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john65pennington's avatar

What does it cost a refinery to produce just one gallon of regular unleaded gasoline?

Asked by john65pennington (29273points) May 27th, 2010

I realize that one gallon of regular unleaded gasoline costs us about $2.79 at the pump. but, what is the actual cost involved for a refinery to produce this gasoline? state and local taxes lay a heavy burden on a gallon of gasoline, so, what does a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline cost to produce at a refinery?

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3 Answers

ragingloli's avatar

According to DW-World
the price of Petrol in Germany in 2007 was made up as follows:
0.4 €cent per litre for getting crude oil out of the ground.
0.1 €cent per litre for getting across the Suez channel with the supertanker
0.4 €cent per litre for transport by supertanker
42 €cent per litre results from market speculation
2 €cent per litre for refinery into petrol
9 €cent per litre are added by the petrol stations (profit margin)
We are now at 54 €cent per litre
The rest is taxes, namely VAT, Mineral Oil Tax as well as an Eco tax, together it amounts to 88 €cent per litre.
Final price for the Consumer: 142 €cent per litre.
That is about 6.6 dollars per gallon for you Americans. (assuming I did not screw up the conversion)

arpinum's avatar

The raw cost of the oil is $1.75. $0.40 to refine the oil. $0.08 for the station owner. $0.12 to transport the oil. Fuel taxes average $0.45, depends on state.

LuckyGuy's avatar

A barrel of oil is 42 gallons. It will make 17 gallons of gasoline and 19 gallons of diesel The ratio can vary. (Call it 18, 18) The remainder is used in other products which can be very valuable.
Averaging across all products, if oil costs $80/bbl, then the price of the crude is $1.90. This will vary with price per barrel. I heard that refining costs 0.50 when you include the price of the refining equipment.
Taxes are a small portion of the price in the US. In some countries it can be twice the oil.
Countries that have high taxes have very fuel efficient cars, waste less and are quick to develop alternative energy technologies: Israel, Japan, Germany, etc.
We may not pay for oil at the pump but we sure pay for it in our military budget in blood and tears. If we funded our military from gasoline and diesel fuel taxes we might be quicker to ween ourselves off oil.

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