Gas price rant and a question for SammyG
 

Am I mistaken or has the differential in price between grades of gas changed?
I believe that in the recent past there was a .10 to 15 cent difference
between the grades
Now in Ct at least there is a 25 to 40 cent difference
As a cheap old bastage that knows my cars have knock sensors there's no chance I'd buy high test But I'm curious if anyone else has noticed this

Question for Sammy: How much more does it cost to produce 93 vs 87 octane?

Good question. Im interested as well.

Dan, there's a Shell in West Hartford with a $.70 spread between grades...unreal

i'll guess...... less than a nickel?

You've got it bass ackwards. The title is supposed to be "Question about gas prices and a rant from SammyG" :)

J/K, I wonder as well.

Gas sold at Fry's grocery store near me is:

Reg $2.63
Mid $2.76
Prem $2.89

At Chevron:

Reg $2.65
Mid $2.84
Prem $3.01

Now now, lets give the man a chance to speak

gas is a full dollar more per gallon here. wow.

edit: i spoke too soon. i looked at prices online and they have really dropped, locally. it's only been a few days since i purchased fuel, but it seems that prices have really dropped. $2.98/gallon is the average being reported.

This is what I would consider normal

In Ct yesterday it was
Reg $3.25
Mid $3.55
Prem $3.85

I've always had a suspicion that midgrade doesn't really exist, it's actually premium. Do they really run three different grades of fuel in trucks to every station?

The answer is, depends.

There's only so much you can get out of a barrel of crude.
Part of what we get is called straight-run gasoline, it's a dirty low-octane product that we get from pure distillation.

The straight run gasoline is cleaned of sulfur and other impurities but the octane is still way too low to sell, so it's blended with higher octane components.
Those components are usually reformate (102-ish octane from a platinum reformimg unit) or alkylate (98 octane from an acid alkylation plant). And they are expensive to make.

So to determine how much premium gas costs to make over regular, we'd have to determine the cost of making naptha and then the cost of running it through a unit to convert it to a high octane distillate for blending.
Those prices vary depending on demand and the cost of the crude.

I can tell you that an alkylation plant and platinum catalyst reforming plant are the most expensive to run per bbl.
The catalyst in a reforming unit can easily cost $20 million and hs to be regenerated every year or so.

An alkylate unit used acid as a catalyst, some still use hydrofluoric acid (alien acid, eats thruogh glass and 316 stainless steel) but most use sulfuric. Lots of it.

I remember last summer there was a shortage of alkylate and high octane blend stocks and that drove up the price big time.

So how much more does premium cost to make ...... it's less than the difference you see at the pumps.
We sell wholesale premium for about 15 cents/gallon more than regular.
That's probably pretty close to what it costs to make it on average.

Then the retailer marks it up to whatever he needs to justify selling it.
Premium kinda sux in that it moves slower, it takes up valuable tankage and pump space, which could be used to move regular.
So he marks up the price of premium to offset the cost of selling it, and then he gets greedy and marks it up some more.
He charges all that the market will bear.
If he goes too high his sales drop off, but he is always testing that limit.

They don't. The pumps blend in the two other grades on the fly to made the mid grade.

It is $2.22 per gallon here for the gas with corn in it. I don't buy that and go for 100% gas and it is 20 or 30 cents more. I don't care my cars get real gas.

No refiner would give away premium for mid-grade, that's throwing money away.
And no refiner would dare sell lower octane as higher mid-grade either. Playing games with octane gets you a ticket to prison.
It is blended but it is the octane it says it is.

They test the octane we sell and they test the equipment we use to test the octane we sell and it has to be accurate.

Did ya know that every refinery has it's own sophisticated laboratory that is constantly running hundreds of different tests on hydrocarbon samples?
I bet we have at least 20 full time chemists on staff.

I usually dont rant on this subject unless someone makes a bogus accusation. SmileWavy

Your rants are OK by me.....as long as you're not (literally) peeing on my lawn.SmileWavy

So is midgrade blended at the refinery or at the pump?

Given the strict standards and measures requirements for octane levels, I can't imagine the pump being in control of the octane in the blended product. Is it really as simple as equal parts premium and regular get you midgrade??

Yup, and you can do the same with oil to get mid-grades....

To be fair, I am not sure if the ratio is linear, but it is predictable. And BTW, the default if they run out of mid-grade and for whatever reason they cannot mix (some outlets do not have the equipment but have extra tankage), they default to premium.

I have, on occasion, found out when the local station was forced to use premium as a substitute for mid-range and was quite happy to save the bucks...

Dennis

This is exactly the reason for my thought and I think I must have heard this at some point from a station operator. I would guess that the midgrade pump occasionally pumps premium out the nozzle. Probably not as often as one would hope and certainly not something you could rely upon if running higher compression and no knock sensor, etc.

On a similar note, a new station opened near me a few weeks ago. Along wiht the usual 10% ethanol blends (reg is 2.919/gal this morning) they also have ethanol-free. Which is 3.619/gal

All else equal, shouldn't the ethanol free be only 30 cents/gal more than the regular w/ ethanol? Or is the price jacked up just because?

Dan, I've seen wide gaps as well at some places. This week I pulled into a Shell station where the regular to premium gap was between $2.80 - $3.44 which wasn't even the worst example. I decided to try right across the street at an Exxon where the gap was $2.75 to $3.15, still a bit wide but not as bad so that's where I filled up the 911.