Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Is Canadian Gas Cheaper than American Gas?

Anyone who has traveled in the states knows that US gasoline is a lot cheaper than what we pay in Canada, but is it really? It all depends how you do the math.

American gasoline is really a lot more expensive, if you add in the cost of subsidies paid by the US government. One of these subsidies is the amount that Washington spends on its military effort to safeguard oil supplies in the Middle East.

Milton R. Copulos, who is president of the National Defense Council Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Washington that lobbies for less reliance on foreign oil, laid out the more familiar case when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March. The “hidden costs” of gasoline imports in 2005, he said, include $780 billion in military costs, a figure that, if acknowledged and spread over all imports, would add $4.05 to the price of each gallon of gasoline.

Looking at it that way, gas prices in Canada are a bargain.

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