AvGas Sales in Steep Decline

Might as well use it up before we relocate to Pandora. Then we will be all about the Unobtanium ;)

Ther'll eet ur eies fer jujubees...

I always wondered why they called it unobtanium if they obtained it...
Maybe they should call it "can-obtain-but-still-really-f*ckin-rar-ium"? :D

 
Alls i can hope is that it is short lived. But as many have stated the economy and rising prices for everything have taken their toll on GA.
 
I agree that RV-10s are not a money saving option for anyone, yet. (Give them another 20 years, and they will be cheap.)

There's always the Velocity, however. If I had a need for a 4-seater, I would be flying one.

http://www.barnstormers.com/Experimental, Velocity Classifieds.htm

Velocity is interesting but what's with the Raptor??

230 kts, 1800 lbs useful load,5 seats, 7 gph, pressurized, diesel!!! $120,000

Is this thing for real?

http://www.raptor-aircraft.com/specifications.html
 
Might as well use it up before we relocate to Pandora. Then we will be all about the Unobtanium ;)

Without the resources to create polymers out of, how are we going to construct the machines to get us there?
 
Out of curiosity, why does this chart represent something to be proud of?:dunno: All it represents is the accelerated depletion of finite natural resources, the vast majority of which will be converted to, and wasted as latent heat into the environment.

No great point of pride to be seen here.

True. Just a deeper rut.
 
No need, I use this:

mr_fusion.jpg
 
Isn't that a fossil fuel? I thought you were decrying the continued expansion of oil production? Sorry if I misunderstood.

Either way, I am in the process of building another mogas fuel truck. (I gave my old one away, back before I found a reliable source of unpolluted car gas.) I've had enough of paying through the nose for a fuel that causes fouled plugs and a crudded up engine.
 
Isn't that a fossil fuel? I thought you were decrying the continued expansion of oil production? Sorry if I misunderstood.

Either way, I am in the process of building another mogas fuel truck. (I gave my old one away, back before I found a reliable source of unpolluted car gas.) I've had enough of paying through the nose for a fuel that causes fouled plugs and a crudded up engine.

There is no oil product that can't be produced by algae (much fossil oil is algae), that algae can be fed and produced by the waste product of making electricity from natural gas with fuel cells.
 
.....and let's take time to remember the law of conservation of energy. :D
 
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Isn't that a fossil fuel? I thought you were decrying the continued expansion of oil production? Sorry if I misunderstood.

As it stands now, their 100LL replacement is made from crude oil. However it doesn't have to be. This is from their website-

Our fuel components can be derived from a variety of biological sources – including sugars, starches, lignin, bio-waste and other sources, or from petroleum. All of the biological sources require unique and expensive processes to convert the raw material into a liquid hydrocarbon form usable as fuel. There are literally dozens of renewable energy firms seeking to find low-cost pathways to make these biological conversions possible at commercial scale. The renewable fuel market is very challenging and very expensive. Swift has proven that a biological source can be transformed by our proprietary chemical synthesis into the exact hydrocarbon we need for high octane aviation gasoline. However, the very same hydrocarbon can also be synthesized from a crude oil fraction for less money, so we have developed alternative production methods, all of which are proprietary, that seek to exploit these various methods to bring our unleaded aviation gasoline to market.

The question was "What should we use?" not "What can we use?" We should be using bio fuels, but we can't.
 
Isn't that a fossil fuel? I thought you were decrying the continued expansion of oil production? Sorry if I misunderstood.

Either way, I am in the process of building another mogas fuel truck. (I gave my old one away, back before I found a reliable source of unpolluted car gas.) I've had enough of paying through the nose for a fuel that causes fouled plugs and a crudded up engine.



You found pure gas down there? Where? :confused:

Last time I looked, there was one guy in Shamrock TX selling it.
 
.....and let's take time to remember the law of conservation of energy. :D

Conservation of Energy doesn't even start to come into play when your baseline is 70%+ waste. Conservation of Energy becomes a factor once you start reaching 90% efficiency. Right now we have no problems getting to 70% efficiency from the 30% or less at which we reside, we just have to decide to invest in new infrastructure.
 
One in Ingleside, and the Rudy's BBQ in Corpus.


Thanks.

It's 205 miles by car for me dangit, Or I'd be down there with the F350 and a buddy tank. :sad:

I know there's got to be somewhere in Houston or around Houston you can get it, but they're not advertising on the web or something ...
 
Thanks.

It's 205 miles by car for me dangit, Or I'd be down there with the F350 and a buddy tank. :sad:

I know there's got to be somewhere in Houston or around Houston you can get it, but they're not advertising on the web or something ...

The BP refinery across the bay aught to be able to hook you up. Alls ya gotta do is get on their list of buyers....(good luck with that).
 
The BP refinery across the bay aught to be able to hook you up. Alls ya gotta do is get on their list of buyers....(good luck with that).


By the time I go get it, burn the diesel to do it, maintain the buddy tank and filters and gear ....

It ain't worth it. :nonod:
 
By the time I go get it, burn the diesel to do it, maintain the buddy tank and filters and gear ....

It ain't worth it. :nonod:

I can't even imagine getting through the paperwork to buy directly from them.
 
I can't even imagine getting through the paperwork to buy directly from them.


I asked our local Exxon distributor (not a gas station, our big area local distributor) where I buy thousands of gallons of farm diesel and all my oil and aircraft oil, I asked them if they could get it.

Nope. :sad:
 
I asked our local Exxon distributor (not a gas station, our big area local distributor) where I buy thousands of gallons of farm diesel and all my oil and aircraft oil, I asked them if they could get it.

Nope. :sad:

I'm really surprised you TX boys have a hard time finding pure gas :dunno:

It's quite abundant north of the Red River. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised since Oklahoma is superior to Texas in many ways ;)


I'm thinking I should start a pure gasoline trucking outfit and do my part to spread freedom across the land.
 
Out of curiosity, why does this chart represent something to be proud of?:dunno: All it represents is the accelerated depletion of finite natural resources, the vast majority of which will be converted to, and wasted as latent heat into the environment.

No great point of pride to be seen here.
They are only finite at a given price.
 
The EIA reports three different consumption numbers: Sales/deliveries by prime supplier, which is the one that Jay cited, retail sales by refiners, which you can find here: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=a403600001&f=a, and product supplied, which is here: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mgaupus1&f=a

From reading the glossary, I get the impression that the best of these at approximating consumption of avgas is the product supplied table. It's the most consistent of the three tables as well. If you look at the retail sales by refiner, the volume has essentially gone to zero, apparently avgas is not being sold by the refiner any longer. I'm guessing that is why you saw the sales/deliveries by prime supplier move up, that was taking the place of the retail sales by refiner.

If you look at the product supplied chart, you'll see that the trend line is down, particularly over the last few years, where we saw declines of 8% - 9%. It looks like 2014's consumption will be off about 5% from 2013, so the decline has slowed. No doubt that some of this was commercial operator moving to turbine equipment, which I think has just about have to be done, as there aren't many working piston aircraft still in service. Look at FlightAware at various times of the day and week, you just don't see that many piston aircraft of the type that a commercial operator would use. Most of the time the most numerous type is either the Cirrus SR22 during the week, and 172s and 182s on the weekend.

I look at the trend line, and if I were an oil company executive and one of my product managers came by and suggested that we develop an unleaded avgas, I think I'd tell him no. Product supplied this year will be probably around 4.2 million barrels in 2014, and if the trend continues, will be in the low 3 million barrels per year by the end of the decade. By comparison, product supplied for jet fuel is staying steady at around 500 million barrels per year. At some point the volume isn't worth it to a major oil producer, and it becomes a boutique product and will be priced accordingly.

I've said a number of times on this board that I think it makes sense to move towards a dual fuel solution, mogas for the under 250 hp crowd, and some sort of jet fueled compression ignition engine for the higher horsepower folks, and a number of you have taken me to task for this. It's not that I want to see all the higher powered legacy aircraft grounded, it's that I think that is what is going to happen whether we like it or not. Cape Air, who operates one of the largest fleets of piston aircraft anywhere, is looking at Tecnam's P2012 as its replacement for its ancient Cessna fleet. The P2012 is powered by Lycoming's TEO-540, which is mogas capable.
 
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I asked our local Exxon distributor (not a gas station, our big area local distributor) where I buy thousands of gallons of farm diesel and all my oil and aircraft oil, I asked them if they could get it.

Nope. :sad:
Since you are across the Brazos river, you might try some of the local stations as they don't have to do the formulated blends like East of the Brazos. There is a test. see youtube where you add some water and see if it combines with the alkeehol and makes a mess in a glass jar. The other way is to take old gas line and soak it in the gas and see if it swells. I think Valero is known to have the straight stuff. Also the marina on Lake Sommerville may
 
I'm really surprised you TX boys have a hard time finding pure gas :dunno:

It's quite abundant north of the Red River. Then again, I shouldn't be surprised since Oklahoma is superior to Texas in many ways ;)


I'm thinking I should start a pure gasoline trucking outfit and do my part to spread freedom across the land.

:thumbsup: They say it's windy in Oklahoma because Texas sucks and Kansas blows! I know of at least 3 stations within 10 miles of my house that sell E0, no problem getting it around here. I only use it in the boat and lawn equipment though unless the price delta between E10 and E0 gets within about $.30/gal or so to make it worth it.
 
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This is a real no-brainer. Folks aren't flying the way they used to. It isn't legions of experimentals burning mogas. Most of those spend more time begin tinkered with than flying, I think. Heck, if I want to buy mogas sans booze I have to go to a marina. That's open if I could get my airplane STC'd to burn the stuff which I can't.
 
The big decline in Avgas though is the disappearance of the bigger piston twins in commercial service. It has little to do with GA. I bet the decline overall is maybe 10% GA induced.
 
For those who are wondering where to get ethanol-free gas, here's a site which shows gas stations which sell it. It looks like there are a quite a few places in TX.

http://pure-gas.org/index.jsp?stateprov=TX

But I don't think the switch to mogas has much effect on the sales of 100LL. I think a bigger factor is that many who were flying large pistons have switched to small turbines. Look at that historical clip from England that someone posted. Even if many people switch to mogas the quantity of fuel they use, or were using, is not that much.
 
:thumbsup: They say it's windy in Oklahoma because Texas sucks and Kansas blows! I know of at least 3 stations within 10 miles of my house that sell E0, no problem getting it around here. I only use it in the boat and lawn equipment though unless the price delta between E10 and E0 gets within about $.30/gal or so to make it worth it.






There's a market for more Mogas in OK because 99.9% of the folks there are so damn broke. :yesnod::lol:

But seriously, it is possible that if someone could get Mogas into 11R, it should sell very briskly with all the E/AB's and planes that can use it. I know I would switch mainly for no other reason than because the skywagon has the STC for it. Aircraft operations per day don't seem to matter, because some very small airports have it. Only transportable availability seems to matter.

I've asked the FBO why, and he cited mainly costs along with availability. After the cost of the equipment (which is more like North of $1MM), it's sketchy getting it. I'm guessing the oil company on the field has some say-so in the matter. The big question I guess is, who's going to pay to set it up and guarantee delivery? And insure it? :dunno:
 
For those who are wondering where to get ethanol-free gas, here's a site which shows gas stations which sell it. It looks like there are a quite a few places in TX.

http://pure-gas.org/index.jsp?stateprov=TX

But I don't think the switch to mogas has much effect on the sales of 100LL. I think a bigger factor is that many who were flying large pistons have switched to small turbines. Look at that historical clip from England that someone posted. Even if many people switch to mogas the quantity of fuel they use, or were using, is not that much.

Yep, Navajos, Beech 18s, 421s and the like have been replaced with Caravans and King Airs, as well as TBMs, PC-12s.
 
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