United States Gas Price Temperature Map

The temp map is a very clever idea. Road trip to Casper, Wyoming!

 

How very interesting.

Los Angeles and surrounding areas some of the highest gas prices.

They also pump oil there.

I've always felt California was getting the shaft. And don't give me that additive blarney. Oil companies have used that manure to justify shafting us for years.

 

Wow, that's pretty neat! I've got it saved on my Favorites list now.

I like how orange/red California is.

 

Is this map a reverse image of the red state, blue state image from the last election?

 

As much as this is a very useful site (which I used to frequent myself), I found some highly annoying spyware on my computer (since removed), which appears to have come from their site. I'd say at the time that I was about 85-90% certain that it came from there, but it could be from somewhere else. Either way, just a heads-up to everyone. Like I said, it is a very good site otherwise, and I may be safe there now that I've gotten the NoScript extension.

 

Strange

It's strange that the states furthest away from the fuel delivery ports have the lowest prices?

Supply and demand, or the greedy oil companys at work?

 

Where the level of competition is high, prices tend to remain close to the cost of production. Where there are monopolies, prices tend to be whatever the market will bear. While the oil industry is not a monopoly in the strictest sense, it is a near monopoly, and behaves more like a monopoly than like a competitive market.

"Gouging" is a value-laden word. Every company in a free market attempts to maximize its profit. Where there is competition, it must do this by trying to make a product people want, or by narrowing its profit margin to capture market share.

But when a very small number of companies dominate the market, their best strategy is to raise the prices until consumption falls off too much to sustain the level of profit.

As long as we allow industries critical to our national security and well-being to be operated on the basis of the greed motive (otherwise called the profit motive), the prices will remain as high as some critical percentage of the population is willing to pay. And private investors will pocket the excess.

So for example, after (or just before) a natural disaster, people are willing to pay more for gas, water, and other necessities, so dealers raise their prices. This is the way capitalism works, folks. If you don't like it, agitate for a more humane economic system, as I do.

 

Very interesting. Interesting to see how the prices vary based on state borders.

It would be really cool if they normalized the prices without state and local taxes. Then we could really see how supply/demand drive the prices.

 

Yes, I know from living in NY & NJ, the difference IS state taxes... NY being among the highest in the US. & they have a nice little kicker. It's not a fixed cents per gallon, but a % of the wholesale gasoline price... so the higher the wholesale gas price goes, the higher the tax goes... The State of NY would have to really have brass ones to ever talk about windfall profits!!

 

the average for states and cities is very misleading. because the bulk of people in my state live in a much higher than average area of seattle, the average of $2.53 is WAY off base.

the others are cool though

i also checked historical gas figures for the state and seattle. they say gas was 1.88 a gallon when i first got my car. i have tracked every penny spent on gas and my records for olympia area says it was $1.199. that difference is unreal.

i remember when i first got my car, gas had dropped more than a dollar a gallon from the time i ordered my car until i got the car. cant even begin to tell you how fast i became the joke of the day at work.

today... for some reason, people no longer seem to think its funny any more. hehehe...ya, they lost their sense of humor for some reason...

 

interesting chart... Washington states is wrong. its not 28 cents. it is higher than that. and its going up...not far enough im afraid, but at least its one small step in the right direction

 

Thanks for the map link...that's awesome... also very telling.

Not to derail the thread too much with my vent, but how can frickin' Wyoming have the some of the cheapest gas in the nation when it's a LANDLOCKED state in the middle of the country?? Transport costs would be greater...granted that the population is less, but you'd think that would raise the cost even more because of the lack of demand compared to...oh...say...LA for example!

Since I live in LA, you've just verified that painful feeling that I have when I fill up at the pump is an oil company arm wearing 6 Rolexes. :angry:

 

True!
Current Washington fuel road tax rate is 31 cents per gallon for both gas and diesel.

 

Hmmm, why does diesel cost more than refined gasoline?

 

i think you get less diesel from a barrel than you do gas

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusguy04 @ Mar 27 2006, 04:12 PM) [snapback]231122[/snapback]</div>

Actually, if I'm not mistaken, it didn't used to until very recently. I thought a couple of years back it was some of the cheapest gas you could buy. I don't know what made it go up so sharply...perhaps it was "refining costs" or "special additive costs"...or whatever the made up reason du jour is.