The Kansas City Star is reporting today that Big Oil has, for decades, been using a combination of simple physics and political muscle to rip off every American who buys gasoline, or any product that depends on gasoline for production.
Yes, gasoline is a ripoff is so many ways already. But this is one that most people never considered -- and one that costs U.S. consumers and enriches Big Oil to the tune of $2.3 billion a year.
Think about it: heat expands, cold contracts. Everyday physics. But when the volume of gasoline expands when it gets warmer, the amount of energy it contains does not. Thus, a gallon of gasoline at 90 degrees F. yields less energy than a gallon at 60 degrees. Significantly, measurably less. Hot fuel gives you fewer miles per gallon than cool fuel does. On the flip: How Big Oil combines that basic physics with politics to screw you and me.
The Star reports that oil companies have known for decades about the lowered energy value, and economic value, of hot fuel. So have weights and measures officals around the world -- the people who regulate and police everything from gas pumps to deli scales to ostensibly protect the consumer.
Decades ago, local and state regulators and the oil industry agreed on a standard of 60 degrees F. for calibrating retail gas pumps. Since then, a combination of social and economic factors (and, one might argue, deliberate industry manipulation) have pushed average temperatures of gas sold at the pump progressively higher, so that pumps calibrated for 60 degree fuel routinely cheat the consumer. This is how Big Oil skims $2.3 billion in pure, unearned profit from our pockets every year.
The story also reports that the technology exists to calibrate pumps so that they measure, and automatically adjust for, the temperature of the fuel. Big Oil has used its political muscle to prevail on the weights and measures bureaucracies to keep that technology out of U.S. gas stations.
The industry claims that the technology is "too costly" to implement. But The Star calls bullshit on that claim by pointing out a simple fact: In Canada, where fuel is routinely shrunken in volume by cold temperatures (a phenomenon that actually cost the industry some profit for awhile), Big Oil maneuvered to have that very same technology installed on the majority of gas pumps.
Go read the whole thing at http://www.kansascity.com/...
It's part one of a two-part series that concludes tomorrow. I'm looking forward to see what else they uncover.