Gas price control

[Greg Hermann]

At 9:43 AM 5/1/01, Bernd Felsche wrote:
>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.
>:-)
OK--so they are either lying or slithering or whatever. We all knew that
politicians are coated in oil! Say they want to conserve fuel til they
figger out that encouraging more usage brings in more revenooo!! Cute
stuff.

Can't find TOO much fault with our (USA's) rather obvious "Burn their's
FIRST!" policy, either!

Greg


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