Global Gas Prices
May 21st, 2008I spent 2002 and 2003 in Portugal as a Mormon missionary. At some point I remember calculating their gas price in dollars per gallon. If I remember correctly, it was around an astonishing $4.00/gal. I remember feeling grateful that I had never faced such an outrageous price back home (our prices were around $1.50/gallon).
I read a headline today about another record break in the price of oil (not exactly eye-catching news anymore). It caused me to wonder, though, “What are other countries paying?”
I started with Great Britain. As of today their average price of unleaded “petrol” is 113.7 pence/liter or 1.14£/liter. Convert that to gallons you get 4.31£/gallon, and with today’s exchange rate it comes out to $8.47/gal!
As of April 3, Japan was paying $4.96/gal. Both GB and Japan make our average of $3.79/gallon seem reasonable.
My curiosity led me to a CNN report from 2006. Although it is two years outdated, it shows the extreme disparity in gas prices throughout the world. Great Britain and many other European countries top the list (not surprising). The big shocker comes at the bottom of the list—Venezuela only pays a few cents per gallon! Apparently, there are no gas taxes, and they only consume their own oil.
Anyone want to go to Venezuela?
May 21st, 2008 at 9:20 pm
¡Viva Venezuela! Must feel mighty nice being energy independent.
May 31st, 2008 at 9:22 am
You are misinterpreting the price outside the USA, because no matter where you go, it is the US Dollar you are paying with in your examples. The Dollar is SINKING, so using it to buy food, clothing, gas, weed, whatever… You are going to get porked.
Ever since the Federal reserve took the gold away from the dollar, it has sank 5% per year. Now in the present bank caused crisis, we keep paying increasingly more for everything, because our money is worth increasingly LESS. In fact, the dollar has lost 50% of it’s value in the last year!
We either need to start a new gold-backed currency (Gold is at a record high right now.. quite a shame they stole the gold from us and now give us fiat currency). The dollar is sunk. They probably want it this way so they can get us to willingly accept a “world currency”. To them, it means there is no exchange rate, and the currency would be worth the same all over the world. The problem is whoever controls the money controls everything, so watch out!
May 31st, 2008 at 10:54 am
Jamie,
The sinking value of the dollar is accounted for in exchange rates. It would be valuable, however, to compare each country’s gas price to their median income (or something similar) so we could see how much each country has to pay relative to what they earn.
As for your argument about the gold standard, your point is well taken. But a world currency!? I think you destroyed your own argument with that theory.