Gas price control

[Bernd Felsche]

Greg Hermann tapped away at the keyboard with:

> At 8:24 AM 5/1/01, Dan Zorde wrote:
> >Perth, Western Australia, just went to A$1.05/L (not much in US$, but it is
> >if you live here) for 92 Octane unleaded (up A$0.12 on previous day).  Out
> >of that over half would be government taxes.  The funny thing is that the
> >government is constantly on the oil companies backs claiming they are
> >ripping of the public, and yet there is no way in hell the government would
> >even contemplate reducing their taxes to help.

> Somebody's _GOT_ to be lying about the amount of taxes. Perth is a whole
> lot closer to the Gulf than we are, so one would think your raw product
> cost should logically be lower than ours is---

Greg,

Australia's over 80% self-sufficient for oils. We have no _need_ to
import oils for gasoline.  In general, we only need to import some
oils for lubricants and the heavier fuel oils.

Fuel "parity" pricing was introduced about 20 years ago; a political
policy to force a reduction in fuel consumption (conserve what was
then thought to be a very limited resource). The government rakes in
the price difference. The declining value of the brass razoo
(officially the Australian Dollar) and the hike in OPEC prices (in
US dollars) mean that our base prices have increased about 40% in a
year. As Dan said, governments is extremely reluctant to give up
milking that cow; even though transport policies have _promoted_
private car usage; i.e. more fuel consumption; at the cost of cuts
to alternative means of transport.

You will get that situation almost everywhere before the revolution.
:-)

Personally, I'm pushing for greater efficiencies in fuel usage and
the use of alternative fuels. That denies the government of revenue;
call it tax-minimisation.

There is still a great deal more efficiency to be extracted from
engines and overall vehicle technology.

Volkswagen have just announced that the prototype of their 1-litre
car (a car using 1 litre per 100 km) should be ready for testing
around the middle of next year.

You'll find a few other interesting snippets on BMW's gasoline-
powered fuel cell project, Volkswagen's plans to produce a liquid
(synthetic) fuel from natural gas and research into bio-fuel
obtained from dairy waste at a car club web site I maintain.

See the News archives at http://www.vwclub.asn.au

-- 
Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
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