gas has been up... tacoma selling much?

That's only basing it on the price of the crude oil. The oil price is only part of the cost of a gallon at the pump. The workers producing it's wages, the taxes per gallon, storage costs, transportation costs, profit and more are all part of the equation.

 

man everyone has a pic on the screen name... maybe I should work on one too!! how about a FLASH PIC?!!

FLASH AH hA!!! Savior of the Universe!!!!!

 

You're right that oil and gas preices are not perfectly correlated. However, at the price levels we are seeing today, the price of oil makes up approximately 75% of the cost of a gallon of gas.

The other ~25% are taxes, distribution/marketing, and refining. As fuel costs increase, it makes distribution and refining more expensive also.

Taxes are about only 7-8% of the cost. They are the only factor that isn't directly impacted by inflationary market forces.

 

^Right on, Buzz.

What folks who criticize oil companies for their "windfall profits" don't understand is the term "profit margin":

A ratio of profitability calculated as gross earnings divided by revenues (or, said another way, gross profits divided by sales). It measures how much out of every dollar of sales a company actually keeps in earnings.

No, instead the idiot politicians throw out words like "windfall profits" to scare everyone and make them mad and convert to their Marxist ways. The fact is, the profit margin for these oil companies is still $.08 - $.10 per gallon. Meanwhile, more and more people use petroleum based products every day, thus increasing the total profits of the oil companies.

It's a free market economy, deal with it.

 

Also a fact that few people realize is that not all gas is refined from Light Sweet Crude. For instance Valero has the capability of refining the lower grades of sour crude, which sells for half the price of Light Sweet Crude. Much better profit margins for the company..