Why are gas prices so high?

If you use low octane fuel in your vehicle, the engine sensors will retard the timing and richen the mixture to avoid pinging.

Since your running at less than optimum performance, your fuel milege is down. Your costs per mile are about even with the premium fuel but you pay 10 cents less per gallon.

I live in Alaska, we have oil, and a refinery 70 miles from where I live.The gas price here is $2.61 for reg unl. Prices are high because the oil cos. can get away with gauging and hte oil soaked administration in Wash. do not have a reason to do anything about it.Let's face it-oil companies are gauging pigs at the trough. The sooner we find alternate sources of energy to power motor vehicles the better. But just remember, it's not in the administrations best interest to enable this to happen. Their cronies haven't squeezed enough out of oil yet.

I wish to bring one thing out concerning the gas prices. If you watch all gas companys raise their prices at the same time to the same rate. This is a clear indication that all of the gas compenies are fixing the price to suit them. If this was truly an open market there would be some differences in price. The oil companies own the oil fields, they own the pumpping equipment, they own the tankers, they own the processing plants, and the own the distribution system. Every year the post record proffets. Last quarter they said that they needed big proffets to continue research and development of new sources of energy, but everyone knows that a research and development budget is taken out befor proffet.The price of oil in the middle-east or anywhere else has very little to do with the actual price of gas. Most of the money that is moved for the price of oil is on paper anyway. There is no way our government can not find the oil companies guilty of price gouging if they really looked at what was going on. A lot of the govornment owns stock in the oil companies, and they do not want them found guilty of price gouging.
I followed a gas delivery truck as it went through town a few weeks ago and I was very supprized to find that it made deliveries to 5 different stations not including the conveience stores. So there appears to be no real difference between, BP, Shell, Cheveron, Quick Stop, citco or anyother brand as it all comes from the same truck.
I am fully in support of a gas boyicot. I relize that people have to have gas in todays world and I am not asking you to do without gas. I am asking you to not drive anywhere you do not have a real need to. Don't go out to eat that way you put pressure on the gas companies in two ways they will notice if enough cut our gas use and the resteraunts and stores will also notice. If we tell them that gas prices are why we do not come to their store then they will also put pressure on the oil companies. It will take all of us to wrench control of the oil prices back into our control.
Thank you for listening
Johnson

Re Johnson comments about oil co. gouging, he evidently doesn't know much about oil pricing and profits. The price of crude has much to do with the price of gasoline. So do taxes. Exxon nets less than 10% on sales of gasoline; without doing one thing the government gets 17% on Exxon sales of gasoline. In California for example, gas sold for $2.00 per gallon includes a state sales tax of 14.5 cents. When gas is sold for $3.00 a gallon the tax goes to 21.75 cents, collected in the price. Total taxes, state and federal amount to about 55 cents per gallon on $2.00 per gallon gas.

There are now more than 18 different mixes of gasoline requiring additives of ethanol or MBTE or other chemicals and also requiring revamping the refineries to produce gas for summer or winter driving. This Boutique gasoline costs substantially more to produce and gasoline is no longer a fungible product, meaning for example that because of State laws mandating the composition of gasoline, Milwaukee gas is not legal to sell in Chicago, and vice versa. Pricing of gas is a very complex marketing problem. Refineries require a huge investment to build and profits are very thin and unpredictable. No new refinery has been built for over 34 years.

Every time gasoline prices go up there are cries of price gouging and price fixing and collusion, also, demands for FTC, Congressional and Sherman Act investigations, dutifully carried out with negative findings.

You can follow a "gray ghost" unmarked gasoline tanker truck around and it will deliver to various gas stations selling different brands. This is a legitimate and cost saving delivery system, under government control by government issuance of "re-brand letters". That saves cross-hauling and uses fewer delivery trucks.

The laws of supply and demand still operate. Just let the government control gas prices and you will have gasoline shortages, a black market, and long lines of cars needing gas. Nixon and Carter did it with those disastrous consequences. And in a tight market you can expect prices of merchants selling the same product to be very close. It is no proof of price-fixing or collusion.

When all is said and done the oil industry is now producing better gasoline for less money (adjusting for taxes and inflation) than that sold 70 years ago. And it is being accomplished despite the many laws and regulations and increasing exploration, drilling and distribution costs.If anyone is gouging the public, it is Big Government. What justification is there for New York City to add a tax of 68 cents per gallon to each gallon of gas sold there?