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Water & Gas: An American pricing paradox
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Americans, meanwhile, continue to pay low prices for gasoline, even as demand increases.
Demand for gasoline in the US has grown 2 to 5 percent each year for the past five years, says Amy Jaffe, an energy analyst at Rice University. The number of cars on the road including a great many behemoths continues to grow, and drivers have steadily increased the number of miles they travel.
But US politicians fear drawing Americans' ire by raising gasoline taxes.
"The American public thinks they have a God-given right to drive SUVs, and a God-given right to fill them up at a reasonable price," says John Tobin, executive director of the Energy Literacy Project, an Evergreen, Colo.-based company that attempts to improve the energy industry's public image.
Consumers' defense of the culture of driving in America has kept prices level over the long run.
So has competition. Major franchises, off-brand stores, and large discount retailers such as Kmart and Wal-Mart all compete for drivers' business.
Ralph Ferguson, owner of the Village Market, says he makes ends meet not from gasoline sales, but by selling beverages and snacks in his adjacent convenience store.
"I'm lucky if I make three cents' profit on every gallon," says Mr. Ferguson.
Behind the costs of two vital fluids
The core ingredients of gasoline and bottled water are priced about as differently as two products can be. The cost of crude oil makes up about 42 percent of what consumers pay at the pump. Because crude is a commodity bought and sold in the world market global politics often dictate price.
Between 1978 and 1981, for example, falling production resulting from the Iran-Iraq war caused the average price of crude to jump from $21 per barrel to $35.
Experts say the current price of crude about $25 a barrel is artificially high, because of concern about future conflict in the Middle East.
"Geopolitical forces need to calm down a bit for buyers to have confidence," says Mark Baxter, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
The cost of water, alternatively, is primarily fixed, determined by local officials rather than a global market. In the case of purified (as opposed to spring) bottled-water brands such as Pepsi's Aquafina and Coke's Dasani, the water is not traded among private water brokers, but comes straight from municipal water authorities.
For customers who use large amounts of water, rates are set between $2 and $3 per thousand gallons, only slightly different from rates set for regular consumers.
Spring water has higher upfront costs. An evaluation of potential spring-water sites for its Ozarka brand cost Nestlé several hundred thousand dollars. The cost of buying the properties was in the millions, according to Nestlé staff geologist Dave Feckley.
"The actual cost of the water in the bottle purchased off a store shelf is generally just a fraction of a cent to a few cents," according to a report sponsored by the World Wide Fund, a Switzerland-based nature-conservancy group.
