Gas selling for under $1 per gallon in 13 US states | Hacker News Reader

Gas selling for under $1 per gallon in 13 US states

nydailynews.com

192 pointsfinphil182 comments

We probably don't need both oil and gas on the front page.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22923025

Pro-tip, if you're driving very, very little look up an ethanol-free gas station on pure-gas.org and fill up there when your tank is nearly empty. It'll cost more but you don't want ethanol sitting in your gas tank, fuel filter, and engine for months. An alternative is fuel stabilizer but make sure you do your math correctly and don't add to much or or too little.

I predict a surge in cars that won't start when the stay-at-home orders are lifted.

Friend of mine is in the car battery business and he's gearing up for a huge surge of dead battery replacement business when this is all over. Doesn't really make up for the lost OEM business from the car manufacturers but it's something.

I make a habit of driving my car at least once every month to combat this.

I have my truck on a battery maintainer. Saves having to start it for a trip I otherwise wouldn't make (or would use a car for). I use it only when I have a task that needs a truck which only happens a few times a year, everything else I take the bus.

This is 100% correct. After about 6 months in the tank, ethanol gas starts turning into sticky garbage that doesn't want to burn. I have a few classic cars that sit a lot. A couple times a year I drive an hour to my nearest ethanol-free gas station with a trunk load of gas cans. I'm sure it is incredibly dangerous, but I haven't had any fuel system problems since I started doing it.

A relative collects Duesenbergs and he uses a fuel additive plus preservative since there is no ethanol-free gas where he lives.

From a science perspective, why does ethanol become sticky? Whiskey doesn't get sticky when it gets old...

sorry, "sticky" is wrong in the context of ethanol gas in a modern-ish tank for a few months. However, when any gasoline is exposed to oxygen it forms solids called "gums." My 1971 car has a tank that's vented to the air so it did form a layer of sticky gunk after about 15 years of sitting. Ethanol absorbs water which makes it "not want to burn," corrosive to metal components and it will deteriorate plastics and gaskets. Modern fuel systems are designed with this in mind. But, my '79 Porsche 928 with its mechanical fuel injection (an analog computer that runs on fuel and air pressures) really hates it.

If you live in California, don't bother. It's illegal and they won't sell to you if it's going into a vehicle.

Do you mean don't bother using fuel stabilizer? I can't see anything about it being illegal in California.

I cannot fathom the supposed environmental reasons for disallowing ethanol-free gasoline. It is an ag industry subsidy via federal mandate to have 10% ethanol in gas, and in a politics-free world we would remove that requirement.

I don't think it's illegal for environmental reasons

> An alternative is fuel stabilizer but make sure you do your math correctly and don't add to much or or too little.

Why would too little be an issue? Won't it still be better than not using it at all?

> I predict a surge in cars that won't start when the stay-at-home orders are lifted.

I'm sure they're still being used to go to the grocery store and possibly trips to the pharmacists, laundromat, or pick up take out.

> Why would too little be an issue?

I assume because if you don't add enough you don't get the benefits and it's just a waste of money.

It isn't ethanol at fault, it is the cheap low grade gas in the ethanol that degrades. Pure ethanol is very shelf stable.

Ethanol is hygroscopic. It is indeed the ethanol at fault.

You are mixing facts. Ethanol absorbs water, but it does not turn into varnish over time, that is the gas. Ethanol that absorbs water separates out from gasoline but it is still liquid fuel that flows just fine. (it burns fine too, but you will have a hard time starting the engine on that mix)

Sure, pure gasoline will eventually go bad too. But that’s on a much longer timescale than the ethanol water problem.

Gasoline is not a single molecule. It is whatever the refinery wants.

Plenty of ethanol advocates have successfully stored ethanol fuel (no gasoline) for years without issues. It can have problems, but they are over pushed by oil shrills.

I went to the grocery store yesterday and couldn't start my car! turns out I left my phone charger in the 12v socket and after 5 weeks without driving it drained my battery.

With oil being basically free, it seems crazy that we're still putting corn in gasoline.

Oil has only been this basically free for roughly a month.

Ethanol has a much higher octane rating than conventional fuel so mixing it in with regular fuel provides for a higher octane rating without needing more additives.

it's also a HUGE govt subsidy for farmers with excess corn

Cars don't care. They'll run on 3+yo gas (though I wouldn't risk it in anything that needs premium for reasons beyond the scope of this comment). It's stuff with carburetors that you have to worry about, particularly two strokes, marine 2-strokes seem even more finicky for whatever reason. Also, modern car fuel systems are well enough sealed that there's not much moisture ingress.

The whole "gas goes bad in X months" this is basically an urban legend at this point but it's continuously propped up because most white collar people's experience with gas older than a few months is trying to pull start some piece of garden power equipment that has the cheapest carburetor known to man on it, a compression ratio in the ballpark of "maybe" and barely runs on a good day and then can't start once you make the gas even mildly less volatile. Old carburetor vehicles could certainly gum up but they'll do that with premium too.

If you don't daily drive a moped, motorcycle or bicycle with one of those engine kits you'll be fine.

Source: Formerly employed in an industry where filling up your vehicle with free junk gas was one of the perks of the job.

i think the main issue is seals/gaskets dry out, crack, and fail without oil pumping around. After not driving for a while, it's not so much the gas that screws things up but the lubricants.

/disclaimer: any time i raise the hood on a car the repair cost is automatically 2x the cost had i not raised the hood. I am not a car guy not matter how much i wish i was.

How regularly and how long should the engine run to avoid this ?

It depends how old is your battery and car etc.

If you don't use your car, or all you do is just going for groceries, Old advice is to drive 10km once a week. Go to a road or motorway. Let the engine work.

Yeah I guess I'll make a trip to a store with long traffic free spans.

I didn't check all of the states that are under $1, but here in NY all of the locations listed that are under $1 are Indian Reservations. Reservations here sell gas, and cigarettes (and a bunch of other stuff) without the state/federal taxes, so it's way WAY cheaper. I assume this is the same in all states?

In my area it's still around $2/gallon. I'm not close enough to a reservation to bother making the drive, but many people (especially smokers) make regular drives to get gas and smokes.

I've seen a few threads about local gas prices in some of the less degreed, bluer collar and more rural filter bubbles I'm a part of. Everyone reporting super low prices is either a stone's throw from the refining infrastructure or buying on a reservation. Most people seem to be paying $2+/- $0.50 as of a few days ago.

Edit: changed my wording because apparently some of you would rather have me tiptoe around the differences between HN and the general population.

As a data point, here in the semi-rural Midwest I'm paying $1.60/gal. I'd guess if I took a road trip to the res it'd be close to $1, though probably not less.

Another data point, no reservation or anything, it's $1.30 near me in central Kansas.

Saw it for $1.14 in south east Michigan

I saw $1.17 in North Texas yesterday

> less elite social media filter bubbles I'm a part of

It's kind of sad you're getting downvoted for saying this. Everyone could employ a little empathy in times like now.

In addition to the virus fear and threat, there's people out there in a very serious and scary financial pickle right now.

GasBuddy lists a gas station in Indianapolis at 1.04. Louisville at $1.39.

With a grocery rewards program (Kroger) I filled up 12 gallons for $1.20 the other day :o

I paid $0.97 at a Costco in Wisconsin the other day.

That said, I’m not sure why it was so cheap there. The going rate at other stations was about $1.39 and they’re usually closer together than that.

The other gas stations are profiting off of the spread until people realize they can get it much cheaper at Costco or other gas stations.

Costco reacts quicker because they probably don't care about making money on gasoline, and they have a goal to always be offering it at or near cost.

Sort of like what's about to happen to housing prices, maybe.

Costco doesn't care about making money on the things they sell, in general.

Costco makes more money from membership fees [1] and this is basically their stated business model. They try to sell everything at a small markup (just covering overhead) and the membership fees are basically profit.

[1] https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/13/how-costco-actuall...

https://thehustle.co/costco-membership-economics is a good read too.

Costco and Woodmans in the Madison area are under $1 as of a few days ago(Costco because memberships, and Woodmans because no credit card fees). Smaller towns had 93c at the regular gas stations the week before.

A lot of gas stations set their price based on a fixed markup from their costs, and only update their prices when they get a new delivery. High volatility and low sales volume can lead to outdated prices that way.

I have noticed in the past that when oil prices are going down, Costco becomes waay cheaper than other places. But when the oil prices are rising, Costco is not that cheaper.

In other words, Costco prices are updated more frequently than regular gas stations.

Chicago area, I haven't seen anything below $1.79. I'm making an assumption that the station owners are trying to make up some lost profit from the lockdowns.

In Chicago each gallon has $0.68 of tax, and that's before the 10.25% sales tax.

In not entirely unrelated news, some electricity providers in the UK have been paying you to charge your electric car[0] today. There have been other days recently where the "agile pricing" has also gone below zero, e.g. 5 April[1]. With the lockdown no-one is supposed to drive anywhere unless absolutely essential though (so e.g. the NHS doesn't have to deal with casualties from traffic accidents), and they're talking about banning cars on some roads for a period when lockdown is lifted[2] (to make it easier for people to walk or cycle).

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/04/20/a-rare-...

[1] https://www.energy-stats.uk/agile-price-plunges/

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52353942

Sounds like a great time to shore up state budgets by raising the gas tax.

It's cheap because it's in low demand at the moment. You'd only be taxing essential workers (thanks for risking your health because we have no social safety net) and logistics, which would raise prices for the consumer.

I just don't think now is the time to raise the gas tax.

The last time I remember these prices was 1998-ish. A quick online inflation checker tells me this is would be like $0.63 USD / gallon then.

Price for Netflix monthly subscription: $12.99

Price for a barrel of oil: $11.50

If you simply cancel your Netflix subscription and store oil in your backyard...you'll be really bored and have a bunch of oil in your backyard

Source: https://twitter.com/awealthofcs/status/1252206952064614406

Plus you can sell at a profit when prices rise, although you'll need a lot of storage capacity if you hope to earn anything remotely substantial.

> Plus you can sell at a profit when prices rise, although you'll need a lot of storage capacity if you hope to earn anything remotely substantial.

You'll probably need a special license to sell oil in large amounts, considering the complications involved in storing, transporting, and disposing of it.

Start an Uber for oil sales. You're not selling it, you're just enabling. Others can get licenses, or not. You don't have to care!

You’ve just reinvented the commodities futures market.

You can even take delivery in Cushing, OK if you want (but you don’t have to, as long as you roll out of the contract before the delivery date).

https://www.cmegroup.com/

https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/why-futures/welcome-to-nyme... (CME Light sweet crude WTI)

You actually need to tell your broker that you want full execution of the contracts otherwise the default is for your broker to sell the contract before delivery. And even so, your broker will expect ability to receive the shipment before they allow that liability to go unchecked

This is important! I’ve seen a friend have to take delivery of train cars full of eggs. Not a good time!

I would personally _love_ to hear this story.

> The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis

What we need is an oil barrel subscription service. For just $20/mo, they'll deliver a barrel of oil to your house or business. For $25/mo, they'll throw in a bucket of coal. Makes a great holiday gift.

Does it include the actual barrel, it seems a steel drum barrel like that is itself worth more than $20!

Wouldn't it be better if I store the oil for you and give you a certificate instead? You could buy it instantly and you could just email or whatsapp your christmas gift of coal...

Even better if the certificates are cryptographically signed in a chain and their custody is verified though a solution of the Byzantine generals problem.

No. You have to bring it back to the local supermarket or recycling center for the $20 deposit.

1) buy WTI oil future (min contract is 1000 barrels)

2) wait for delivery

3) cry when you now have 42000 gallons of toxic sludge on your front porch

4) wash your hands and maintain appropriate social distancing

I know gasoline is a commodity and it doesn't matter what the source is but my understanding is that crude oil from Saudi Arabia is better (probably subjective) than crude oil from Canada?

I don't get why people don't just store crude oil and not process it for a bit (I'm guessing six to eighteen months)? I looked online and it seems that for a car, you should fill up the gas tank if you're not going to drive much for months and still go around the block about once a month?

Yep, there are different grades of crude (referred to as light vs heavy and sweet vs sour). Alberta tar sands crude is in the heavy/sour range.

The differences in the grades of oil require different tooling to process and may be more or less expensive to process.

West Texas fracking crude by contrast is light and sweet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_crude_oil?wprov=sfti1

As to why people don’t store it.. well, we (as a nation, and also the oil industry) try to but it’s only possible to store limited amounts of liquids (notoriously because liquids are incompressible), especially when you’re talking about thousands to millions of barrels per day.

Estimates are that oil demand has dropped by 30% globally, the OPEC+ meeting last week showed us a ~10% global cut by Saudi Arabia/Russia/US... which still leaves a meaty 20% surplus.

A lot of the recent contention has been around when all the (strategic) reserve tanks will fill up and cause the price to really plummet... which we’re seeing now.

Crude oil is hard to store safely. All the storage capacity is full, and it's expensive to build more.

They had a story on this at Marketplace. Storage is limited and not free, with oil tankers being used as extra storage units during the glut, at an increasingly large cost. Also capacity reduction is not trivial either, particularly for smaller wells that can't just shut down (vs larger wells that can slow down extraction).

"I don't get why people don't just store crude oil and not process it for a bit (I'm guessing six to eighteen months)?"

It's the same answer as a lot of "economic mysteries" right now: At scale, everything is really hard.

If we have all this commerically-targeted food that can't go to the consumer market, why can't they just sell it in stores? Well, at scale, everything is really hard. You have to set up supply lines. You have to set up packaging. You have to get the stores to stock it and price it and just a whole bunch of things. Existing consumer supply lines can't be used because they're generally at capacity. Your commercial supply lines are different in numerous ways, from the companies that have it down to the physical nature of the trucks delivering it. And on and on.

The other problem you have is that even though bringing this all up is perfectly possible, it's highly risky. What if the companies spend all this money to bring up a new supply chain or massive amounts of new oil storage, only for the problem to resolve itself a week before it opens? You could build a big storage tank only to open into a market of record high prices for all you know. Sure, if you had a magic crystal ball there's probably all kinds of ways you could make make massive amounts of money from this disruption, but nobody has one.

> It's the same answer as a lot of "economic mysteries" right now: At scale, everything is really hard.

Except this has already been scaled, and is already happening. The US strategic petroleum reserve (and similar programs in other nations) is exactly this: a giant buffer of storage capacity designed to make cartel exploitation of the oil industry infeasible.

And it works. The reason we're having this crash now, when the lockdowns started 6+ weeks ago, is precisely because there is a big pool of idle storage able to "store the crude and not process it for a bit".

But now all that buffer is exhausted, so we're seeing the crash everyone knew was coming.

> But now all that buffer is exhausted

Is it full? I recall that the stimulus bill originally included a provision to buy more oil for the strategic reserves, but that the measure got removed by the Democrats. (Both sides are capable of making mistakes...)

We should be buying right now.

Why is it a mistake to not buy oil for the strategic reserve right now? The mission statements are all talking about dealing with low supply, but the problem right now is low demand. Is the mistake that it would be cheap right now to "top-up" the reserve?

> The mission of the Office of Petroleum Reserves (OPR) is to protect the United States from severe petroleum supply interruptions through the acquisition, storage, distribution, and management of emergency petroleum stocks

https://www.energy.gov/fe/services/petroleum-reserves

> The sheer size of the SPR (authorized storage capacity of 713.5 million barrels) makes it a significant deterrent to oil import cutoffs and a key tool in foreign policy.

> Such conditions have only existed three times, most recently in June 2011 when the President directed a sale of 30 million barrels of crude oil to offset disruptions in supply due to unrest in Libya.

> to address short-term, emergency supply disruptions to a refiner's normal operations on several occasions.

https://www.energy.gov/fe/services/petroleum-reserves/strate...

It looks like they're going to lease excess capacity instead. Oil producers will be able to store excess oil themselves:

https://www.worldoil.com/news/2020/4/14/doe-working-to-lease...

I was implicitly answering the question of "why not just build more"? I know we have some.

It is true that we have some already, and that does make it somewhat easier to build more (it's not like we've never done it before, we have the software and businesses ready to go, the tooling presumably exists somewhere), but there's still substantial expenses that doesn't help with (the tanks still have to be built, land may have to be acquired, you can't just build one in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, you have to have it where the oil can be shipped to, inspections and permits because even under these circumstances I'd still rather like at least the important ones to happen for something like this, etc.).

It is difficult and dangerous to handle and store crude oil:

"After revealing a long-held plan to try to buy a barrel of crude, I was now receiving a disappointingly stern lecture on the dangers of hydrogen sulfides. The wine tasted vaguely sulfuric, too."

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&...

Wrong.. kids, get ready for the most slippery slip 'n slide adventure!

Can I drink from the firehose afterwards?

It's better than that! Used steel barrels go for around $29 a piece. All you need to do is buy oil, dump it out somewhere, and then sell the barrel for $17 profit!

See, this is why we need a good EPA in the US and similarly good in other countries. To protect against capitalists like you who don't care about externalities. ;) Now go make a financial derivative so I can trade on used steel barrels.

And a link to his innovation.

With these profit margins I should easily be able to afford a fancy national marketing campaign to cover my ass. I can see it now.

Oil – It comes from the earth. We're just returning it.

You're not thinking outside the box. Buy the oil, burn it for power, sell the barrel, and use a portion of the profit to pay for carbon credits.

Voila, an infinite supply of clean energy.

Storage isn't included when you buy oil. You don't actually get a steel barrel.

You don't literally get the barrel when you buy a 'barrel' of oil.

Joke ---- Head

It doesn't make any sense as a joke - oil isn't sold like the setup of the joke says.

I hope it doesn't ruin your day to hear that chickens also don't typically cross roads.

That's why everyone wants to know why that one did!

You don’t live on Maui...

You mean Kauai?

Frickin’ chickens!

The real problem is the "joke" wasn't funny. Telling someone it went "over their head" comes off as arrogant when done for an unfunny joke.

There's a difference between someone saying the premise of the joke doesn't make sense and not finding it funny. It seems like it went over someone's head if they say "Yeah, but oil isn't sold that way" versus saying "That joke wasn't funny."

Not acknowledging the joke at all is one of the best ways of stating that it wasn't funny.

Hum... Yes they do. And they choose to do it way more often when there is a car coming towards them.

If oil was sold like that, it wouldn't be a joke

"That Time I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil", an interesting read:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-03/that-time...

rent it for others to dump oil in it, ponzi oil scheme

Thank goodness that oil is not actually stored in barrels, then.

See this classic article on the difficulties of actually trying to do this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-03/that-time...

Someone just need to write a blog on how to use RPi, React, Alexa and a few beakers to refine oil and we're set.

The US should buy the oil then pump it back into the shale. We can call it "in ground strategic reserves".

I have been averaging a dollar per gallon for over a year now in Indiana. Just get a gas card. At my store https://www.kroger.com/fuelfaqs?storeNumber=02900364 "up to 1,000 fuel points can be redeemed for up to 1 dollar off per gallon at Kroger Fuel Centers in a single transaction" So I buy my groceries, accumulate 1000 fuel points & then fill up once a month. Ofcourse, it all balances out - my wife has an EV & pays $150 back to the state :( https://www.myev.com/research/interesting-finds/states-that-...

The downside (also from Indiana) is you have to go to Kroger. It’s about the third chain in line of grocery stores I want to go to due to general dirtiness and high end product selection.

Sorry, I am relatively new to your state. This my second year in Indiana. I tried going to Meijer https://www.meijer.com/ a few times. imo clientele's too posh & everything felt too upscale, clean & stuck up. I tend to skew blue collar. When I think grocery I want a see an unkempt farmer pull up in a truck & dump 100 pounds of broccoli in crates so there's stalk and leaves all over the store, and that is exactly Kroger. I then get to pick up the broccoli for a dollar. If I go to Meijer they wrap the broccoli nicely in plastic & charge $5. I don't have that kind of spare change. For $5 you can rent a whole vm on linode & get a business going.

I know a guy that thinks Meijer is below him, and won't shop there. Likens it to a low-grade Wal-mart. And he lives near me and so I know which Meijer's he's been to, and there's nothing wrong with those stores.

I certainly have no problem shopping there, and I think it's cleaner than most local stores (that aren't high end, there's quite a few of those around here), certainly better than Wal-mart, although Wal-Mart does have a better delivery service, we just found out yesterday.

Meijer has cheaper Broccoli than that. Just checked their website, and you can get broccoli for $2 a pound, or a giant 32 oz bag of fresh florets for $5, which I guess is what you're referring to, but that's easier to cook with and prepare, so there's probably more demand for it in that form, and has similar prices elsewhere (my local Wal-Mart has that priced at $6 right now). You can also buy 12 oz bags of frozen broccoli for $1 each right now at Meijer.

And I'm near Chicago, which is probably more expensive than Indiana. Even the Whole Foods near me is only selling broccoli for $2.50 a pound.

Honestly each stories varies a lot by location.

In general, Meijer is a direct competitor to Walmart. Cheap, and low end.

Kroger is the bargain basement grocery store chain. Has all your groceries. A few fancier items. A real selection (unlike say an Aldi that only stocks some products). But not fancy at all.

Amusing that your local Meijer is fancy. Most Meijer are not. There are some nice and new and fancy ones, same with Kroger (went to a few real nice Krogers in Indy).

And if you can use a phone number to redeem the points, use Jenny's number. You night have to pay inside vs at the pump for that. One could also try getting a replacement card that has Jenny's number attached to it. That might be considered fraud though; I'm not a lawyer.

The kroger rewards in WA allow you to use phone numbers at the pump.

Automatic $0.10/gal discount.

Also, who's Jenny?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/867-5309/Jenny

Ha!

I know the chorus well, but not much past that.

Thanks :)

Out of curiosity: How cheap does gas need to get to generate electricity profitably using a generator?

I know it is flat out a bad idea in principle to compete against a dedicated large scale producer. But still wondering.

Edit: Maybe I should ask r/theydidthemath

i wonder how fast power plants can switch from lng to gasoline? Man, just when you think we can't get further into bizzaro-world..

Why aren't people filling up big tanks? I don't get it.

They are and do. The tanks are full.

Because gasoline goes bad eventually.

As far as oil: some are. Often times in the form of huge tankers floating off the coast.

Storing oil isn't easy, cheap, or safe. I doubt many people have tanks, the know how, or the permits required to store oil. Then once the price goes up you have to move the oil again. It's all really complicated.

If you're seriously curious about knowing more check out https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/08/26/491342091/plan...

> Why aren't people filling up big tanks? I don't get it.

Gas is fairly volatile—even when storing my motorcycle for a couple of months I put gas stabilizer in the tank to avoid draining it.

That's a lot of work to make $20 over the few years it takes to rebound. (assuming it ever does)

They are. The world is simply running out of suitable tanks. Yes, that's a thing when global oil demand drops by 30% but production is only cut by 10%. Even if you disregarded every law regarding oil storage and started filling up water towers and tuppaware containers, exactly how many of the ~25,000,000 excess barrels of oil now being produced DAILY do you think that would account for?

The website\app GasBuddy has a great US gas price heat map. Data is updated through in-app gamification.

https://www.gasbuddy.com/GasPriceMap

A few screenshots - https://postimg.cc/gallery/4YLTqLH

Use the website, not the app. The app is spyware and regularly sends them your location data in the background.

Oh... Oh no. If you don't like that then I have some REALLY bad news about literally every other app.

Nice whataboutism. Call out those apps too if they get promoted here.

This is not good news. Oil/energy is an economic lubricant. The depth and breadth of its reach and power exceeds The Fed.

In the USA, the 2007/08 recession was softened (?) by keeping energy prices low. Increase in domestic product - via fracking - being the key.

Without fuel prices as an economic tool the dynamic and predictabily of the coming recovery will be greatly limited.

What I don’t understand is why it’s so much more in CA. It can’t just be taxes; it’s only 0.47c [1]. So why is it often $1-2 more?

[1] https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/taxes-and-fees/sales-tax-rates-for-...

Probably mostly supply and demand. People in CA might have more disposable income than those in Wisconsin. Texas isn't under $1 despite having low taxes and lots of nearby oil drilling.

So you’re saying supply is restricted in CA? How can that be? We have now shortages of gas stations, and no shortages of gas. In fact we have many refineries here.

Tax is closer to $1 [0]. Gas stations are supply restricted in the sense that their storage tanks are finite in size although it seems to me most of the price is because they can.

[0] https://www.ocregister.com/2019/04/16/californias-gas-taxes-...

The federal taxes are true for everyone. So you can subtract that from your difference across the US.

But there’s no lack of competition, and plenty of apps like gas buddy that aid in that. That should put pressure to reduce prices, yet neighboring states can be so much lower. Something else is going on.

No, CA gas is always $1 more because Californians will pay it. It's not a true free market that responds to supply and demand. Even when it's refined locally and should benefit from savings in transportation cost, it's always more. The CA market is broken out by CA-EPA requiring CA-specific formulations for inauthentic "environmental" reasons.

For example, CA "winter" gas adds oxygenates to "reduce CO and soot" by 10%. However, the resulting fuel has 10% less energy, so you have to burn about 110% of it to go the same distance.

One of the early oxygenates was MTBE[0]. Genius move, that. Save the environment by poisoning groundwater!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTBE_controversy

You linked to state sales tax on gas, but are there other burdens? Local sales tax, bond payments, other taxation for road maintenance, etc? I don’t live in CA, but just thinking your pump price may be encumbered by more than a sales tax.

But aren’t all those wrapped up into the gas tax? How else is that price increasing?

Too bad I'm not driving at all now and don't have any place to store large amounts of gasoline.

Of course, the reason you're not driving right now is also the reason prices are so low.

You can't beat the system...

Reminds me of the old witticism “You aren’t stuck in traffic. You are traffic.”

Not the only reason. Until last week Russia and Saudi Arabia was in a price war, which was/is a large part of the reason for the low gas prices, at least in the EU.

My understanding was that the price war was still, indirectly, caused by the Coronavirus. The price was dropping a little early on when the virus was mostly confined to China, and the OPEC countries couldn't agree on who should cut production... so they broke up and made everything worse.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/11/814529252/episode-978-coronav...

I live in area with lots of natural disasters and store fuel on site. It’s already full, but thinking about buying another tank to take advantage of the prices

How fast do you go through it, and would you add stabilizers so it spoilers slower?

I have 11 days of on site storage - approx 300 gallons.

It’s diesel, I add stabil and polish it annually. Injectors for my 4 cylinder generator are $350/ea. Can’t fuck around

I bought some 6 gallon jugs about 18 months ago, but you'll spend more on the jug than what you'll save.

(I use them to store ethanol-free gas for my power tools. I buy the gas at an airport about 25 minutes away from my house, and at $6 a gallon, it's "worth it" to make a trip about once a season.)

Wow, $6 a gallon for ethanol free? Here ethanol free is around 30c more than regular E10.

No I'd bet he's getting avgas. That's avgas price territory.

Probably 100 octane "low lead". Which has a lot of lead in it. Some people swear by it.

No.

"Low lead" gas destroys power tools.

The airport that I go to sells both unleaded and "low lead." It's very easy to choose the "unleaded" pump. It's lower octane than 100, but I don't remember the exact value.

You could buy oil certificates, if you think prices will raise again.

That reminds me of this incident where someone got a lesson in how the trading "rubber" meets the road: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery

That was a funny read!

It’s been a while since I saw links to TDWTF. Didn’t know they were still kicking.

What's an oil certificate? Do you mean futures?

I filled my car in Wisconsin for the first time in 2 months at $0.989 for 87 octane. I think the last time I paid that price the attendant filled it for me.

The official reasoning for the current Fed's unprecedented quantitative easing is to prevent deflating prices like these from lasting long-term.

I saw it for $1.17 in Sherman TX yesterday. The lowest i've ever seen gas was around $0.96 sometime in the 90s

In other news: local restaurants are dumping alcoholic drinks out 'the back door' for a song. Because, dated.

Don't get used to low prices. It's gonna change.

And yet in the sf bay area gas is still close to $3..

Here's a nice breakdown of the factors for that price. Taxes are around 72c of that gallon, on March 30th.

https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/transportation_data/gasoli...

I'd love to see updated numbers on this.

Can not read this article from the EU.. But the headline amounts to ~ 0,24€ per liter.

The only real meat from the article:

The states on that list include New York, Michigan, Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Ohio, Colorado, Missouri, Iowa, Virginia, Wisconsin, Kansas and Kentucky.

Keep in mind though that prices are not in any way shape or form set at the state level. This could just mean that one small region of the state has that price while the major metro areas where 95% of the states population live are 250% higher still.

>the major metro areas where 95% of the states population live

Do you have anything to back this up?

> This could mean

It's conjecture.

You missed the point.

I can give anecdote from St Louis region, which has ~40-50% of Missouri's population. Gas prices here are around $1.60

I live in one of the large metros in Ohio, prices are all still $1.30-1.50/gallon here. Like most of the locations in the article, I would guess the sub-dollar prices are very isolated locations or special circumstances (no-tax native american reservations like I saw in other comments?)

$1.07 in the Dayton area...

> Keep in mind though that prices are not in any way shape or form set at the state level

Gasoline / Diesel taxes vary pretty widely from state to state. Taking from either end, gas in Alaska is taxed at 14.6 cents per gallon, while California's gas tax is more than quadruple that at 61.2 cents. The gap is even bigger for diesel.

Maybe this is a semantic critique, but the assertion that prices are not set at the state level seems a naive one. They're not "set" at the federal level either, but taxes bear on the price significantly at both levels, though more uniformly at the latter.

All of those seem very low from my European perspective. Fuel duty is the equivalent of $2.67/gallon here in the UK.

Is this website about internal combustion engine fuels? Or it's just an aggregator of all american newspapers? I thought HN is something about software and programming.

That's mistaken. HN is about anything intellectually interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Of course, repetition is not intellectually interesting so we try to keep the front page relatively free of it.

One of my cars is a long-range Tesla, the other is a plug-in hybrid that can go about 30-ish miles on a battery.

At the beginning of the lockdown, I looked at my wife and said, "let's stop touching icky gas handles during this whole thing and make sure we only charge at home."

So all of our distance driving uses the Tesla, and we use the plug-in hybrid for in town driving.

Haven't touched an icky gas pump yet!

Is Tesla the ArchLinux of cars manufacturers?

By the way, why are you driving long distance during a lockdown?

Tesla's the Apple of cars.

The Arch of cars: https://ea0e05a6ffc83d5fb84e-cbd7b9ff6ab9d7e4de0720aa602bc9d...

The Manjaro of cars: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c2/2a/eb/c22aebc3121882e6d54a12372...

The Debian of cars: https://barnfinds.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/right-front...

The Ubuntu of cars: http://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2017/05/2018-Honda-...

The debian of cars would totally be a crown victoria.

As a Debian user for over a decade now, I heartily approve of the image you picked.

I didn't know that Debian was such a robust environment for Rust.

My wife works at a hospital.

Where I live is mildly rural, it's not like Silicon Valley where everything you need is within 2 miles of your house.

Must be nice to be rich.

You're on a forum for venture capitalists and software engineers...

That's not a good way to describe HN. Yes there are a lot of software engineers here, but there are many others as well. They're just as welcome and HN is just as much "for" them.

> Must be nice to be rich.

Money is about priorities.

In my case, I'm an environmentalist. A good friend of mine, who's an Uber driver, just bought a Model 3 Dual Motor, same car that I have. (Although I don't know if he paid for enhanced autopiolot.)

> Must be nice to be rich.

Money is also about understanding the difference between the cost of equipment versus the cost of ownership. A gas car costs more to operate than an electric car.

It's easy to misunderstand the cost of an electric vehicle. In general:

1: $60k: I spent (rough numbers) $60k on a Model 3 Dual Motor

2: -$10k: I got $7500 back from the federal government, and $2500k from my state. (Purchased in December 2018)

3: -$10k: I will save (rough numbers) $10k over the life of the car because charging at home is cheaper than buying gas, and because electric cars are much cheaper to maintain. (I had a Leaf for 4 years and only paid to rotate the tires.)

My Model 3 Dual Motor is (roughly) like spending $40k on a gas car. Plenty of middle-class people buy cars in this price range.

The difference is that more of my ongoing costs are in the loan, which never changes, compared to things like gas, where the price fluctuates.

A box of 10 cent nitrile gloves will net you the same thing...

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