Saturday, June 21, 2008

(English) Literacy is for everyone


One can't afford to be behind on the current affairs you see

Fuel Prices: Part 1.5

A follow up to the earlier post.

I showed the post to my father who commented on an error in the post, which was identified again by my good friend Vatsan, and here is what he wrote; and what sums up the error; and my response

And yes; there will be another, more detailed and accurate analysis of fuel prices in the (near (hopefully)) future

Anonymous Vatsan said...

dude, there is a mistake in your analysis of the prices.
even though you can get only 46% petrol from crude, that doesnt multiply the price of petrol by 1/0.46, because there are other components of crude that have monetary value.
these may of lower or of higher monetary value. and this could even give an error in the range of +50% (or more, or less. depending on the value of these other commodities obtained from crude) in the price of petrol.
and you also havent factored in the price of the fractional distillation and the refining. which would increase the price by a bit.
but, i do think that it is safe to say that all factors included, the price of a litre of petrol, without subsidies and duties, would be a sizeable amount lesser than 76 INR.

June 21, 2008 11:00 PM

Blogger Avi C said...

@ Vatsan; you're the second person after my dad to point this out to me. Yes; what you say is right. Absolutely correct. In fact, I was planning to write a new blog entry explaining my error.

I could say that I've chosen a worst case scenario, but then again, I haven't included the refining costs, etc.

I did look up the actual price and saw it mentioned somewhere and it was about Rs.71/L , which is about 5 rupees away from my estimate.

A best case scenario, on the other hand would be about 76*.46 (assuming all the crude is refined into petroleum and there are NO extra costs involved), which is about Rs.35 but that, obviously isn't the case. That said, I am planning on a blog entry with more variables involved.

June 22, 2008 12:08 AM

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Traveller's Tales

While I can't really say I've travelled too much, I can say, with all the confidence in the world; that I've made the most of each and every trip. To begin with; I'm the kind of person who's probably throw away a map just so I wouldn't look at it, and to say that a rainy day is only an occasion to eat something different. Yet; there was one trip that really wore me out; one from New York to Frankfurt, with my flight postponed by over eight hours, my luggage lost in transit, my phone battery running dead, having drunk black coffee without a meal; there was little I could do but wait.

I soon began cribbing to a fellow passenger. Misery loves company. I soon settled with being bored and looking at the pictures I had taken of my exploits before my arrival. All I was hoping for was a distraction, and it soon came in the form of a large man, who I've since tried to contact many times, but have been quite unsuccessful. We got chatting; but after a while, I could only remain silent. That was one of the few times in my life I can remember listening without saying a word.

RSK was a millionare, and that was past tense even when I met him. He was a prisoner, now free and on his way to his home country. As he went on, I got more than just a way to pass my time. He originally went to Nigeria for some business dealings, and things seemed to be going well until someone stole his identity and he was convicted of fraud. He went on with his story; he was forced to stay in dark, dingy cells and undergo inhuman treatment. He was forced to sign a confession everyday, and the only thing that stopped him from doing so was his integrity.

In spite of his inhuman treatment, he candidly admitted that of all the inmates, he was meted the best treatment; and there would often be fights in the prison on who would stay with him in the cell; him being the only "whitey" there. The impact of racism hadn't become as apparent to me until then. His own government seemed ill inclined on pursuing his release. He continued about how for many days he had almost no food to eat. His torment ultimately did come to an end six months later, when thanks to the intervention of the Goverment, he was flying on an Emergency Visa to Canada, hoping that he could take up his issue with his government.

I recorded many things on that trip on my video camera; but I missed recording this "interview". When I look back, I do regret it, but it wouldn't really have been the same with me pointing a camera at his face.


I decided, of course, I would keep in touch with such an interesting person, and asked him how I could contact him, and he scribbled his email behind the receipt for his Big Mac (or as he called it; his first taste of home) and handed it to me. I've never succeeded in contacting him, but I still have that receipt, safe with me, and a lone picture to remind me of him; or contemplate on when I have a really bad day.

Then again, I never really needed a picture: RSK is a man I will never, ever forget.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Fuel Prices: The Long and Short of it

This is not a post that describes
1) Goverment Policies
2) Conspiracy Theories
3) Organic Chemistry
4) Eric Theodore Cartman

The short of it;
a litre of petrol; as of Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 should cost 76.3458 Indian Rupees, but it still costs less than Rs.60

This is NOT accounting for the numberous other charges that will inevitably add to the cost of petrol like duties, profit margins, sales tax, etc.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions

The slightly more in-depth analysis
Let's get on with it


Oil Dashboard
June, Tuesday 10 2008
$131.50

Anyway; that's the price for a barrel of crude oil according to http://oil-price.net/
So; how much is a barrel?

The barrel is the name of several units of volume

Oil barrel: 42 US gallons, 158.9873 litres,[1] or 34.9723 Imperial (UK) gallons.

Taken from Wikipedia

so 158.9873 litres of crude for US $131.50 as of June 10, 2008.

This works out to about 131.50US$/158.9873 L of crude; i.e. about 0.82711009 US $ / L of crude. Keep in mind that this is NOT what you put into your vehicle.

Now how much PETROL do you get from a litre of Crude

I was wondering the same and so I did a bit of googlin and I found a nice little blog. The blog linked to a certain cars.com site which didn't work and so had to be accessed using the wayback machine

Click here for that site

From that source, we obtain the data that only about 19.5 gallons of the 42 gallons of crude cab be obtained as petroleum. Going ahead with the math, this is only
19.5/42*100=46.4285714%
Only about 46.42 % or .4642 of the crude is petrol.
This means from one barrel of Crude, we obtain .4642*158.9873 L=73.8019 L of Petrol per barrel
This means the cost/litre of petrol is
131.50US$/73.8019L=1.7817$/L of petrol.

How much is this in Indian Rupees (thanks to XE.com)
Live rates at 2008.06.10 20:26:13 UTC

1.7817 USD

=

76.3458 INR

United States Dollars
India Rupees
1 USD = 42.8500 INR
1 INR = 0.0233372 USD



There you have it; a litre of petrol; as of Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 should cost 76.3458 Indian Rupees, but it still costs less than Rs.60

This is NOT accounting for the numberous other charges that will inevitably add to the cost of petrol like duties, profit margins, sales tax, etc.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions