Copago, yes. Easter isn't a big one, but I anticipate a $0.20 hike somewhere in the week preceding Memorial Day.

And I just wanted to say one last thing about E10 unleaded ethanol fuel. fjohn got me thinking. I'd heard the bit about E10 being bad for things before, but most of my research said it was not dangerous. However, since I DRIVE a Ford, and my owner's manual wasn't specific to Ethanol, I decided to call the company. Their customer service center was very unhelpful, I don't think the guy I spoke with even knew what E10 Unleaded ethanol fuel was. And he looked it up in his database and came up with nothing. That in itself is somewhat telling, since IF Ford Motor Company discouraged the use of E10 unleaded across the board, I'd think that information would be readily available in the customer service database. However, he recommended calling the service department at a local Ford dealership because they have all the current specs for such things, directly from Ford Motor Company.

So, that is what I did. I explained that I had been told FMC discourages use of E10 unleaded at the risk of voiding the warranty. He laughed at me. I am not being snide. He actually laughed at me. He said there are certain vehicles which should not use E10 unleaded because it is not available in the minimum octane requirements for that model, and that unless you have a "Fuel Flex" vehicle you shouldn't use any higher percentage of ethanol fuel, such as the E85, though they DO make autos that can use E85. But he informed me that FMC encourages the use of E10 unleaded in any auto that does not specifically require fuels of a higher octane because it is a cleaner-burning fuel.

He did mention that sometimes in Nebraska's very hot summers, E10 unleaded can cause vapor lock in older Taurus models. That is it.

I suppose that if your owner's manual does actually say not to use Ethanol fuels, you should follow that directive. However, it is specific to only certain Ford vehicles, and FMC endorses the use of ethanol fuels in any vehicles in which it meets the minimum octane requirements.

What is the average engine size in other countries? ...just a rough guide.

I seem to have gotten my alcohols mixed up, Lothruin. You are right, ethyl alcohol, or ethanol is the drinking variety (C2H5OH). Whereas methyl alcohol (CH3OH) is used as a solvent, anti-freeze and fuel, only ethanol can be used in fuels for vehicles. It's proportion to gasoline is usually 10 to 15 percent.

Ford does not recommend the use of methanol. Why is it so hard for me to differentiate between methyl and ethyl? No wonder I'm not a chemist.

Tellywellies: We Americans are in love with big engines (I have a 5 litre powerplant in my truck); the outside capacity for most vehicles intended for pleasure rather than work is about eight litres. This is a monster size by anyone's measure.

Fjohn, I wondered if that might be the case, but then, as I said, I HAD heard that bit about ethanol before, but I know you aren't the only person who mixes up methanol and ethanol. There were plenty of people in my chemistry classes who could never keep them straight. And I suspect that is exactly where the rumors about whether ethanol is safe come from; a couple people either not knowing or not remembering the difference and telling a couple of other people who wouldn't know better unless they looked it up for themselves, etc.

I just am a really strong proponent of E10 fuels. Since it is made of corn, it is a huge boon to my state's economy, not to mention being cleaner burning, less expensive, renewable AND it actually helps keep your fuel injectors clean.

So, when presented with this opportunity and impetus to really fill out my information I took it, and thanks for that. Now I can, with certainty, tell anyone that ethanol fuels are the right way to go. (And I got to give a little information to everyone here at Funtrivia!) Yay!

It's 83 cents a litre in my small part of the world.

Zowie! $3.14 per US gallon multiplied by the current exchange rate of (I'll guess here) .85 is USD 2.67.
Does that sound right, argus9?

In Alabama, the gas price for a regular leaded is $1.99

I have a 1995 Mercury Mystique that has 2.0 litre engine and is a 4 cylinder. Average price for gasoline to fill her is at $2.46 per gallon for 93 Octane.

Used to cost, when gas prices were semi-normal, about $20 a week to fill her up. Now, with the hike it costs approximately $30 or $32 to fill her.



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Agnes (JTJ)

Yep, it's 84 cents Canadian a litre here too, which converts to $2.62 US. Looks like maybe you'd better stop complaining! Considering that you can't travel five minutes outside of my little town without bumping into a punpjack, you'd think it would be cheaper here.

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Now I can, with certainty, tell anyone that ethanol fuels are the right way to go. (And I got to give a little information to everyone here at Funtrivia!) Yay!

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Hehe. In Australia fuel with more than 10 percent ethanol has been banned for sale. We had an ethanol scare a little while ago and many service stations [in Sydney anyway] placed signs up either saying no ethanol was present in their fuels or if it was it was well within the limit allowed.

This newspaper article tells just about the full story of the ethanol scare.

I paid $1.19 Australian yesterday per litre of diesel. A full tank,60 litres, will get me about 450 kilometres.

I also believe ethanol is better for the environment.
Here is a serious link about ethanol for anyone interested, it is very detailed but easy to read.

It's a shame that such political leanings can so badly damage a beneficial product.

Having lived in Europe for about twelve years of my life and then come back here to California after an eight year stay over there, I have to say that the shock of seeing bigger and bigger monstruous cars on the road here and seeing people complain about the price of gas hit me hard.
Europeans pay so much more and avail themselves of public transportation so much more as a result, that, I feel that Americans would be shocked if they had to cope with that much more out of their budget per year to make it to work and play etc.
In Europe I drove one of the smallest cars on the market because the transportation system didn't reach my house often and there weren't any sidewalks to get to it if I wanted to cross the cliff I lived on. Even then, the regular gas was about forty dollars at least per week. If I managed a tank a week it was miraculous.
The other car was a diesel and if it hadn't been, one of us would not have been able to go to work with the expense of the gas.

Here in the States however, I realize that every problem is relative, so of course I notice the rise in gasoline prices causing problems. One thing that causes them is that public transportation isn't reliable nor does it serve the suburban neighborhoods it should. We have major gridlock in most cities. Whenever I've had to accept jobs they are often very far away and taking public transportation would have required three hours waiting and switching etc.
This is the American way of life. Because we've never actually been forced to do without inexpensive gasoline, the public transportation structure is shaky at best.
I took the train system downtown recently to avoid the traffic and parking fees, but, it only reached a place that was still half an hour's drive from my home and required a traffic jam to get there.
We have purchased a diesel here in California, a VW as it's more fuel efficient than any other vehicle. The other alternative fuel though at the moment is recycled cooking oil from restaurants and in Berkeley or Davis California you can find that sort of Diesel vehicle running on recycled oil.

I just lament the lack of alternatives and also the car manufacturer's insistence on pushing people up and up towards cars that consume such large amounts of fuel.
In America, the one with the biggest toy really does win.

It's a good thing large cities have public transportation...except for one. Arlington, TX is the largest US town without public transportation. Neither the Dallas nor Fort Worth public transportation systems service Arlington. As I live in the metroplex, around here the traffic situation is lousy, and getting worse every day. There were outlying areas with large fields five years ago, and that entire field is a housing area now. Frisco, McKinney, and Little Elm are communities on the north side, and they are rapidly growing. I work in Frisco, and I can't keep my trade area map updated without it already being obsolete. What new streets I get today, there would be more tomorrow, making today's map obsolete.

You guys from the U.S. with your stories of $2 per gallon, which equates to about 52 cents/litre (0.27 pounds/litre) are just trying to make us in the UK jealous - and you're succeeding very well indeed! Still, higher fuel prices must have a positive effect on CO2 emmissions and global warming.

The public transportation issue is a big one. The bus system in my city (too small for any kind of railed public transportation) is really very good, but for a number of reasons, including having a 2 year old (no child safety seats on our busses last I rode one) and where we both work compared to where we live (we live at almost the outside edge of town, I work outside the city limits not far away, and my husband works quite literally all the way across town), it is enough of an inconvenience, requiring hours extra of our time, that we do not use it. In fact, the bus doesn't even service the area my office is located. That extra hour in the evening is worth more to my husband being home with us than waiting for the bus and then riding it around for 45 minutes until it finally gets back to where we live. To some extent it is very selfish, but we also both drive small, high-gas-mileage vehicles and in warmer weather we do a lot of walking to the store, etc.

However, it was the poor PT system in Indianapolis that caused my husband to not go to college. He had been accepted and had a scholarship to an art school there, but the PT service didn't run in accordance with the class schedules and neither he nor his mother could afford to get him a car. If the public transportation line that serviced the area of the school had been more accomodating of class schedules, he'd have been able to go. As it was, there simply was no way for him to get there and still be able to take all the classes he needed to take, so he was unable to avail himself of that opportunity.

I think that's a big issue. For most communities it isn't enough to simply run busses around a given area. In order to best serve the community one must also take into consideration the locations being serviced. I know that in my city, the schedule of the particular line that services the University of Nebraska is designed to go through the city campus roughly 20 minutes before most classes start. It travels to east campus and back, running two busses at a time for the route. Perhaps it is because it is a smaller city, more able to make accomodations like that, and perhaps it is because the University accounts for a significant amount of our population and income, but whatever the case, I think it is an excellent idea.

As a mother who took public transportation for about four long years with a toddler in Philadelphia, and out to the suburbs where we lived then, I can honestly say I did my bit.
However, the time spent on transportation was long and the transfers took a long time especially with a sleeping kid on my shoulder and a bookbag on the other.
If I'd been able to read on the train, then perhaps it would have been better, but, I basically kept my kid occupied. I'd never have taken a stroller on the transportation system, therefore, I would basically hold the kid on my hips. I had a mile total on each side of the trip, so, it was long hard walking and carrying a kid.

My basic complaint is that most Americans simply have no idea of how little they pay for gas in comparaison to other countries.

Bruyere, if I COULD take the bus to work, I'd probably try to figure something out with my daughter. The bus doesn't come within 5 miles of my office because it is outside the city limits. Kit's daycare provider is only a few blocks away, and the same bus stops a block from our house, and within 5 minutes, passes hers. It's the getting to my office bit that is the real problem.

My mother used the bus system for most of my childhood, including my sister and I whenever we needed to go somewhere, For a long time we were a one-car family, and even when we had two, my mother was either going to school or working in the downtown area, so catching a bus was easy. All the busses go downtown. Even when I started at the University, I regularly rode the bus, or rode my bike (the 15 miles, which isn't VERY far, but I'm not a cyclist). I have to admit that was mostly to avoid parking costs, because I had my own car.

As for me, I don't particularly LIKE paying $2.00/gal for gas, but I DON'T avail myself of PT and I KNOW America is in the minority when it comes to gas prices, so I try not to complain. That is also one of the reasons I buy E10 and only E10. If, for whatever reasons, I feel PT is outside my realm of possibilities right at the moment, I do what I can to support renewable resources.

The cost of petrol in the US looks amazingly low to most Europeans, but we probably ought to keep purchasing power parity in mind.

At present, if I want to buy US currency in the UK, I will pay about 55p or 56p for a dollar, and that’s the kind of rate at which we tend to convert prices from dollars to sterling. But British friends who’ve visited the States and Americans who've been to the UK often tell me that a dollar goes a lot further in the States than a dollar’s worth of sterling does over here. So the two dollars that an American is paying for a gallon of petrol represents more in terms of local purchasing power than the equivalent does to us. In other words, if the Americans didn’t have to pay two dollars for every gallon, they could probably buy rather more groceries, books or beer with that money than a Brit could buy with £1.10 or thereabouts in the UK. Of course, petrol is still very cheap in the US compared with the UK, but maybe it’s not really quite as cheap as a simple currency conversion makes it seem.

What I find strange [well in regards to petrol anyway] is the fact that the price we here in Australia pay is actually pegged to the price of petrol in Singapore. Work that out.

I'm going on a hunch, roos, but I wonder if your delivery point for crude oil is in Singapore. There are delivery points worldwide, and I'm sure the one for me (as I live in Texas) is in Cushing, Oklahoma.

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The contract trades in units of 1,000 barrels, and the delivery point is Cushing, Oklahoma, which is also accessible to the international spot markets via pipelines.

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Source: http://www.nymex.com - one exchange that crude oil is traded on in the USA.

Singapore is certainly one of the main delivery points for Australasia Dave.
The aspect of our pricing regulations that I find of particular interest is the fact that Australia currently produces approx. 80-85 percent of the petrol used for domestic purposes yet all petrol prices are pegged to Singapores prices. We pay here the same price for petrol produced here as we would if it was imported from Singapore, with all associated shipping costs.
I read on an oil company site the following

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Australian wholesale prices are based on refined petroleum prices quoted out of Singapore (which is the major Asian exchange for oil products). Singapore prices will be determined by regional and global demand for these products.

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, from here.
I realize I shouldn`t complain too loudly though, Australia is generally in the lowest grouping regards the price of petrol when comparing what other OECD participating countries are paying. The U.S.A. is generally paying the least when compared to other OECD countries.
I would hate to pay what Europeans and Brits in particular have to pay.

Doctors are not cheaper in America. Most everything else is as far as I can see.

These things are only relative however, most everyone thinks that different commodities are going up in price etc, but if they haven't lived elsewhere, they haven't got an idea of how much it is anywhere else. So you basically make do wherever you live, and haven't a clue about things elsewhere unless there's a reason to be. Relatively speaking, the gas prices here have really gone up rapidly and it is starting to become noticeable to Americans so they're complaining. What I tried to point out was that, it still was not enough to make them realize that they drove too many high powered vehicles without a care for the environment or economy and that they felt that it was their right to do so. In fact, questioning the big vehicle thing was tantamount to being unpatriotic in some places. A visit to my local automall would probably make lots of people faint at the sheer size of the vehicles and my street has twenty pickup trucks loaded with all the bells and whistles and V8 engines yet they transport one person each day and none of them actually serve a purpose of hauling things for work but they're for showing off! They probably get about 15 mpg at best too.

However about the relativity of prices, I'll give you an example, in Hawaii where I lived for three years, you don't require heating or air conditioning because of the climate so you'd think that the bills would be cheaper or next to nothing. But it's the contrary, if you use hot water to bathe, it will cost you more per month than it does for people to heat and air condition on the mainland. The oil transportation to generate energy is costly.

I don't think people realize how different it is for others unless confronted with it. The gas prices do seem high to us at the moment in the States, yet, in Europe we coped with much much higher prices. It's currently 1 Euro 57 per litre in France at the discount places like Leclerc.

You need to calculate the minimum wage in a country to see how much labor it takes to put gas in the tank though.
Then it becomes obvious.

Well, exactly Bruyere. On reading your post, I found a site that listed average wages for a number of different occupations and in a number of different areas. Searching for average wages in the UK for secretarial or administrative support jobs, I found that even the MINIMUM for the very basic administrative job was around 7 pounds. That's 13 US dollars. That is more than I make an hour by $2, and I've been at my job for 5 years, have considerably more responsibility than just basic secretarial jobs, and mine is a pretty good job, and fairly well-paying for that type of work in my part of the country. My husband makes $3 less than I do, and we have a small child to support.

Now, I'd guess there's a pretty high percentage of wealth comparatively between the US and other countries, obviously, but MOST Americans are not wealthy. I don't know what the average wage in other countries is, among the working class, but if it is lower here, then even when the price of a product is less when compared directly, that doesn't mean it actually less costly.

And on that note, those who can afford to drive a V8 Ford F150 extended cab with all the bells and whistles hauling nothing more than their golf clubs in the back, probably are not put into hardship by paying $2.00 for 13 miles of driving. It is certainly less costly for them compared to their wage than it is for me compared to mine.