Since my last fill up,

our gas has gone up .45 cents a gallon !!

The bad thing, is that it is not even summer, yet.

Try being on this side of the border.
$4.89 at the cheap Arco but going up fast.
[insert insulting political comment about the Gov here]

Since we moved to central Texas I've noticed wild fluctuations in gas prices. I'm talking about $0.30/gallon over night. Some days it fluctuated up, some days down.

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Can open, worms everywhere.

Can't say it something funny, or unusual; been going on since 1973. I get irritated every time it goes up, but, anymore, I'm not surprised.

As my car needs high test gas, I am really happy that I only need to fill-up once a month.

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Always Stay Strong!

I was sat at a light yesterday and saw that the El Cheapo station was showing over $4/gallon for gas and diesel. Thank goodness I'm not driving much at the moment, even if my BMW diesel gets 36 MPG around town.

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Release the Kraken

Too bad making your own alcohol is illegal as we could all just make it out of almost any plant (including plain ole grass clippings) and show the middle finger to the oil barons! A friend of mine gets alcohol from somewhere (not saying..) and has run his car on it for years.

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My Daddy was a pistol..

We’re under $3.00 here

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Oh the horror!!! Just in the last week I read several threads about the evils of Ethanol.

Back in college I worked part time at a chemical plant. We used ethanol in one of the formulations. One of my coworkers had a 2-stroke motorcycle and he did an experiment. Drained the tank and added 100% ethanol. Made some carb adjustments, timing and spark plugs (he was a mechanic) and his bike ran perfect. When I graduated and moved on he was still "borrowing" his fuel from the plant's tank.

How many times did he replace rod/crank bearings?

$3.03 ………….

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Sure you did

I guess those of us are lucky, here in Reno, for our area, on the west coast.

Costco is at 4.25, average 4.49, Cheveron at 4.89 but

across the state line, Truckee Calif. lets you buy gas at only,
$6.39 a gallon.

$3.16 yesterday, $3.02 today at most places. Costco was $305 on Sunday, so it's likely less today.

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Can open, worms everywhere.

The oil system was not deactivated. The ethanol was still run at 50:1.

H.E.B. our local grocery store has gas pumps with the cheapest prices in Kerrville. All of the others, a few cents higher. Sometimes over a dime higher at the stations out on the I-10 exit ramps.

When I retired my drive dropped from 200 miles a day to 200 miles a month so the impact has been reduced considerably. My current record is 4 days without riding or driving. That sounds simple, just try it. Sure, I understand that people in NYC don't own a vehicle.

I still smile at the empty suit joking about "snack-flation" during the Super Bowl. Let em eat cake. Yeah, I get it.

I thought about that too, but if the bike had an auto-oiling system (no need to mix oil with the gas directly) cranking the oiler up a little would compensate for alcohol's lack of lubricity (oiliness).

FWIW, some countries (for example Brazil - last time I looked into it) use alcohol almost exclusively for motor fuel. It just requires some simple tuning modifications, especially with fuel injection.

They make their alcohol from plant waste - leftovers from cane and beet sugar production. We could do the same. Corn stalks and cobs, wheat chaff, and any other waste plant matter can be used to make alcohol.

The problem with our use of alcohol is that all of our alcohol producing & distilling facilities are geared towards using GRAIN. Basically turning food into fuel - which jacks up the price of both the FOOD and the FUEL.

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

I iffin' HATE thieves! Especially some low-life who would steal from his employer.

Just checked around on gasbuddy and Vegas is in that twilight zone where diesel is the same or less than regular at some stations.

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Release the Kraken

I have a "Flex Fuel" Silverado. On a long road trip (600 miles) I ran regular gas (10% Alcohol) one way and E-85 the other. Afterwards I calculated both down to the cost per mile. Couple pennies different. E-85 is much harder to find, so I don't bother with it. For me, it's a contingency use only.

Corn prices are really low right now, and I'm not seeing that at the pumps.

$3.85 here, but I expect it to go up considerable by the end of May.

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The best I can with what I got

Running an errand yesterday I drove a short loop to pick up forgotten paperwork otherwise I would not have passed a station $0.30 cheaper (Exxon) than anywhere else, 3.39 vs 3.69.

Those parts of your motor will last longer on pure ethanol than on pure gasoline, as ethanol has less energy (about 30%) and burns cooler. Not only that it is harder to ignite than gasoline and in the case of fire, easier to extinguish


That is one of the big reasons there is an alcohol class in racing

The reason for the recent spike is conflict in the middle east. But, if you want to see the actual reason for the overall gas prices take a look at the earning reports for every major petroleum company for the last 3 years. Record profits each and everyone. Despite what some believe, no one in the electric car industry or government forced that money on them, they wanted it and the consumers paid it to them.

The price of crude has a lot to do with it and the big producers in the middle east set that. Yes, we can drill for more like we did in 2016 and 2017, but the fact is US drilling rig count took a serious drop in 2017 due to low crude prices and the OPEC nations dropped prices to compete, which made US drilling for high cost recovery crude way less profitable. That drop in rig count then begin to drive the price of crude higher again.Then when Covid started US dropped from 19,400,000 barrels a day in to 16,400,00 barrels a day. A 16% drop.consumption which further dropped the price of crude to a short time low of just $15 a barrel and gasoline prices plunged as a result. It is currently back up to over 19,300,000 barrels a day. The actual drop in crude prices on a monthly average was NOT from 2016 ($40) to 2018 ($70) then late 2020 and covid ($41 per bbl) It actually occurred from 2012 ($110 per bbl) to 2016($40 per bbl). Also crude production isn't a lets produce more now deal, from lets drill for more oil now till the actual result of that increased drilling hitting the refineries takes well over a year and more if for difficult to extraction oil like the Balken.

The OPEC nations produce 34 million barrels of crude a day, the most the US ever produced was 20 million per day. WShich gives OPEC way more control over the price of oil than the US producers even at top production and our government has very little control over any of it. If OPEC wants $75 a barrel, they get it and our producers are not going to think lets be generous and sell for less. LMAO. If you could mine gold for $1000 an ounce what would you sell it for when the world market value is $2191? Why do you think oil is different

As for bearing wear ... I'm thinking along the line of cylinder wash down.
Once the alky get in the oil, bearing wear increases a bunch.

A friend of mine has an old VW diesel. He's rigged a second fuel tank in the trunk that he fills with used cooking oil his daughter's boyfriend brings him free from the diner where he works. He starts the car with diesel from his main tank and after a minute throws a switch he's rigged on the dash, switching over to the cooking oil. I've ridden with him several times - it seems to work great. He says he adds diesel fuel once or twice a year.

Dead Central Texas gas is about 3.20 right now, in small towns, and maybe 2.99 in larger 'burgs.

Not wanting to risk a political rant the politics of ethanol are, nonetheless, interesting. Back when alcohol was being considered for large-scale, and reasonably permanent, additive to gasoline, to "ease our dependency on oil resources," every relevant industry had a position.

The American Chemical Society provided testimony on Capitol Hill that their member companies could produce methanol a whole lot more economically than ethanol could be distilled from corn (and once in a while grain sorghum). They were correct but economics was a little beside the point.

The fact remained that, at the time, commodity prices, particularly corn, were depressed (as now) and Iowa hosted the first primary in the form of their caucuses. Both parties fell over themselves to provide a boost to the number one corn state's economy. This is a much simplified version but that's pretty much how ethanol, distilled from corn, got to be the gasoline fuel additive "of choice" in the U.S.

Full disclosure: I work in the ag industry and many of my fellows benefit from the practice. I'll not say a bad word about ethanol in public as too many of my cohorts are National Corn Growers Association people.

I will say that I pay close, objective, attention to the practice and there is little doubt that distillation of corn for a fuel additive is significantly more efficient than when the practice was begun and generally "pencils out" if only by a little.

The practice of making ethanol from other, usually whole plant, sources is generally known as "cellulosic" ethanol production. Though occasionally promising this practice has not "penciled out" for the most part. Cellulosic has poorer ethanol yields per ton of starting material than grain distillation thus it proves considerably more expensive despite the fact that the starting fodder is usually cheaper than corn. One of the biggest problems is cellulosic distillation plants are more complicated and expensive to build and trucking bales of switchgrass more than 30 miles ruins the economics of the venture.

The farm economy is in the proverbial toilet just now and knowledgeable ag economists forecast the cost of establishing a corn/soybean crop in the heartland this year will exceed profits making break-even cash flow a rarity and losses extremely likely. Currently almost 40% of the U.S corn crop goes to ethanol production so messing with the status quo just now would be a near death blow to U.S. farmers.

Just my two cents. Bryan

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Ordnung muss sein
SWHF #789

Wher I live we do not have much choices in gas stations. You need it up here you get it! Dam the prices, full speed ahead! (Apologies to Admiral David Farragut)

We, wife and me try our best to get our gas when traveling. It normally will be at least .20 to .30 a gallon cheaper. Same deal with the boat users, the smart ones will fill up before they leave civilization. Getting that same expensive gas on the lake at a Marina can easily add a dollar or more to a galleon of that Oh so precious liquid!

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14 S&W Revs none with locks!

Ah come on now. You and I know everything is on the up and up.

wink wink

With a well setup engine running the correct carbonation or injectors that will not happen, Similar to running propane.

I agree. As I recall he cheated on his income tax as well.

Yeah, the two really aren't connected in this case.

Although we only produce alcohol for fuel from grain, we aren't producing it on the scale that I'm talking about. Generally speaking it is only an additive - about 10% added to of a gallon of gas - not a primary fuel. If we tried to produce enough alcohol to replace gasoline as a primary motor fuel, those "low" corn prices would skyrocket. More demand for the same production = higher prices. Econ101

Our high gas prices are due to reduced production relative to demand. Same demand and reduced production = higher prices. Again Econ101

HOWEVER, if the alcohol added to our gas were being produced from waste plant matter instead of grain, the prices of the gas and the grain would both be lower.

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

Wow, paid $2.98 / gal. at Sams Club in S.C. yesterday.

OK, but if you remove the corn subsidies from the REAL price of corn and THEN compare the cost of alcohol made from corn does it really pencil out that much better than alcohol from biomass?

How about selling that 40% of corn production on the world market instead of making ethanol out of it. How does that affect the equation?

Even if it pushed the price down temporarily, I'd think the market would achieve a balance pretty quickly. Unfortunately there isn't a market for plant waste - so it goes to waste - whereas the corn wouldn't - it could be sold. The leftover stalks and leaves from the corn could even be a good portion of the waste plant matter used to produce alcohol.

If the market for corn is down, grow something else! That's what my grandfather did for over 60 years. He switched his main crop several times that I can remember. Corn & hogs, hay & cattle, hay & horses, soybeans, oats, whatever paid best at the time, that's what he raised.

The other question that comes to mind, is how much more does it cost to transporting biomass - like switchgrass or corn plant waste - than transporting grain? I'm not seeing how that is a significant factor either way - especially when the plant waste is free or nearly so.

Basically, the main point that I'm getting from most of what you posted is that corn was chosen as the alcohol production feedstock for reasons other than what was most practical.

Seems to be the way too many things "work" in the modern world.

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

Unless you have a lot of blowby or don't change your oil, should be a non-issue.
With gas, blowby in the oil stays in the oil and thins it out - because they are both petroleum.
With alcohol a lot more of it evaporates out rather than staying in the oil.

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

The alcohol yield from grain, on a pound for pound basis, is many fold that of plant biomass. Cellulosic sources, biomass, cannot be compacted enough to make transporting it more than a few miles worthwhile as the transportation cost far exceed the value of the biomass - that's a fact and it's getting worse not better. Cellulosic plants are far more costly than grain distillation plants as far more process is required - and good cellulosic starting material is far from "free" or practically so. Corn stalks are a very, very poor starting material for cellulosic alcohol production. Most cellulosic ethanol plants have been shuttered or sold over the last 20 years or so and there are very, very few left. Switchgrass, one of the best cellulosic starter materials, yields about 75 gallons of ethanol per dry ton whereas corn grain yield 100 gallons per dry ton and grain is considerably more space efficient per unit of weight and hence cheaper to transport. And cellulosic methods are much more complicated and expensive than distillation from grain requiring lots of extra steps - it's just economics.

The 40% of the corn going to ethanol production is very much "on the world market" as all corn, like any commodity, goes to whoever can pay for it. So selling the 40% on the market versus utilizing it for ethanol in a bit nonsensical - a bushel of corn going to a U.S. ethanol plant costs exactly the same as a bushel of corn loaded onto a ship in New Orleans headed to China if purchased on the same day. If we stopped making ethanol from corn there would be an extra 40% of it on the market and corn prices would tumble dramatically due to reduced demand and excess supply.

And growing something else is virtually not possible for more than 50% of the corn acres in this country as that is specifically what the local infrastructure is designed to accept and handle. If a Central Illinois corn/soybean farmer decided to grow an alternative crop he'd have to identify a place to haul/take it that was capable of handling/moving it. Unfortunately that means trucking it (again) and that cuts into margins amazingly fast with each and every mile. Lots of corn belt farmers can, and do, grow a variety of small grains (wheat, oats, barley, rye) and hay crops but typically rely on a corn/bean rotation for the majority of their acres. Problem is, along with corn, soybeans are at a 25 year low relative to production costs, and small grains are almost hard to give away. There is virtually nothing that is enjoying decent prices these days.

As said, cost of production currently exceeds receipts. U.S. farmers are victims of their own success and efficiency.

Lastly, the "corn subsidy" amounts to about $2B annually, which unfortunately, is a mere drop in the bucket (not very much in the grand scheme of things) and has very little effect on ethanol prices.

The "most practical" method of alcohol production for fuel additives would be methanol from crude oil fractions or fermentation of waste wood pulp. But that was not the decision made by public policy makers. BTW ethanol has been a gasoline fuel additive since the 1920s.

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Ordnung muss sein
SWHF #789

Wait until the electric car mandate hits, it’ll go to $10/gallon to save the planet🙄. This will be right before the powers that be discover the electric grid doesn’t have to capacity to support a zillion electric cars.

$3.58 gal. here in western Montana ..today, lol !

I guess Brazil has better plant waste to work with.
Good explanation. Thanks.

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

Brazil was a few years ago anyway making ethanol from cane sugar which gave a substantial yield. They were /are running the economy on neat ethanol.

That's what I understood too, their plant waste feedstock is from sugar production - from both cane and beets.

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

Brazil probably has lower labor costs and regulatory overhead. Also, I'm not sure if sugar is priced on by open world market the way corn is.

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Release the Kraken

Actually, it has been going this way on a reginal basis for longer than the mid-1970s. I was stationed in Lawton, OK and the price of gasoline doubled and halved every 30 days. Payday on base at Fort Sill was the end of the month and gas prices were $.17 per gallon. The day after payday the price was $.34 per gallon. It seems unbelievable that those prices ever existed, but in a state with an oil wells on the capital grounds, cheap gas was the norm not the exception.

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Gary
SWCA 2515

I was just reading an article on wsj.com with a bunch of forecasts for gas prices. Many were talking $4.00 in the summer.

They were blaming refining for the most current increase. Gas is up more than oil, the crack spread is up. More than the usual number of refineries are down for maintenance, a general shortage of refining capacity, Ukraine blowing up Russkie refineries.....blah, blah, blah.

Venezuela is buying gas from us. A lack of maintenance is killing their refineries. In the long run Russia's oil business is going to die. It's extremely difficult to keep production even stable without U.S. oil service companies. There are foreign players, but they aren't on the same scale as the U.S., and they ain't playing with Russia either.

The price of corn for fuel is kept high by subsidies. The price for corn for food production is generally averaged out. Most corn is used for critter feed..and.oil. The grains used in Alcohol production is also used for animal feed. There is more use for corn than we think though. Wheat is a major crop for human consumption...and soybeans. Without the subsidies the price of corn would drop... less corn produced eventually everything would even up. The price of corn today in real dollars is half what it was in the 50s. More corn is produced today by the use of a lot more fertilizer new GMO seed. Weed sprays. 1950 yields on corn was about 60-70 bushels where I lived. I had one field of about 30 acres in 1985 of 169 bushels acre. Only one I remember off the top of my head. It cost close to 4 times the cost to grow that than 1950 though. BTW you can get(or could) a fuel alcohol permit. I had one. I got my best yield of alcohol to grain at about 170 proof average. And yes it would run in a properly set up engine. If farmers depended on alcohol to grow their crops today you'd need a lot more corn. I read you could not really break even. Where I live now major crop production is sugar beets for sugar and animal feed and all those grain cars on the train here go to make beer. I guess the farmers make a fair profit on that. The Coors grain elevators are always busy during the harvest

2.85 at the local this morning

$3.43 @ Helena Costco yesterday, $3.59 and $3.69 at the two gas stations in Whitehall.

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Front sight and squeeze

I paid $2.95 yesterday at the Sam's Club. Gas tends to be cheaper here than the National Average. Mostly because we're surrounded by refineries and transportation costs are low. Or maybe the refiners keep it low because they all live here! Something on the order of half the U.S. refining capacity is located in Texas and Louisiana.

The "price"of corn is identical regardless of its utilization - a bushel of corn destined for alcohol production is the same as a bushel of corn headed for a feedlot or a bio-plastics manufacturer. There may be very subtle differences but corn bought on the same day from approximately similar geography all costs the same. Farmers do not make more by selling corn for one utilization versus another. Subsidies for corn-based ethanol production do not go to farmers but rather to ethanol distillers. It's a strange business when those producing do not set the price on any given day for their product.

And if the price of corn falls any further there won't be any. As previously stated the cost of production for corn and soybeans in 2024 is projected to exceed farm income. The average corn/soybean farmer in 2024 will lose money. Agreed if there was less corn it would be worth more but farms disappearing and farmers going out of business has far more consequences than commodity prices.

And yes, Brazil has an ethanol-based fuel economy and it relies on sugarcane as a starter material. Sugarcane beats corn for ethanol yield per ton of dry matter. Remember it's sugar content that mostly determines alcohol yield via fermentation and distillation. Brazil has also invested in the required infrastructure so that ethanol plants are numerous and widely scattered and hence the starting material can be more economically transported.

All "renewable" fuels controversies are, as many of you pointed out, the result of public policy decisions made by elected officials and appointed bureaucrats. They are not, necessarily, based on defensible science or economics.

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Ordnung muss sein
SWHF #789

Spring break, gas goes up.