How much does it cost to transport a gallon of fuel to a retail gas station?

Actually, the problem is ethanol does not have as many BTU's as gasoline. That is why any gasoline with an ethanol blend will be less expensive at the pump, but will yield less miles-per-gallon. The net gain in cost vs MPG is zero. (Unless you remove the subsidy then the cost of ethanol is more than gasoline). As for why they mandate ethanol in gasoline? The idea is sold to us as a way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Search 'ethanol use in Brazil' to find out why corn based ethanol production will never lead to a viable fuel source.

 

I'm not going to put a dog in this race but let me offer you this:

A gallon of Ethanol has 27% less BTU's per than a gallon of gasoline.......

Get a calculator and good luck.

 

When they first came out with then it was methanol was to cut our dependence.. Now they try to talk us into that it burns a cleaner carbon. Funny thing.have you ever seen a white carbon? In some states they used it in the winter time ..it was something like November to April. The bad thing..it uses up to much of the food supply. Brazil is something like 100% ethanol. To make it they have robbed the sugar cane supply in Brazil. Now that we are 50% North American supported oil supply..we don't count that much any more on foreign oil. And that percentage is growing every day as they are finding more and more of a supply of oil in the US and Canada.ethanol is going to be on its death bed with this independence.

 

Less expensive? Where? Not here anyway......

And while were talking Ethanol a couple of FYI's for the masses.......

Ethanol attracts water....prolly not a big deal up north but here in the humid south, it's a problem.

Ethanol in gas will strataphy meaning it will separate from the gas by simply sitting. No more keeping gas stored......you have about 30 days to full separation. Stabil products help but the key word is help....not stop.

Ethanol rots gaskets ...... it will destroy you carbs in short order.......( small engine stuff )

And believe it or not, it costs more to make the stuff than gas........so it costs more, rots gaskets, attracts water and cuts fuel mileage. Looks like we have a winner!

 

But but but ethanol is saving the environment..it used to be to make us less dependent on foreign oil.. Now they claim its cleaner carbon.. Carbon is carbon and all the same.. So we are saving what ever we need to save today. This is all an agenda, that does nothing or the environment but has to do with a few back pockets getting very big. Al Gore is a very small player in this game. We now have to burn urea.. To clean up the air.. Funny thing. It's poisoning the air. It's all about money .. Yours becoming theirs. Does your trucking company get subsidized? If you fail.. You don't get bailed out.. Why should they ? It's time that companies stand upon their own 2 feet. There have always been success and failures.. You let the failures die. No matter who's agenda is pushing it.

 

The gasoline is almost the same for the area it is to be sold in. What makes the difference between the brands is the type of additive the company injects into their product. When it's refined the federal government puts requirements on the company which they must adhere to meet the specs. At this point they are all considered the same. In fact that is what is sold at the community rack. What makes ARCO ARCO and Chevron Chevron is the additive. That additive and the blend rate must be registered to the government as their product. You can not sell gasoline injected with the registered additive for ARCO at a Chevron station. Even when the gasoline meets the same spec's it must be pumped out. I know how Reno is but in Las Vegas our ARCO product came from the ARCO refinery in Carson shipped through the pipeline into the storage tanks at the common tank farm. There were many times when we would run out of a product and borrow product from Chevron to fill our needs. We could do this because the additive is injected at the rack. We would just pay them back when our tender came in.

I've never had to deal with Butane but Octane was the key. There are only two products refined at the refinery. Premium and Regular are refined with different octane levels. The refinery also told us that Premium goes through more refining than Regular. But the important and most regulated item is the octane. All the fines you see at the retail station for gasoline are for octane violations. IOW's you can not sell a lower octane gasoline to the public than advertised but you can sell a higher octane than advertised. Midgrade is just the two products mixed together. When I think about that one I think what a genius that guy was for coming up with a simple money maker. But what a huge problem for the transport driver! Then to throw a huge wrench into the game you add Ethanol. Ethanol is a octane booster so you know the companies are not going to give octane away like they did many years ago. You then get the sub-grade product where the octane is lower than what is required so you have to add ethanol to bring the product to spec. What we wanted to see were the pumps at the station that blended the two products together. That would have saved many headaches. There's a lot more to the grades of gasoline but that's about it for our drivers to know.

 

The gasoline companies hate it. You guys up there had the problem with MTBE in your water and it forced the companies to drop their own product and buy Ethanol. We could not blend it in the gasoline at the shipping point so you now have a huge problem of getting that product to the terminals. San Diego has no water access or rail so I don't know what they did. I'm sure they built a rail spur. The tax breaks do not off set the costs of blending, transporting, storage, and any other cost the companies were not used to. I know for years BP/ARCO has been trying to develop another product they can get out of their own stock to replace Ethanol. But I do believe it's here to stay for awhile.

You are right that it's no good for cleaning the air. In fact it also produces Ozone which is a regulated pollutant. The people that are making the bucks are the farmers and the refiners. It's ok that the farmers make the money because they need it but they also need to switch from corn ethanol to a feedstock that is not used for something else.

 

MTBE from the beginning they knew it was going to be a disaster as it was water soluble. But used it anyway as it met an agendas requirements. Many water wells in California are closed because of leaking gas tanks. From the 2 cycle engines, tahoe was getting polluted. It wasn't on the surface, but they tested about a foot down and there it was. The biggest thing with methanol is fires, because you can't see the flame very easily. And the transportation of it. It is either railed barged or trucked.. So is there really an advantage of it, out of methanol manufacturing country.

 

I hauled gas and oil for nine years back in the seventies and eighties and it was .01 per gallon. most of the trips were under 20miles and we got 85.00 per load and hauled 8700 gallons in the summer and 81 to 8200 in the winter. it all depends on the temp. Fuel oil was 7500 and 7000 to7200 based on the temp