European Gas Prices: And You Thought $3.50 Was A Lot…

Earlier today, the AAA and Oil Price Information Service reported that average U.S. gasoline prices hit a new record at $3.50 per gallon. A lot of people are freaking out here in the U.S. with the cost of gas but how about if you paid more than double that like they do in Germany; how does that sound?

Ok, so we knew that Europeans pay an arm and a leg for gasoline – mostly due to heavy taxation, but we wanted to see exactly how much more so we “flew” over to Eurostat, the official European statistic office to find out. As you can see in the list, there are huge variations in Europe with gasoline prices ranging from “as low” as €3.82 / $6.12 a gallon in Bulgaria to as deep-space high as €5.87 / $9.39 in The Netherlands. Suddenly $3.50 doesn’t sound that bad, does it... And no, we’re not implying that we should pay more for gas.

*Gas prices were taken on April 18, 2008 by Eurostat and they concern the average cost of one liter of Euro-Super 95 -taxes and duties included. For comparison reasons, we converted Euros/liter prices into Euros/gallon and Dollars/gallon. Note that the exchange rate between the Dollar and the Euro also hit a new record high today (€1 = $1.60 on April 22, 2008).