Well hey that's nothing. Gas is $1.85 just down the street from the house, plus we have snow to boot. So there! Plus the high will only be 20 deg for the next 10 days so no hay fever either. We are blessed...

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I filled up with gas in the morning 12/2 at $1.92/gal and in the evening with diesel in the Barth a $2.55/gal. I also added fuel conditioner to the Barth as it is going for the big sleep on Saturday. It is snowing off and on and at 6:00 AM today 12/3 there is about 1" of snow with temps at 28. It should hit 35 or 36 today. This makes getting it into storage difficult as I may not be able to get the cover on with the snow on the roof. I should have done this a couple of weeks ago.

Bill G

Down here on the Old Coast of Fla. gas is about 2 bucks for regular and 2.25 for diesel. I'm taking a group of friends up to Desoto dragway today for the Snowbird Nationals. They have a special parking area for motorhomes close to the track. We'll only have a high of 74 today and it will be down in the sixties for tonights "Night of Fire" show with the jet dragsters and a 3 engine jet Peterbuilt. If we bundle up real good we should survive it.

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Dan & Suzy Z
'81 Euro 28

Jeez, I feel so sorry for all you guys. Gas is still around $2.30 here. I put 100 bucks worth in the Barth a month or so ago for $2.75 per, and that was with a 15 cent discount. Full price was $2.90, and they were prediciting it would go up. Oh well.

Snowing lightly for 2 days here, temp. hovering around 32. I drove in and out over the snow yesterday, but Mama thinks I should shovel the drive this morning. I think I'm going to take her to breakfast over the snow first, & maybe she'll forget she said it.

Snow here at this time of the year is unusual, but we may be heading for more. Some of the ski areas didn't make it open at all last winter for lack of snow, but several are open early this year with already record snows for the date.

I guess I'd better Google for dis "snow" thingy, find out what it is, and learn something about it...

Rusty, try to imagine something that would be the absolute opposite of hurricanes, humidity, & palmetto bugs big enough to steal your hamburger sandwich, and you might come close.

[This message has been edited by olroy (edited December 04, 2005).]

Actually, I lived in Alaska for three years and Maine (ayuh!) for three...I've tried to blank out the Winter Wonderland recollections from my mind.

Besides, it's going down to 50F tonight..., 40 tomorrow night, and low 30s the rest of the week...

Years ago in Maryland I had a Maine-iac neighbor. He was a stickler for law and order, but he nagged me for 3 weeks about "Loren Otta" before I realized that's what he was talking about.

Those years I drove a Chrysler, but he claimed to drive a "Fawd Caah."

Has anyone figured out why in the last few years diesel been more expensive than gasoline?

It used to be that diesel fuel cost less then regular fuel. I seem to remember it going up in the winter months and then falling below regular in the summer. Now it's always more. What gives besides greed?

"What gives besides greed?"
Home heating fuel oil. If you yankees want to freeze in the dark, to repeat a 70s oil-bidness mantra, diesel fuel prices will go down.
ALSO: another 70s oil-bidness truth: There is no shortage of gasoline, there is a shortage of CHEAP gasoline.

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"You are what you drive" - Clint Eastwood

[This message has been edited by Gunner (edited December 05, 2005).]

quote:

Originally posted by Gunner:
"What gives besides greed?"
Home heating fuel oil. If you yankees want to freeze in the dark, to repeat a 70s oil-bidness mantra, diesel fuel prices will go down.

It seems that gunner is spot-on. I was looking at another RV site and found this. It's not mine but sounds like what Gunner is saying..........

Since I have worked for a refinery and since I now work in Oil Trading I will try and explain this without to much complication.

Most refineries in the U.S. are built to run on Sweet crude which has less sulfur. The problem is sweet crude is more expensive. When you hear oil is at 65 dollars a barrel they are quoting the WTI crude, which is sweet crude. This is the benchmark in pricing. However there are several refineries in the U.S. that run sour crude, which comes from the Vens, Saudi's and Mexico. Sour crude runs at a discount of 15 dollars to even 20 a barrel less then WTI. So a refinery can actually purchase crude at 35-40 dollars a barrel and make the same gas and as a refinery purchasing 65 dollar a barrel crude.

Sounds like a simple plan right, everyone should start to run sour crude since its cheaper and much more abundant in the world. Well it costs 500 million to a billion dollars to change a refinery so it can run on sour. In addition a refinery will have to shut down for 3 to 6 months drastically increasing demand.

Problem is, demand is high which drives prices up. Diesel fuel is essentially heating oil. Only real difference is one is dyed. Only the North East region (mainly) uses heating oil and there is not much storage for heating oil. Right about the time when refineries start to produce large amounts of Heating oil (diesel) for the winter we had numerous hurricanes which knocked out much of the refining capacity (about 20%). There is such a demand for heating oil that it drives the price of diesel up. Its a supply and demand curve, simple economics.

Now this will be the hard part for many of you to understand. There is not much spare capacity for refining gas, heating oil and jet fuel. So when you have high demand for gas and not such a high demand for crude (this happens when refineries are shut down, the demand for crude drops) there is a bigger margin for profit.

Now if oil companies lower gas/diesel prices, consumers will drive like they always will. Act like nothing ever happened and go out and buy their excursions with v10's etc for hauling soccer kids. Keeping the demand just as high. The country would see gas lines, and actually run out of gas. When the refineries shut down we went through 10 percent of our spare gas capacity in 3 days.

Bottom line is Americans are only careful about consumption when it hits their pocket. Its called price control and in the last three months its done more to control oil consumption then all all the hybrids/electric cars and solar/wind areas combined.

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http://www.truckroadservice.com/

[This message has been edited by Bill (edited December 05, 2005).]