Gasohol

Denny wrote:
Hampton Airport in SE New Hampshire sells straight mogas with no
additives. They buy it by the tankload at the terminal in Portland ME
before the bad stuff goes in.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford


The joke on us all is that gas pumped to your local distribution
terminal has no alcohol in it... At the distribution terminal are huge
tanks of gas, and smaller tnaks of alcohol, dye, additives, etc...
The driver pulls up with his tanker... Keys in who the gas is for
Shell, Marathon, ETC.and what the octane rating is and the computer
selects the appropriate base stock of gasoline and mixes in the proper
additives and dyes as it pumps the load to his tanker, including the
alcohol... We are being hosed by the oil companies, in cahoots with
the government, in more ways than just price...

It is true that all oil companies fuel is essentially the same,
and has been true for a long time. Explain how the government is
somewhow in "cahoots" with the oil companies? Federal, state and
local governments together make more on a gallon of gas than the
oil companies do.

"ktbr" wrote in message
...
Denny wrote:
Hampton Airport in SE New Hampshire sells straight mogas with no
additives. They buy it by the tankload at the terminal in Portland ME
before the bad stuff goes in.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford


The joke on us all is that gas pumped to your local distribution
terminal has no alcohol in it... At the distribution terminal are huge
tanks of gas, and smaller tnaks of alcohol, dye, additives, etc...
The driver pulls up with his tanker... Keys in who the gas is for
Shell, Marathon, ETC.and what the octane rating is and the computer
selects the appropriate base stock of gasoline and mixes in the proper
additives and dyes as it pumps the load to his tanker, including the
alcohol... We are being hosed by the oil companies, in cahoots with
the government, in more ways than just price...

It is true that all oil companies fuel is essentially the same,
and has been true for a long time. Explain how the government is
somewhow in "cahoots" with the oil companies? Federal, state and
local governments together make more on a gallon of gas than the
oil companies do.

http://www.redplanetcartoons.com/wor...7gasprices.jpg

"Matt Barrow" wrote:
http://www.redplanetcartoons.com/wor...7gasprices.jpg

It varies of course with location, but for a gallon of branded gas sold
in California the average values appear to be[1]:

$3.44 Retail price per gallon.
$0.62 Taxes (18%)
$1.61 Crude oil cost (47%)

Profit margins vary a lot by company and over time, but a mid-term (not
long term) average of ~8% seems a useful number.[2] Though Exxon managed
to get nearly 11% last year.[3] So for the above $3.44 gallon of gas,
and if they were still getting 11%, their profit would have been:

$0.38 Oil company profit.

So the $0.09 in the cartoon may be the gas station owner's EBITDA per
gallon.

The industries that really have high profit margins are banking, drugs,
and software. People rarely complain about price gouging from Microsoft
or other software companies, but their profit margins are quite large
relative to other industries. And some people wonder why I'm still in
the software business. ;-)

[1] http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/margins/index.html
[2] http://www.gravmag.com/oil.html
[3] http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/01/news...xxon/index.htm

On Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:58:28 -0000, Jim Logajan
wrote:

Profit margins vary a lot by company and over time, but a mid-term (not
long term) average of ~8% seems a useful number.[2] Though Exxon managed
to get nearly 11% last year.[3]

Exxon had a good year in part because it owns a lot of refineries. In
the past, refineries have been a very bad business (the money was all
in extracting oil from the ground) but lately there's been a huge
shortgage of capacity (hurricane Katrina, Europe no longer exporting
much gasoline) so refineries are stretched to the limit.

When something is stretched, the price goes up, which is why Exxon did
better last year than say Royal Dutch Shell or Beyond Petroleum.

(For years, we have been importing gasoline from Europe. Isn't that a
hoot? They've historically tended to need more diesel than the
refineries could easily produce without exporting the lighter stuff,
and the excess came to us so the yuppies didn't have to have a bad ole
refinery in their backyard.)

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942
forthcoming from HarperCollins www.flyingtigersbook.com

ktbr writes:

The joke on us all is that gas pumped to your local distribution
terminal has no alcohol in it... At the distribution terminal are huge
tanks of gas, and smaller tnaks of alcohol, dye, additives, etc...
.....


It is true that all oil companies fuel is essentially the same,
and has been true for a long time.


Anyone here recall Sohio with Winter-Ice Guard?

A) Yes, pipeline carry fuel that is traded widely between companies.
Many times, groups of competitors jointly own the pipeline company.
Inland Corp == Sun, Union, Shell & BP

[There are large efficiencies of scale on same; it costs almost as
much to run a 6" dia pipeline as an 18" one.]

Exception was that no one would take low-end Sunoco as it was lower
octane than regular. [Sun mixed a % of the low end and high octane
right at the pump.]

B) Yes, all the additives are injected at the marketing terminal;
aka where the trucks are loaded. So yes, you should be able to
buy un-altered gas, with the right connections...


--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

Want to emphesize that ALL gasoline has some water in it. It leaves
the refinery with some non-zero amount. It's stored in floating roof
tanks [1] that will let some in. It's in a truck in the rain... it's
there.

The question is getting rid of same.

We all know how -- let it sit quietly and it shall settle out. Then
open the bottom drain and watch. That might be under your wing, or
on a tank or inbetween...



[1] Gas does not go kabboom; gas vapor does. So it's stored not in
tanks as much as 4 million gallon cylinders with closed bottoms.

On top of the gas there's a big heavy floating roof that has a gasket
all the way around the edge. It floats directly atop the gas; ergo
no vapor space.

Then there's a sliding ladder deal so the pipeline operator can
climb up over the cylinder lip and back down onto the roof.

BUT, with the tank half full; there's a 2 million gallon trap atop
the roof to collect rainwater and snow; some of which leaks past
that gasket. Most is SUPPOSED to go through an articulated downspout
gadget INSIDE the tank and out the side at the bottom; but that's
only when the temperature is well above freezing...and they leak
a little too...

This was obvious to many pilots & few ground-dwellers, but now many
of the tanks also have a cap on top to keep some of the rain and
snow out. I was looking for a GoogleMap photo and all the ones I
worked on are now capped.



--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

David Lesher wrote:


This was obvious to many pilots & few ground-dwellers, but now many
of the tanks also have a cap on top to keep some of the rain and
snow out. I was looking for a GoogleMap photo and all the ones I
worked on are now capped.

Here's some uncaped ones.

http://tinyurl.com/ypupkd

"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net writes:

David Lesher wrote:


This was obvious to many pilots & few ground-dwellers, but now many
of the tanks also have a cap on top to keep some of the rain and
snow out. I was looking for a GoogleMap photo and all the ones I
worked on are now capped.

Here's some uncaped ones.

http://tinyurl.com/ypupkd


and one photo I just found:

https://www.piersystem.com/posted/42...017.125127.JPG


--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

Given the issue with alcohol, and the fact it is injected at the
last stage - truck loading -- why aren't the STA owners such as EAA
running campaigns to set up procedures for FBO's to procure untainted
autogas?

I can see the average truck loading terminal saying "we can't do that"
until they get a memo saying that they can...



--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

"David Lesher" wrote in message
...


Given the issue with alcohol, and the fact it is injected at the
last stage - truck loading -- why aren't the STA owners such as EAA
running campaigns to set up procedures for FBO's to procure untainted
autogas?

I can see the average truck loading terminal saying "we can't do that"
until they get a memo saying that they can...



--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

I really doubt that the terminal operators are so ignorant as to make that a
problem.

OTOH, there are some real problems for the FBO to overcome. One FBO owner,
who I know, stopped selling gasolene several years ago--saying that he
sometimes suspected that he lost more to evaporation than he pumped. That
was certainly an exageration, but the point was well made that the sales did
not justify the overhead--so now he only pumps Jet A, and gasolen powered
aircraft must taxi elsewhere on the field for their fuel. For many, if not
most, E-zero mogas would be an additional grade of fuel in a low volume
market--and one which would require additional infrastructure, and also
licensing, maintenance, and inspection of same.

Obviously, many also operate rental aircraft which they would prefer to run
on the most appropriate fuel. However, untill we are willing to guarantee
them a reasonable volume of sales, I don't see how they can do it. (They to
never bet on another man's game, but I will hazard a guess that an FBO needs
to use a full devivery every other month to keep the product available--and
at least twice that much to offer it at a competitive price. Any
requirement for above ground storage may also increase the required volume.)

Just my $0.02
Peter