American Oil Companies
Posted by dflak07 on December 29, 2007
Benazir Bhutto is assasinated on Thursday. Since this sets off turmoil in oil-rich Pakistan, the price of a 55-gallon barrel of oil rose $0.55. According to my calculator $0.55 / 55 gallons is an increase of 1 penny a gallon. According to the calculators used by the oil companies it’s 10 pennies a gallon. Except for the good folks at Exxon/Mobile where it calculates out to 19 pennies.
I think I need to go back to school and learn math. I also need to go back to school to learn economics. According to what I learned about the law of supply and demand, the only logical explanation is that someone pulled the plug on Saudi Arabia and all the oil ran out.
But we have not seen anything yet. A one cent increase in the price of a barrel of oil from $99.99 to $100.00 will be reflected with an immediate increase of 25 cents or more at the pump.
Roch101 said
How many gallons of gas are refined from a barrel of oil?
Billy The Blogging Poet said
And thus the reason my primary means of transportation is a 200 mile per gallon motorized bicycle.
dflak07 said
Roch101, There a 55 gallons of oil in a barrel. I get your point that not all of it winds up as gasoline. However if the ratio was 10:1 we’d probably still be using whale oil.
Billy, Personally, a 50+ mile per gallon motorcycle would be my preferred method of getting to work every day. But my wife is a nurse and worked the emergency room as a student. She is adamant to keep me off one
Personally, while the cost of oil is beyond my immediate control, what I pay for gasoline is partally under my control. I can often choose when I drive (I plan trips meticulously, there is rarely a wasted mile) and I can always choose HOW I drive. I have a 2004 Altima – I get between 29 and 30 miles per gallon out of it on a short daily commute that’s about 1/2 city, 1/2 highway.
I use 7 gallons of gas a week (365 gallons a year). That may go down now that the new connector in town is open. It’s a mile or two shorter, and it eliminates a net of 7 lights from the commute.