DG,
"Why has the price of gas in America been cheaper than in many other countries for years?"
Your answer is at the end of this post.
U.S. gas prices are a joke ... in Norway
By Aaron Smith, staff writerMarch 10, 2011: 11:08 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Americans often fret about the price of gasoline, which has surged dramatically in recent days, fueled by turmoil in oil-producing nations in the Middle East and North Africa.
But the price of gas in America lags far behind its European counterparts. While Americans tear their hair out at the pump, Europeans watch them enviously from across the Atlantic.
Most Europeans pay at least double what Americans do. Some of them, including the Greeks and the Scandinavians, shell out even more.
In the U.S., the nationwide average for the price of gas was $3.53 per gallon on Thursday, according to AAA. The price has risen for 16 consecutive days, jumping 34 cents.
But that's still less than half the $9.28 per gallon paid in Oslo, according to Din Side, a Norwegian search and news site that monitors gas prices, among other things.
Who's paying what: Most Europeans, including the British, the Irish, the Germans, the Italians and the French, pay somewhere between $7.50 and $8 per gallon, according to the International Energy Administration.
Danes paid $8.20 per gallon at the end of February, according to the IEA. Greeks -- no strangers to economic hard times -- were paying $8.45.
Many people may assume that Europeans pay a lot for gas because they don't have their own source of fossil fuels.
In fact, they do.
Norway is awash in oil because of its thriving oil industry in the North Atlantic. The United Kingdom also has access to the oil fields in the same region.
Italy has deep corporate ties with Libya. Its oil production company, Eni, is the largest producer in Libya. But even in the best of times, without civil war in Libya, gas in Italy is expensive when compared to the U.S. Italians on average paid $7.77 a gallon at the end of February, according to the most recent data from the IEA.
"The difference between countries comes down to taxes and subsidies," said Tom Kloza, the chief oil analyst for Oil Price Information Service. "Prices are incredibly high in Europe because of the stiff taxes that EU countries put on fuel. The same holds true for many other countries."
The Japanese also pay more -- $6.30 at the end of February -- and so do the Canadians, at $4.49 per gallon, according to the IEA.
more:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/10/news/international/gas_prices_worldwide/index.htm
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