Yeesh -- allegedly intelligent people are freaking out about >0.05% of the explosives extant in Iraq. You expect them to understand BTU equivalency?

But of course; Gazette readers are all above average in every way.

lot of that "real money" goes underground, never again to be seen

I know I've seen my fair share of $$$ go down ratholes. I have made the point to many naive whinners that if it weren't for "evil" BIG OIL, you'd be paying much more for energy than you are now.

Producers are not going to get a fair shake in this information age ever again. Ask the cattleman, the dairy farmer, the corn grower.

Heck, ask my wife -- she's pretty sure that shrink-wrapped salmon planks show up on riverbanks every morning for the nice fisherman to pick up and send to Sam's.

BTU = British Thermal Unit

Can't we establish a thermal unit of our own? Surely something of value is being lost in the translation.

I became so confused back in the days when they first began to produce unleaded fuel and that caused the price to go up that I've completely given up on ever understanding the price of gasoline.

How can producers justify charging more for leaving and additive out of the gasoline?

I was around...buying gasoline in the late 70's - early 80's. I swear, I do not remember gas costing anything like ...$3.00 a gallon. Am I reading that PDF chart correctly?

Clarence, at least it's not "FTU," if you know what I mean. ;-)

Your question about gasoline is interesting and shows that the industry hasn't done a very good job of educating the public about the technical challenges it faces. Lead was added to gasoline to increase the octane of the product, so that it could be used in the engines of the day. The addition of lead was a relatively inexpensive way to accomplish this, but it was also found to be a health hazard and was regulated out of the picture. However, the need for high (or higher) octane gasoline still existed and the refining industry had to come up with another approach to accomplishing it without using lead. The result was not the removal of an additive, but the replacement with other, more expensive but also more health-friendly additives. (Even those, like MTBE, proved to be unacceptable to certain government agencies and special interest groups.)

And, finally, you're correct in recalling that you never paid $3/gallon for gas. The graph is adjusted for inflation over the intervening years. One way to think about it is that gasoline would have to cost $3/gallon today to have the same relative impact on your purchasing power as it did in, say, 1970 (or whenever that peak was reached). It's a theoretical calculation, of course, but it's still a useful way to view things from a macroeconomic perspective.

Eric

Thanks for taking the time to try and educate this ignorant farm boy about gasoline.

Here's the way the lead additive aspect of the subject was explained to us. No one ever mentioned lead increasing the octane rating. Instead, we were told that lead in our gasoline helped keep the valves from building carbon deposits on the exhaust side of the combustion process.

Honestly I doubt that most people have any understanding of the importance of octane ratings of grades of gasoline available to them at the pumps. There was a time when I used only the highest octane rated gasoline in my new cars because it was said to prevent them from "running on" after the ignition was turned off. That used to be a common complaint about new cars. I gladly paid the top price when I filled up and was happy with my car's performance too. It seemed to run a lot better with the higher octane gas.

I'm not sure about this...BUT at times it does seem to me that the attitude of most refiners or gasoline manufacturers is exactly that...FTU. You don't really need to know what we know. Just fill up and shut up and put up your dough.

Clarence, if you'd like a technical explanation of how lead helps increase the octance rating of gasoline, visit this website.

By the way, I wasn't trying to be vulgar with my reference to "FTU." It was a feeble joke to contrast British Thermal Units with French Thermal Units.