the continual propaganda by the players. When prices at the pumps goes up, they justify it by saying that prices for crude have gone up. But when it goes down, they explain that crude prices are just part of the cost because of refinery, delivery, etc...BULLSHIT. They have many and I mean many reasons for the increase in cost, Iraq War, Venezuala instability, Katrina, refinery issues, blah, blah,blah for the higher cost . The bottomline is as long as we continue to pay, they will continue to raise the price. It's a matter of when we are not willing to pay that things will turn around. Look at the 70s fuel shortage. Once the US and Canada decided to implement energy conservation programs, suddenly OPEC is willing to sell and at a much lower cost. We are then lured back into the fold.

It's all about demand, (I won't even say 'supply' because there are plenty left and not just in the Middle East), volume, market share, etc. It's Economic 101. This principal applies to region where it cost $7/litre. It's no different.

Now they are starting to spin it so that "$1.50/litre is going to be the norm"- Experts no doubt are paid by oil company to "warn" us.

It is all about conditioning. Remember the uproar and people fighting at the pumps when it jumped from 86cents to $1.07? where $1.15 in the norm now.

'The frog won't jump out of the pot until he is cooked if you slowly raise the temperature'

And what about the price decreasing at night time verses during the day? How do you explain that concept?

The oil companies have us by the balls because we NEED their product. We cant all just stop driving, working etc. I hate the high gas prices too but I still need to go to work, my mortgage doesnt get paid if I dont. Thats why I ride my bike as much as possible.

since oil is not an infinite supply, it will stop one day. a new technology will take its place. its that simple. i hate when people construct these doomsday scenarios, we will adapt, and carry on with life. the world's not going to end. but i tell you what, those raghead f__ks that control opec will be sitting on a hot pile of sand riding camels all over again once the oil is gone.
hahaha
so thats what i think about when i am bendinjg over at the pump. their great grandchildren will be herding goats just like their great grandfathers once did!

Yep, funny thing that oil industry. What you`re dealing with is a group of people who are astute at creating and promoting crises such as to drive up the price of the barrel. The actual cost of producing it has not gone up but by manipulating the markets (again, by creating mass fear about supposed risks), they have managed to drive the price way up (risk premium, a convenient economic theory). They then buy the oil from themselves (their own subsidiairies) at outrageous prices (the spread here is where the real money is), refine it (adding their customary margins) and then sell it back to us. When they get hauled in front of gov'ts, they carefully read back from the Great Book of Lies about how it is market conditions,.... and how they only make a few measly percent profit on it (of course, focusing strictly on the refining end of things), all the while recording outrageous profits. Yep, they have the system all figured out. The sad part is, no one has the gonads to do anything about it (likely because the people who could are all on the take with Big Oil). In the end, we only have ourselves to blame for we sat idly by and watched it all happen.

I get a real kick (once my blood pressure goes down) when I hear oil industry reps speaking on the issue of rising prices, they sound like such victims, regurgitating thde same old lines time and again. Here in Canada, the industry has been studied numerous times regarding price fixing and collusion yet no proof has ever been found and no one has ever been charged. Funny how that happens.... Last point, another of their lines refers to the shortage of refining capacity yet no one is building new refineries. Why would they, by controlling supply, thtey are driving up the price (OPEC is NOT the only cartel at work here folks).

Yep, the joke is on us folks.

Here in the States, 70% of what you pay for gasoline is the market price of the crude oil.

That's at the dock in Saudi Arabia, before it is shipped here. Before it is refined. Almost all the oil refined here is imported. Almost all federally owned land, and out west that's most of the land, is off limits for drilling. That's because the same elected dimwits who bloviate about "big oil" are more interested in preserving the weeds, the bugs and the rodents than they are in preserving the American economy.

About three dollars of what you pay for a gallon of gas is the crude oil, most of the rest is tax (about 68 cents per gallon in Ca.) levied by the same elected morons who won't let Americans drill for oil in America.

If you think the problem is oil companies crying croc tears and making excuses, why not call their bluff? Let them drill for oil wherever they find it. Let them build refineries without having to spend ten years and billions of dollars convincing the Almighty Government to grant permission.

What I find even sadder is the Governments expectation that the oil companies should invest in renewable energy. Why on Earth would they want to do that? Like they would ever kill the cow that’s giving them all the milk.

Hopefully someone with mankind in mind will figure it out and my children/grandchildren won't be slaves to the next batch of "energy" companies.

Here in the States, oil company profit from refinery to pump, is 23 cents per gallon.

I just looked up Canadian fuel taxes on Wikipedia and holy shit. In Montreal you pay $1.47 in taxes for every gallon of gas you buy.

Twenty three cents for the oil company. A dollar and forty-seven cents to the government. Some joke.

Yeah, that's insane!