Gerberry and Hagan, "LOOK HOW MUCH WE CARE!"

[sfc_oliver]

Maybe they don't exactly understand who is making the money from a gallon of gas?

Gas stations: A surprisingly small amount goes to the guy who runs the station.

Most service stations are independently owned and operated and take in between 7 and 10 cents for every gallon they sell, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

That 7 to 10 cents going to the gas station isn't even profit. Out of that, station owners still have to pay leases, workers, and other expenses - leaving them with a profit of just a few cents. For the service stations, most profit comes from selling coffee, cigarettes, food and other amenities.

These calculations are based off of EIA's most recent numbers, when gas was $3.04 a gallon. Gasoline hit another record nationwide average of $3.27 a gallon Thursday.

Taxes: The government takes about 40 cents right off the top, with about 18 cents going to the feds. State taxes vary widely, but the national average is about 22 cents a gallon. Most of this money is used to build and maintain roads.

Transportation: Getting the gas from refineries to service stations via trucks or pipelines - and the cost of storing it in large tanks - eats up another 23 to 26 cents per gallon.

Refining: About 24 cents a gallon goes to refining companies like Valero (VLO, Fortune 500), Sunoco (SUN, Fortune 500) or Frontier (FTO, Fortune 500) that specialize in turning crude oil into gas. Some companies like ExxonMobil (XOM, Fortune 500), Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500) and ConocoPhillips (COP, Fortune 500) also have refining operations.

Profits for refiners have been squeezed lately because the price they pay for oil has risen so much faster than the price they can sell the gas for. This helps explain why Big Oil companies -like Exxon, which actually buys more crude oil than it produces - haven't seen their profits rise as much as the price of oil.

Crude oil: This is the most expensive part of a gallon of gas. Of every gallon of gas $2.07 from every gallon of gas goes to producers of crude like Chevron (CVX, Fortune 500), BP (BP), and smaller outfits like Anadarko (APC, Fortune 500) and Marathon (MRO, Fortune 500), or national oil companies controlled by countries like Saudi Arabia, Mexico or Venezuela.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/13/news/economy/gas_gallon/index.htm

[Dan Moadus]

I'm surprised that it took so long for the "panderers" to come out. Yesterday's Vindicator had a story about Rep. Gerberry and Hagan proposing legislation establishing a commission requiring gasoline companies to prove that they are not taking unfair advantage of their customers.

This isn't the first time gas went to $4 a gallon so there has been a lot of discussion that allows even the common man on the street to understand that these high prices are due to many more factors than collusion amongst gasoline companies.

Most of us understand that oil is a commodity that is auctioned off, and it's price is affected mostly by supply and demand, which of course results from many many factors. Has Gerberry and Hagan not been privy to all the information that has been put out?

Oil and gasoline companies are no different than other companies, they want to charge us as much as they can for their products in order to maximize their profits. They'd be perfectly happy to see prices double.

It seems apparent to many people with the exception of Gerberry and Hagan that there must be some natural limits on what these companies can charge, because I'm sure if there weren't, they would be happy to sell gas at six or seven dollars a gallon.

Did it ever occur to Gerberry and Hagan, that if these companies could dictate prices, that they would not have allowed them to drop to $1.86 a gallon two years ago?

At the press conference, which was held at a gas station, there was a man and his son who both worked in the lawn care field. When asked about Gerberry's proposal they both said they did not see any need for government involvement, allowing me to conclude that we would all be better off if we could get the man and his son to trade occupations with Gerberry and Hagan.