RV Fuel Issues & Prices - Post 'Em Here!

The gas prices here in Colorado Springs are 10 cents/gal higher than diesel.

gas $3.79
diesel $3.69

The link below goes to an interesting article by Motley Fool, an investment magazine. It discusses where they think oil prices are going and have an interesting graphic on where the cost of fuel actually comes from. Be careful Tom, there are big words.

Clicky

That's this weeks excuse. Next week it will rise more because Texas has many tornadoes this past week. As if they don't usually have tornadoes? Or less?
Then we got to figure in the following weeks excuse to raise the prices.

Gas in our are is within about 12 cents a gallon of diesel! Refinery maintenance is the given reason.

Checked Gas Buddy this morning to see what the prices were at now. Surprise! Of the reporting stations, the highest was $3.99. The lowest price was $3.81 at a Cenex station. What the heck is going on? Strange things are happening (strange music in the background).

Nope, the prices for the US consumer are the lowest in the world and about 1/3 of what they were a decade ago and what is paid in the rest of the world. Controlling prices always leads to less production. What will happen is more will be produced by the vast reserves to fill the gap. Demand has squashed production now and it will rise dramatically now. Thousands of jobs will be made. In PA alone there are 80,000 jobs related to the production of natural gas. Trucking in Europe and here (as government allows) is moving to GNC. Pilot Flying J is putting in 550 stations along the East West Corridor for transportation fuel.

Does that mean U.S. prices for us consumers will now rise substantially?

The DOE today OK'ed a LNG export terminal in Quintana Island, Texas. It will be capable of exporting 2% of current production of US totals which are below capacity now due to low sales costs. Another one in the same area is nearing approval and others around the US are in process of approval. This broke the logjam where Dow Chemical and Monsanto had been holding up approvals. Canada and Australia both are further along Texas. LNG is being quickly used in Europe and Asia.

Clicky

LindsayRichards wrote:
When I went on the drilling platform tour in Morgan City, LA, we were told that a new level 6 drilling platform cost about $6.5 BILLION each. Prior to the moratorium there were 24 in the Gulf. These level 6 platform are about 4 acres in size and have 7 levels or about 28 acres of floor space. WOW. They also said that about 90% of the gross profit went into the "upside" or exploration. This is expensive to drill in the few places that are still OK. The Deep Water Horizon was in water 6,000 feet deep and then drilling down and additional 2 miles below the surface of the bottom. We have billions of barrels onshore and in shallow water that are "off limits".

I have linked to some interesting photos of the drill rig photos below. This tour is publicly available if you are ever in that area.

http://www.linandnancy.com/morgancityla.html

The gulf states are restrictive because tourist don't like looking through the oil platforms to see the sunrise or set.

I know the refinery I worked at for almost three decades was sold in the late 1990s and the money the purchaser then spent on environmental upgrades was double the cost of the purchase price without gaining one barrel of throughput.

Its a dangerous and expensive industry with a highly trained / skilled workforce. Its also very interesting and the pay was white collar money in a blue collar job. The downside is the hours are terrible and often long (might go a month w/o a day off working 12/16 maybe more hours / day) chronic fatigue of the rotating shift work operating staff is so common place that feeling bad was normal. The phrase often used when someone complained about a lack of sleep was, "Suck it up cupcake, it ain't an ice cream factory".