Why we're getting ripped off on gas!

[CnoteTJ]

AN ENGINEERING MASTER PIECE

During the construction phase......
Dubai, United Arab Emirates


All finished. Notice the size of the palm trees outside.


Can you guess what it is

Remember, this is in the middle of the desert....
The very HOT desert where temperatures get up to 140 degrees.....

Unbelievable! But true.....
It is a self contained Ski Resort.......................
YES, it is!
The INSIDE view:




Why is gasoline almost $5 a gallon for regular unleaded???
So the Arabs can ski in the desert, that's why!

Are we stupid or what!

[Kral4me]

 

[frankiev]

guess sand storm sailing is out dated.

[rocket]

the real reason we pay so much for gas is cause we won't take advantage of our own oil deposits, both offshore and on-shore!  that and the 18% in federal taxes and 33c of state taxes (weird congress blames 'big oil' for prices when they make 5% and the federal gov makes 18% of the cost per gallon!!  oh yeah, and what is big oil?  exxon has less than 10% of the market share.  who is big oil?)

[mallcrawl]

sure we can drill our reserves now and lower prices for the next twenty years

or we can leave them alone suck it up as our fuel prices get close to what the rest of the civilized world pays and then when the arabs run out in twenty years and we have the largest reserves in the world

well lets just say the cost of protecting the enviroment while we drill won't be so bad

[rocket]

The new ways of drilling have minimal impact on the environment, like horizontal drilling.  And in twenty years, we better have something other than gas to power vehicles.  Oil will run out someday.  drill today, lower prices, develop alternate energy sources for tomorrow.

if gas continues to rise at the current rate, people are going to have to choose between heat for the house and fuel for the car

[Gastank]

You know Ski Dubai is actually cool. I went my last Deployment. Kick-ass. There are ALOT of other reasons that the gas prices are at a national average of $4 per gallon. I pay about $8 a gallon here in Italy. Double the states. We just have some people in power that have alterior motives.

[rocket]

Get this, "big oil" makes about 10% or less on the sale of gas.  10% is EXTREAMLY low for a profit margin.  The lumber yard my Dad works at has a 40% markup!  That is more typical.  Taxes are over 18%!  the government makes more than the oil companies!  Here in CT we pay over $0.33/gal for state tax!  Speculatoin in the futures market, along w/ OPEC drive the cost of oil up.  Most of increases lately are due to the speculatoin!

One thing to keep in mind when you see "record profits for oil companies" is that it is completly American to create a product the public wants/needs and sell it for a profit.  It's called capitalism.  And any 'windfall profits tax' will only hurt us for two reasons: first, no one is going to take a cut in profit, so the tax gets passed on to us.  second: if they didn't pass the tax to us, it would result in less money for exploration of new sources, building/maintaining/updated refineries, etc, which means less oil availible, which drives up the cost for us.