Think gas prices are high?

The Leader Online By Barney Burke Leader Staff Writer

The price of gasoline has edged past the $2 mark in Jefferson County. But gasoline doesn't cost nearly as much as many other everyday products. Photo by Barney Burke.

Petrol is cheaper than milk, soda pop, other items on store shelves

While motorists grumble about alleged price-gouging by oil companies or blame the war in Iraq or the strike in Venezuela, it's worth looking at how gasoline stacks up to other common products.

Not only are a lot of other liquids more expensive, but they won't move your car an inch.

Why is it that orange juice costs three times as much as a gallon of premium petrol? One can guess that the $5.99 cost of a gallon of OJ might reflect long-distance delivery. Look at the label on a one-gallon bottle of Minute Maid, for example, and there's a disclosure that the product comes from Brazil as well as the United States.

At $7.99 a gallon, four times the price of gas, buying a 12-pack of Budweiser beer can seem like a pretty spendy decision compared to gasoline. But the big-ticket beverage without a doubt is coffee. An 8-ounce cuppa joe at Starbucks in Port Townsend will set you back $1.30 - which translates out to a whopping $20.80 per gallon.

Another product that you can't put in your tank is latex interior paint. A gallon of flat latex goes for about five times the price of gas, and that $9.97 only gets one to two rooms per gallon, in this reporter's experience.

And then we have the one-gallon container of professional grade Roundup weed killer, which can be had for $99.95 a gallon in Chimacum, 50 times the price of high-test fuel. It isn't clear just how long that amount would last the average gardener, or how long it would take to remove it from your garden if you accidentally spill it.

But as anyone who wears hard contact lenses can tell you, the most expensive liquid known to mankind may in fact be the popular Boston brand lens cleaner, which comes in a one-ounce bottle for $8.79. At a remarkable $1,125.12 per gallon, a gallon of Boston costs as much as 562 gallons of premium gas, nearly as much as Lasik surgery for both eyes.

At the bargain end of the scale is municipal tap water. In the City of Port Townsend, residents can drink up the bounty of the Big Quilcene and Little Quilcene rivers for a modest 0.18 cents per gallon, and Tri-Area residents pay 0.25 cents a gallon for water from the Jefferson County Public Utility District 1 (PUD), or about 1,000 times cheaper than bottled water. The city and PUD charge base fees of $13.99 and $20 a month, respectively, in addition to volume charges.

By comparison, bottled water seems exorbitant. At local grocery stores, a gallon jug of generic bottled water goes for $1.90, nearly the price of a gallon of premium gas.

Gasoline is going for about the same price as home heating oil, $1.92, which in essence is diesel fuel, conveniently delivered to your door. Propane, also popular for home heating, is running about $1.55 a gallon depending on the customer's tank size and who owns it, according to local suppliers. The price of propane is expected to drop about five cents soon, one dealer said. His answer was as cryptic as the common answer from gas station owners: His suppliers simply informed him that the price is going down.

Among the most expensive petroleum-based products available locally is Marvel Mystery Oil, familiar to many old-time motorheads. Like something out of the J.C. Whitney "home of chrome" catalog, pouring the stuff into your gas tank with every fill-up is said to have many benefits for your car. But at $14.95 a gallon, the modern consumer may find the brand name lacking in scientific panache.