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thebajarunner
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3718
Registered: 9-8-2003
Location: Arizona....."Free at last from crumbling Cali
Member Is Offline
Mood: muy amable
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Don't even try to plan your budget more than a few days ahead of departure.
I am seeing gas prices around Modesto/Oakdale get raised twice a day.
Cheapest here today is $3.09 and highest is about $3.49, but stick around, that was at noon.
Interesting.... last week I was back East for meetings.
I left my brother-in-law's place in Westchester, NY and it was about $3.35, drove 45 minutes to Jersey and it was $2.79. That is as bad as the
Southern Border situation.
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Bajaboy
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4375
Registered: 10-9-2003
Location: Bahia Asuncion, BCS, Mexico
Member Is Offline
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What are your options at this point? If you need/want Baja, you're going to pay the price. Cut back somewhere else....
Zac
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 64859
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: San Diego County
Member Is Offline
Mood: Have Baja Fever
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Just reach the border with enough gas to get 20 kms. south, where the price is the standard national rate... about $2.20/ gallon (Magna/Regular).
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comitan
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4177
Registered: 3-27-2004
Location: La Paz
Member Is Offline
Mood: mellow
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Interesting article:
Return to regular view
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Big Oil limiting gasoline supply
California pays for corporate chicanery
- Jamie Court
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Californians are paying the highest price in the continental United States for gasoline. The nation's big oil companies announced world record profits
for the first quarter, building on last year's world record profits. Sound familiar?
The latest version of California's electricity crisis registered $3.37 per gallon at the pump last week.
A few years ago, Enron and other energy companies turned off the lights and robbed Californians blind. They did it by closing power plants and
artificially withholding electricity to give the illusion of scarcity. That made the price of electricity soar, even though the price of producing it
was minimal.
Big Oil is playing a similar game now. A few large oil companies are making billions of dollars by artificially limiting refined gasoline supplies to
jack up prices far in excess of raw material and production costs. (That's why a recent drop in crude oil prices isn't resulting in reductions at the
pump.)
California oil refiners have rigged their system by limiting the number of refineries and running on low inventories. The companies have closed nearly
half the state's refineries since federal gasoline deregulation in 1981. Today, the gasoline supply barely meets demand. As a result, the commodity
appears scarce and the market price for it is sky high, along with profits.
The latest proof comes from government gasoline pricing reports. They show that from January to April, crude oil costs increased far less than the
run-up in gasoline prices, even assuming that refiners all had to pay the high "spot market price" for crude oil, which they didn't.
The increases in the crude oil "spot price" accounted for only 12 cents extra per gallon of the 60-cent rise in that period. More than 40 cents of the
60-cent increase in gasoline prices over 3 1/2 months came as increased refinery profit margins for the oil companies.
The reason oil companies generally do not pay the spot price for crude is that they either harvest crude oil from their own fields or have long-term
contracts at cheaper prices. So even the oil spot price calculation gives oil companies too much credit for increased costs of producing gasoline.
The refiners also blame increased costs for ethanol additives for the big jump at the pump. But if ethanol blending increased costs for oil companies
in California, other states in the West using conventional unblended gasoline should not be as affected. Yet Washington state, which uses only
conventional gasoline and has similar refinery capacity and crude oil sources, saw increases at a higher percentage rate than California's. To pump up
their profits, refiners have also taken a page out of Enron's playbook by shipping needed energy products out of the state.
According to a California Energy Commission report, state refiners recently switched production from our state's gasoline formula to gasoline that
could be used only in other states, including Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. The supply of export gasoline increased by a startling 38.5 percent during a
single week, while production for in-state use fell by more than 10 percent. This prevented any surplus in California, which would have pushed prices
downward.
The most visible proof of refiner profiteering came in corporate reports to shareholders. Chevron, for example, informed its investors of a 49 percent
increase in net income financed by a 260 percent increase in refining and marketing profits, in large part coming from California.
When oil companies can make more money by making less gasoline, what is their incentive to change?
Only the big stick of government regulation of the gasoline supply can help.
First, the state Public Utilities Commission should be charged with regulating gasoline supplies. The commission could require refiners to meet demand
by controlling exports of gasoline products and by monitoring refinery shutdowns to prevent manipulation of supplies. If necessary, the commission
could force oil companies to build new refining capacity.
Second, California needs to invest in alternative fuels to stop our dependence on petroleum and the companies that control it. Signatures are expected
to be turned in soon for a November ballot measure to take back a small portion of oil companies' windfall profits in order to fund the development of
alternative fuels that could significantly reduce gasoline consumption and fuel prices.
Unfortunately, Big Oil, like Enron, has paid a lot of campaign cash for its political cover. For example, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has received $2.2
million in campaign contributions from oil companies, running a close second to President Bush ($2.6 million) for top spot in most campaign
contributions in America from Big Oil.
If California politicians had acted quickly to take over power plants and stop the electricity rip-off, Californians would have saved tens of billions
of dollars. State officials need to learn from that lesson or the financial toll from this "energy crisis" -- and the next -- will be just as bad.
Jamie Court is president of Santa Monica's Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
Page E - 4
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archiv...
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?2006 San Francisco Chronicle
Strive For The Ideal, But Deal With What\'s Real.
Every day is a new day, better than the day before.(from some song)
Lord, Keep your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth.
“The sincere pursuit of truth requires you to entertain the possibility that everything you believe to be true may in fact be false”
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 64859
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: San Diego County
Member Is Offline
Mood: Have Baja Fever
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Oh geeze... "Big Oil" makes the gasoline for us and has a profit of less than 10 cents a gallon.
The government doesn't produce a drop and makes 50 cents or more per gallon.
Who should reduce their profits???
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