Most Expensive Places to Buy Gas in the U.S.

http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/article/103987/Most-Expensive-Places-to-Buy-Gas-in-the-U.S.

Monday, December 10, 2007
Most Expensive Places to Buy Gas in the U.S.
by Matt Woolsey
Saturday, December 1, 2007

Drivers in San Francisco enjoy views of the Golden Gate Bridge, with scenic stretches of the Pacific Coast Highway to the south and the rural shoreline to the north.

And they pay for it at the pump.

There, the average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline reached $3.546 Wednesday, up from $2.524 a year ago.

San Francisco, Calif.

Things don't look much better in other parts of the state. San Jose, San Diego, Sacramento and Los Angeles posted the country's next-highest per-gallon prices, respectively, according to Gasbuddy.com, a Web site that tracks gas prices nationwide.

Such high prices are not confined to California. Among the country's 40 largest metros, New York City, Buffalo, Seattle, Miami and Chicago rounded out the top 10 priciest places to buy gas.

The surge at the pump is the result of rising crude oil prices, which have grown significantly since 2004, when a barrel sold for $26. On Wednesday, a barrel went for $93.

Golden State Guzzlers

Still, west coast drivers are hit hardest. Those in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles pay more at the pump than those in Houston or Dallas, where the average price per gallon Wednesday was $2.90 and $2.923, respectively, due to such factors as fuel taxes, environmental standards and costs of business like regulatory burdens and taxes.

Ten Most Expensive Places to Buy Gas
Rank City
1 San Francisco
2 San Jose
3 San Diego
4 Sacramento
5 Los Angeles
6 New York City
7 Buffalo
8 Seattle
9 Miami
10 Chicago

What's more, the difference between, say, San Francisco and Houston is more pronounced this time of year since California requires cleaner fuel year round. Texas, like many Southern and Midwestern states, eases up on such requirements during the winter months when consumption slows. California's higher environmental standard increases refining costs, which get passed along to the consumer.

Why So Steep?

Crude oil's output is heavily influenced by the 12-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, each of whose yield makes oil such a volatile commodity. For example, earlier this month crude oil approached $100 per barrel due in large part to Mexico cutting a fifth of its crude-oil production. Also affecting prices? The weak U.S. dollar. Because oil is traded internationally in dollars, much of the per barrel price increase over the last few years also has to do with the slipping greenback.

Last week crude hovered around $93 a barrel, and crude futures are starting to dip below $90, as OPEC is expected to increase output, which in turn will lower prices. OPEC restricts output to keep prices high, but it isn't in its interest for prices to skyrocket because this would dent consumption.

Some hope rising oil prices might increase acceptance of corn-based ethanol as an alternative, green energy source, but the ethanol market has its own problems.

This year, $7 billion was spend in federal biofuel subsidies, resulting in a 20% increase in acres of corn planted. Investors, looking for a fast buck, have in turn produced far more corn for ethanol production than there is blending capacity or consumer demand.

A flooded market has made it more cost effective for ethanol producers to hold on to their supply than to sell it. Some factories in North America and Australia have shut down completely as a result. It's a market in disarray.

"Initially, [the subsidies] looked like a pure handout, but now it looks like its suckered investors into losing a lot of money," says Michael Liebreich, CEO of New Energy Finance, a London-based analyst firm. "Right now oil could be at $120 [per barrel] and it wouldn't make any difference...the speed that the private equity industry poured money into the industry is beyond its profitability."

The national price average for for E-85 -- an ethanol gasoline mix -- is $2.478 a gallon, according to the American Automotive Association, but when that figure is adjusted for energy generated by volume, E-85 costs $3.261 per gallon. Based on figures from the Energy Information Administration, E-85 generates about 25% fewer BTUs (energy unit) than does gasoline and, at its adjusted price, costs about 16 cents more per gallon.

There are, at present, about 4.4 million flex-fuel cars on American roadways and less than 1% of American service stations offer E-85.

A Better Bet

Unless huge oil fields are discovered in America, the solution to lower gas costs, experts say, lies in efficiency of consumption. From a city planning perspective, step one is reducing congestion. In its 2007 "Urban Mobility Study," the Texas Transportation Institute estimates that drivers in the nation's 437 urban areas wasted 2.9 billion gallons of fuel last year due to traffic delays.

Expanding roadways and building better transit systems relieves congestion, but both are costly. Some say improving traffic efficiency can be a much cheaper way to lessen congestion. Two ways to do this: systems such as service patrols, which comb heavily trafficked areas and help stranded motorists and ramp monitoring systems, which involves the installation of traffic lights on entrance ramps that regulate the frequency with which cars enter a freeway or highway.

"There's room for us to expand upon our management of the system," says David Schrank, co-author of the TTI study. "We can make our operations much more efficient through things like service patrols or ramp metering...very few areas that are managing 100% of their system, and there's room to improve on their management by going beyond the freeway to the arterial streets."

Ex-rocker is Australia's new Environment Minister

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2971279.ece

From The Times
November 30, 2007
Ex-rocker is Australia's new Environment Minister
Bernard Lagan in Sydney

Old rockers never die — in Australia they take to running the country.

Less than a week after electing a new Labor Prime Minister, the country’s cultural and social revolution gathered pace when two children of the Sixties were appointed to key jobs.

Peter Garrett, the former sweaty, edgy and menacing frontman of the Sydney-based band Midnight Oil, scourge of corporate America, became Environment Minister.

And the right-wing Liberal Party, shattered after its electoral catastrophe of last weekend, has turned to the raffish, thrice-married Brendan Nelson. The 49-year-old, who for years wore a diamond ear stud, owns several Fender guitars and is known for belting out hits by the Animals.
The choice of Mr Garrett, in particular, was brave. At 6ft 4in (1.93m) and aged 54, he always had a rock star’s body with a politician inside. He spent the 1980s screaming from stages against the US military, supporting the rights of Aborigines and railing against big business. Yesterday the politician emerged fully when the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, appointed him — not without risk — to the Environment portfolio. Mr Garrett, a lawyer who never practised, stumbled in the election campaign. He joked off-air to a radio announcer that what his party said during the campaign and would do in Government were two different things.

More than any other, Mr Garrett’s appointment underscores the enormous change that is sweeping the Australian Parliament since John Howard, Prime Minister for nearly 12 years and the world’s longest-serving conservative leader, was ignominiously dumped by voters and even evicted from the Sydney suburban parliamentary seat he had held for 33 years.

The consensus within the Liberal Party is that Mr Howard stayed too long and should have stood aside last year for his youthful deputy and Treasurer, Peter Costello, the former barrister long seen as the heir apparent.

But Mr Costello, seemingly enraged by the scale of Saturday’s loss, his thwarted ambition and with Mr Howard, has refused to seek the leadership of the Opposition. He now says that he sees his future out of Parliament and pointedly failed to turn up at Mr Howard’s farewell lunch for his outgoing ministers on Wednesday.

So when the conservatives met in Canberra yesterday to select a replacement for Mr Howard, they could hardly have chosen a man more his opposite. They rejected by only three votes the man thought most likely to win: Malcolm Turnbull, the former Goldman Sachs banker who is Australia’s richest parliamentarian.

Mr Turnbull, 53, who married into the Hughes legal and literary dynasty and represents the blue riband Sydney seat of Wentworth, first came to national attention when he represented the former MI5 agent Peter Wright to overturn the British Government's ban on Wright’s memoirs, Spy Catcher, in the mid-1980s.

Despite Mr Turnbull’s impeccable credentials to lead the Australian conservatives, the party voted for Dr Nelson, a radical choice that broke with the past. Dr Nelson is a medical doctor with a track record of socially liberal thinking. He rides large motorcycles and has a raffish aura.

Mr Garrett was keeping, mostly, quiet about his plans at the Environment Ministry, but his 1990 song Blue Sky Mine, which protested against asbestos mining giants, might provide a clue: It said: “The candy store paupers lie to the shareholders / They’re crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers / The balance sheet is breaking up the sky.”

What was increasingly clear was that Australia may now be ready to do what Mr Howard never would — address global warming and sign the Kyoto agreement on global emissions.

In some of his first words since taking over from Mr Howard, Dr Nelson underlined the cultural shift, saying: “Whatever some critics of the Kyoto Protocol might think, it’s symbolically important to Australians and I think the most important thing for us as the alternative Government is to see that Mr Rudd gets it right.”

The rock generation has found a new mission. And so, yesterday, did Australia.

Protest songs

“Got your last meal, filled up with pesticide Hamburger chain third world infanticide Got robot car your jobs will disappear It's the politics of a brand new year Manhattanization is coming, open your eyes if you dare Carry us on to the crossroads, come to your senses and care"
Progress

“Here comes the tired statesman Heavy lidded, bearded, nowhere left to land He makes the jigsaw fit With a hammer in his hand"
Drop in the Ocean

“Now market movements call the shots Business deals in parking lots Waiting for the meat of tomorrow"
US Forces

“Flat chat, pine gap, in every home a Big Mac And no one goes outback, that's that"
Power and the Passion

“Coastline hosed down washed away Economics now there's nothing left Tomorrow's child takes concrete footsteps And they’ll drink champagne or be damned"
Shakers And Movers

“Four wheels scare the cockatoos From Kintore east to Yuendemu The western desert lives and breathes In forty five degrees Beds are Burning

Source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/