Gas prices too high? Try buying gas in England.
I like to cry about how gas is approaching $3/gallon here in Orlando. I thank my luck stars I don't live in England. There, gas (petrol) is approaching £1/litre. Sounds like it's a lot less than here, doesn't it? Well, let's do some conversion between metric and English units of volume and a currency conversion for the money.
- One U.S. gallon equals 3.785 litres.
- One English £ equals $1.79 U.S. dollars (at today's exchange rate).
What you are missing is that Min wage in England is $11 US dollars an hour and they don't pay for insurance etc. The US imports only 15% compared to nearly 100% of its oil in England. The true cost of a barrel in the US at todays rate is somewhere in the order of $3 US dollars. You have to remember that the big 5 oil companies have there own oil wells. So they get oil at cost not the $65 - $70 dollars a barrel that is on the news. And England uses Diesel the US uses gasoline. Gas in America should be about .75 cents a gallon and even at this price the oil companies are making money. Don't forget those same oil wells also produce natural gas.
ReplyDeleteHere in the UK, we are currently paying the equivalent of $1.87-$1.95 dollars,per litre of gasoline. We have diesel and LPG as well, but the majority of vehicles here, are petrol(gasoline). As for insurance....we pay an absolute fortune here. My insurance, at age 43 with a clean licence held for 14 years, and several years without a claim, costs approx. £1400.00, which is approx.$2730.00 per year. Be glad you don't live and drive here.
ReplyDeleteWhat are the current rates of the national minimum wage?
ReplyDeleteThere are three levels of minimum wage, and the rates from 1st October 2007 are:
£5.52 per hour for workers aged 22 years and older
A development rate of £4.60 per hour for workers aged 18-21 inclusive
£3.40 per hour for all workers under the age of 18, who are no longer of compulsory school age.
What every one doesn't seem to understand is that the Federal Government has regulations and restrictions in place that prevents the oil companies from drilling for oil in the US. We currently import over 70% of our oil from other countries. Want to see where all the oil is in America?
ReplyDeletehttp://energy.cr.usgs.gov/oilgas/noga/
I believe our Democrat Congress wants to socialize the oil industry to make sure that we all suffer. I say we fire the whole lot of them and start over.