The American Demise?

Whilst driving home from school today, I saw something that really got me thinking:

$2.71

If you guessed the price of a gallon of gas, you are correct. However, this is diesel we are talking about, and compared with the $2.88 price of unleaded, it made me quite intrigued. That was not the end of it, as this was a Citgo gas station, which many of you know is Venezuela's American branch of its now-nationalized (government-run) oil company. Think about it, the country who's leader has decried the actions of the United States government, quite frankly, has us by the balls. Hence why we rarely here of a comment made towards Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela.**

Let's say you pay $2.90 per gallon, now multiply that by the average size of your gas tank (say, 16 gallons) and you have $46.40 for each fill-up, now since most Americans fill up at least twice a week, for 52 weeks, you can say that on average, you pay about $4825.60 on gas each year. Of course, throw in a few rises in gas prices, long family trips, and you can easily say that you would pay about $5000 in gas each year.

Now, do the same equation with the price of diesel and you come out to around $4509.44 for gas each year. I don't know about you, but having $324 left over at the end of the year sounds pretty good to me.

What's the demise?

Good question. Quite simply, it is the prospect of the oil industry, and considering there are here around 143,781,202 cars in the USA (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_cars_are_there_in_the_US) you can say that the amount of money that goes towards gas each year, on a low side, is 6.93830568e11 (whether you remember algebra 2 or not, that number is staggering).

If Citgo gas is sold cheaper than the $2.90 amount at every other gas station, say...$2.60 a gallon, which is reasonable considering the amount of unnecessary taxes and profiteering that is factored into gas prices from big oil companies, the entire national petroleomic structure (as I like to call it for this situation) would be drastically changed. People go to the places where the gas is cheapest and while an $0.08 different won't do much when seen in everyday occurrences, a difference of $0.40 would, especially when it saves you around $5 each time you fill up. Now, if a chain of gas stations, let's say Citgo, decides to charge a gallon of gasoline for forty, fifty, or sixty cents cheaper than everyone else (making little-to-no profit) plus advertising the fact that you would save about $500 per year if you bought gas at Citgo, then it won't matter that the company is state-run by an enemy of the United States, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

Let's face it, if this were to happen, and believe me, people would flock to Citgo's, even if they had a nice picture of good 'ol Hugo on the front door, it would create a massive rupture in the Capitalistic system in the United States, especially amongst other gas companies. They would be forced to do one of the following situations:

1. Lowering their prices to compete with Citgo. (Best case scenario)

2. Bankruptcy for the other gas stations. (Mediocre scenario)

3. The government puts massive tariffs on Venezuelan gas. (Worst, but probably, most likely scenario).

Well, one can dream, can't they?


**FYI, Hugo Chavez was a freely elected president, so, frankly, you can't call him a dictator.