Not all of the material in a barrel of crude oil is used for
manufacturing gasoline. Only a certain range of distillate fractions can
be cracked to make gasoline (petrol). The same can be said for heating
oil (essentially diesel fuel) and those two ranges of fractions overlap.
Thus, more gasoline from a barrel means less heating oil from that
barrel, and vice versa. The other fractions probably sell for less than
the price of gasoline.
So, part of that 72 cents goes to distill the crude, to crack the
selected fractions, to store and distribute the product, and of course
to tax it. What is left is profit.
Jim
Pat Naughtin wrote:
On 2010/06/06, at 02:59 , Stan Doore wrote:
Contrast the above reporting with reporting the Gulf oil spill in
gallons for the first few weeks of the spill and now reporting a
combination of gallons and barrels of oil spilled. No use of metric
(cubic meters) of oil spilled is being used.
Dear Stan,
Who is the person who dumbs down these figures? Where is this person?
And why do they do it?
As you know gallons are not a good unit to measure amounts of oil
because the amount (measured as its mass in kilograms or tonnes) of oil
varies according to the nature of the oil ('West Texas' vs 'Mexican' for
example) and the current temperature wherever the oil happens to be at
any given time.
Obviously the unit that buyers and sellers of oil use is not the same as
the unit used to report to the public. It follows that someone,
somewhere, has to alter – dumb down – all oil numbers for the general
public.
Barrels of oil of course are a different matter because a barrel for oil
has never actually existed. This creates some odd situations. Here are
two of them that I have noticed today:
1 A few weeks ago it was reported that the BP oil leak was emitting 5000
barrels per day. Now the cap placed over the oil leak it is reported as
stopping almost all of the oil by stopping 10 000 barrels per day.
Maybe, like the lords and ladies in France before the introduction of
the metric system, the oil companies are using barrels with a variable
size according to the circumstances when they make their report.
2 This morning the world oil price indicator was quoted as about $70 per
barrel. This translates to about 53 cents per litre in Australia while
petrol (gas) is selling at about $1.25 per litre. If people knew these
figures they might be tempted to ask, 'Where did the other 72 cents go?'
Again I ask, 'Who is the person who dumbs down these figures? Where is
this person? And why do they do it?'
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, /Metrication Leaders Guide,/ that you can obtain
from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped
thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern
metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save
thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their
businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different
trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and
government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's
clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the
metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA.
See http://www.metricationmatters.com
<http://www.metricationmatters.com/>for more metrication information,
contact Pat at [email protected]
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