Where Your Gas Dollar Goes

If you're still holding on to hopes that gas prices will go back down some day, give it up. Not only will the two dollar threshold never be crossed again, three dollars is just around the corner and will likely be surpassed before summer.

You've likely heard all the stories of the contributing factors to high fuel prices: the Iraq war; instability in the Middle East; hydrogen leaks; peak travel seasons; hurricanes Rita and Katrina -- you name it, they've used it.

But have you heard this excuse? According to CBS News, the CEO of ExxonMobil makes some $13,700 per hour. They don't explain how they come to that figure, but one could safely assume that as a CEO, he's considered to be a full-time employee. So let's just call it a forty hour work week. That's $548,000 per week, $2,374,667 per month, or $28,496,000 per year. If all those numbers complicate things for you, here it is in plain English: twenty-eight and a half million dollars per year.

I last filled my gas tank for $2.659 a gallon. To fill my little thirteen gallon tank from empty would cost me almost $35. How many tanks of gas could the CEO of ExxonMobil put in my car per year? 824,370, or 10,716,810 gallons. Again in plain English: that's almost eleven million gallons of gasoline.

I think it's pretty clear what's driving the high cost of gasoline.

Joe