In article ,
George E. Cawthon wrote:
(edited for space)
TURTLE wrote:

(story about ethanol plant able to sell ethanol at 60 cents per gallon,
and closing when gas at the pump was $1 per gallon)

If they were selling the alcohol at 60 cents and gas was
selling for $1.00, it is no wonder they stopped making
alcohol. You can make alcohol economically if you use
waste products. But you can't grow crops to make alcohol
economically because the energy you put into the process is
greater than the energy you get out of it. There may be
some exception to that, but they are few and far between.

One other factor: If the gas station was selling gasoline for $1.00 per
gallon, how much of that went to the refinery? I think probably less than
60 cents per gallon, since a major part of the retail cost of gasoline is
taxes.

60 cents per gallon is $25.20 per barrel. I somewhat remember that
refinery costs were somewhere between a nickel and a dime a gallon (could
be a little more now), so for the cost of crude plus refining is 60 cents
per gallon, the crude alone would cost about $21-23 per barrel.
How much did gas cost at the pump last time crude oil was $21 per
barrel? $1.15-$1.20 a gallon? Last time gas was a dollar a gallon, if I
remember correctly, crude was about $17-$18 a barrel.

When crude recently fluctuated as high as $50 per barrel to as low as
mid 40's, the pump price for regular was about $1.80 to $1.95 per gallon -
about 80-90 cents a gallon above the price of crude, and a good chunk of
that is taxes.

- Don Klipstein )