Dutch blogger George Maschke reminds us that although our gas prices may seem high here in North America (it’s about CDN$1.23 / litre in Accordion City) — high enough that Republican presidential candidate John McCain has suggested a gas tax holiday — they’d be considered a king-sized bargain in the Netherlands. He took this photo of the price sign at his neighbourhood gas station in The Hague on Saturday, May 10th; note that they’re in Euro per litre:
George did a little math and converted the Dutch prices so that they’d be expressed in U.S. dollars per gallon; I simply did the Euro-to-Canadian dollar conversions to get the prices in terms of Canadian dollars per litre. The results of our calculations appear in the table below:
| Gasoline grade | Dutch price | Dutch price in Canadian dollars per litre | Dutch price in American dollars per gallon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular | €1.559 / litre | CDN$2.43 / litre | US$9.14 / gallon |
| Premium | €1.673 / litre | CDN$2.60 / litre | US$9.81 / gallon |
| Diesel | €1.359 / litre | CDN$2.11 / litre | US$7.96 / gallon |
No wonder there’s such a strong bicycle culture in the Netherlands! (Yes, their urban geography helps too.)
Keep these Dutch prices in mind should the predictions of gas hitting CDN$1.50 per litre this summer come true.
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personally, I'll be shocked if gas prices DON'T hit $1.50 this summer.
shocked, not pleased.
It's not only in Dutch prices ! It's average European prices...
Just cam back from Glasgow where in early May 08, the gas is 1.25 pounds Sterling per litre. That's $2.50 to us Canucks. Chew on that.
If we paid for the subsidy given to the oil companies at the pump the cost of gas in the U.S. would be $10 per gallon. This is the actual cost to us not the $4.40 per gallon seen on the pump.
These prices are nothing new to Europeans which is why they have resorted to using other types of fuel that we should equally be using. This is not or should not be rocket science