'Hot' Gasoline Costing Texans Millions

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has an excellent article today about another sneaky way the oil companies have to get into your wallet. It seems that gasoline, by agreement between the oil industry and regulators, is supposed to be sold at 60 degrees. Years ago, that was considered to be the average temperature in this country.

One gallon contains 231 cubic inches of gasoline. However, gasoline is a liquid and will expand when it gets warmer. The same amount of gasoline that takes up 231 cubic inches at 60 degrees, will expand to 235 cubic inches at 90 degrees. So if you fill a gallon jug at 90 degrees, you are buying less energy than if you filled the jug at the standard of 60 degrees, even though you are paying the same price.

Of course, with our extended and extremely hot summers here in Texas, we are usually buying gas at temperatures even hotter than 90 degrees. It has been estimated that Texans have lost hundreds of millions of dollars by buying "hot" gasoline. When gasoline was cheap, this might not have mattered as much, but gasoline is not cheap anymore. With prices as high as they are, Texans should be getting a full gallon's worth of energy when they buy a gallon of gas. Currently, they are not.

This is a problem easily fixed with modern technology. Pumps could be fixed to account for gas temperature, and adjust the price accordingly. But it's not a question of technology. The oil companies do not want to fix the problem. They are making too much extra money - money that should be staying in the pockets of ordinary Texans.

You can bet the problem would be quickly fixed if it cost the oil companies, instead of providing windfall profits. In fact, this did happen a few years ago in Canada. There, the oil companies were losing money because the gasoline was being sold at temperatures less than 60 degrees because of the long and hard winters. They lobbied the Canadian government, and got the right to adjust prices according to the gasoline temperature.

If the "hot" and "cold" gasoline issue is important when it causes the oil companies to lose money, then it is also important when it causes ordinary Texans to lose money. We must not let the oil companies get away with this. The price of our gasoline is not going to get any cheaper. In fact, it will probably rise even further, which means Texans will lose even more money to "hot" gasoline.

I don't expect the current Republican regime to do anything about this. They showed us long ago that they are in the pockets of the greedy corporations. This problem will have to be solved at the ballot box next November. If we elect a new governor, and great Democrats like David Van Os, Hank Gilbert, and VaLinda Hathcox, we will be well on our way to stopping this back-door thievery.