Fill ‘er Up…

And bring money. Lots of it.

I’ve just returned from 3 weeks in France, riding my bike and eating so well that despite riding 577 miles with 48,000 feet of climbing over two weeks, I still managed to bring a couple of extra pounds back though US Customs. Anything to declare?

In Europe, gas stations quote prices in euros per liter, so it is kind of hard to compare to the $/gal we are used to here in the US. But I was able to figure out that if you take the euro per liter price and multiply it by 4.05, you get $/gallon. Since I was seeing prices like 1.59 euro per liter, I calculated that the French are paying the equivalent of $6.44/gallon. I know that European gas prices are always higher than in the US, but the gap is narrowing.

When I got back to the States, I was kind of shocked to see that our national average gas price was close to $5/gallon. And here in California we are approaching Euro levels. I filled up my wife’s car on Wednesday, and I paid a whopping $6.49/gallon. Just like France! But the food is better there.

No worries though, our President knows why gas prices are so high:

“Oil companies, instead of everybody, says, ‘Well, Biden won’t let them drill.’ They have 9,000 drilling sites that they already own that are there. They’re not doing it,” Biden told Kimmel. “You know why? Because they make more money not drilling and buying back their own stock.”

I have lived through several periods of high gas prices since I started driving back in 1974, and people always blame the greedy oil companies. When prices moderate and even drop back to previous levels people never seem to wonder why, if the oil companies are so powerful and have such a monopoly on supply, would they let prices, and profits, fall?

And why did the greedy oil companies magically discover that they could make more money by ‘drilling less and buying back their own stock’ starting in January 2021? What stopped Exxon Mobile and Arco and Chevron and Royal Dutch from pursuing this strategy back in 2016? Did oil executives have an epiphany that just happened to coincide with a change in occupancy in the Oval Office?

The US national average gas price was $2.34 per gallon the week of January 4, 2021. It was $4.98 per gallon (and climbing) for the week ending June 4. A 113% increase in 17 months. If you put 10 gallons a week in your car, it is costing you an extra $26 (for now), so skip the trip to Applebee’s and settle for Burger King. And if you happen to be an RV owner with a summer road trip in mind, make sure the credit cards aren’t maxed out.