On Fri, 12 Aug 2005, Arif Khokar
Cry me a goddamned river. The litre is 3.745 times larger than the US gallon, which means Canadian fuel sellers can play large games with the price of fuel and it still looks small. Your 30¢ price increase in the last 2 weeks is typical of the variation we see in Toronto within *hours* on any given day. Last Monday at 11AM, a particular Esso station was selling Regular for 95.2¢-litre. Same station was at 84.9 eleven and a half hours later, and 96.3 two hours after that. Next day, it was 97.1 at 10AM, 98.4 at noon, and 95.3 at three, then 86.4 at 10PM.
Converting Canuck bucks to US dollars, and litres to US gallons, that translates this way:
11:00AM: $2.905-gal 10:30PM: $2.591-gal 12:30AM: $2.939-gal 10:00AM: $2.964-gal 12:00PM: $3.003-gal 3:00PM: $2.908-gal 10:00PM: $2.637-gal
Largest gap observed in this timeframe at this stationover a 35-hour period, in US dollars per US gallon: 41.2¢
And you think Gas is expensive in the US 2067On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 17:23:41 -0700, , said the following in rec.autos.driving... Same on the East Coast. We are all getting f***ed by the oil companies. The question is how long are...
41.2¢ converted to Canadian dollars per litre: 13.5¢
Which is more palatable: An increase per unit volume of 41.2 whole cents? Or an increase per unit volume of just 13-and-a-half cents? Right.
And that's the way it works all over, at every station, regardless of brand. All to do with up-to-the-second calculations based on the price of crude oil and international politics, I'm certain -- not.
Canadian opponents of the metric switch in the '70s rightly predicted that this kind of game would be greatly facilitated by selling gasoline in litres instead of gallons. And, the Canadian (Imperial) gallon was larger than the US item, such that the 41.2¢-per-US-gallon price swing is a 55.7¢-per-Imperial-gallon price swing.
It's almost as good as 3-card monte. Follow the queen, follow the queen, follow the queen, you KNOW what I mean!
