I was watching the BBC at Ponds Forge this morning while I was pedalling away on a recumbent bike. One report noted that the price of petrol sold by a company is now slightly less than £1 per litre (click here for the story). It got me wondering what that translates into dollars per gallon, which is more familiar to me. One litre is approximately 0.2642 US liquid gallons, or one could state that one US liquid gallon is roughly 3.785 litres. Thus if it takes £1 to purchase one litre of petrol here in the UK, it costs about £3.785 to buy one US liquid gallon of petrol. Hopping on Google's "pounds to dollars" converter for today, £3.785 is equivalent to $5.73.
The price of petrol in the UK is considerably more than what people pay in the US. The average cost today for a gallon of regular unleaded in the US is $2.012 (click here for my source, but note that the number changes daily). People in the UK thus pay about 2.85 times for petrol what people in the US pay.
There was some hype about petrol prices falling below £1 per litre, and I'm sure there will be many happy customers at the pump. But excitement is relative. It's good to keep an eye on what happens outside one's country, of course, even the stuff that doesn't make huge headlines.
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