Now, with us winning the war and with enough oil in reserve to do us, why in the heck are gas prices so high? This is ridiculous. Who's pocketing the money? Why are taxes on gas so high?

 

Taxes on gas haven’t gone up and nobody except OPEC is really pocketing any money. The reason is “supply and demand”. The world economy is going strong including America, China and Japan and there is more consumption of oil by many of these countries as well as others.

Therefore with demand growing in America because of a strong and growing economy and Chinas economy basically exploding and Japans economy out of the hole after years and years being in deep means more people want oil and are buying it.

OPEC “supposedly” under estimated what the demand for their oil would be and set limits accordingly and now everybody wants what they have and the highest bidder gets it in a sense so the price of a barrel of crude goes up. It is approx. $41.70 a barrel. When we were paying approx. $1.45 a gallon for gas a barrel of crude was going for approx. $33 - $35.

So you can see, for the most part, the oil companies are not “pocketing the money” but OPEC is getting fat and rich off of it.

Taxes on gas are usually a specific amount per gallon. For example federal tax may be 20 cents per gallon so it doesn’t matter if a gallon of gas is $1.20 or $3.00 it remains the same.

Another reason for higher then normal gas prices are due to state by state clean air mandates which requires refineries to make special blends of fuel. Refineries have a set capacity they can produce so the more blends they have to make the longer and more costly it is and they pass that on to the consumer. You have to remember we haven’t built a new refinery in America in over 20 – 25 years. You have the environmental wackos to thank for that and all the different blends that have to be made that have “helped” the price of fuel go up, so not just OPEC but Algore and family are happy to see the price of gasoline WAY up there…

 

um, er, yeah, i was gonna say exactly what Burt did, but he beat me to it by a hair.

Alright I'm lying.

I don't have a real good answer, I'm just a dumb consumer who takes it dry.
I'm so mad I'm GONNA DO NOTHING ABOUT IT AND CONTINUE TO TAKE IT DRY!!! haha

I just filled up tonight at the Esso.
91 liters and a car wash $98.24

Pretty sad when you need a C-note to fill your truck up and then get 455 kilometers out of it.

BLEH!!!

 

It is not OPEC getting all the money. It is Bush allowing the oil companies to rip us off. Exxon Mobil is the second largest corporation but reported the highest profit. They had more than twice the profit as Wal-Mart, the largest corp. No one can tell me it's supply and demand. It's greed and tyranny.

 

Just a point here.
When OPEC raises their price to $41.70 a barrel (25% of US consumption)

US Oil Companies do so immediately also with domestic oil (75% of US consumption)

ALL barrels worldwide are $41.70

If there are excess profits, US Oil Companies get 75% and OPEC 25%