NMO, see if you can apply for a Citi Dividend credit card, I have one, and it gives me 5% rebate on gasoline, AND groceries, AND pharmacy!!

everything else is the standard 1% back of course :p :o

 

and it's not a brand-specific card, fill up at ANY gas station, you get 5% back!

 

I beg to differ, Chevron and Shell are the only 2 national brands that have recently passed the Top Tier Gasoline classification (Conoco-Phillips and 76 also made the list but is not available everywhere). These gas companies have passed test required by several car manufacturers (GM, BMW, Toyota, Honda) to keep their cars within EPA standards.

If you like gas from CheapGasRUs gas station because "they are selling their gas quick therefore the gas should be better" then be my guest

 

Petroleum engineers don't know jack squat about gasoline. Petroleum engineers only know about getting crude oil out of the ground.

I've been watching this thread for about three days and am amazed nobody has piped in to let you guys know that all gas is the same within the same region. It all comes from the same pipeline. Shell, BP, whoever, refines the stuff and loads it into the pipeline. The fuel runs from point A to point B and then the same or a different company may unload the fuel. After unloading this company will add their own additive package and name it Techron or whatever. The only difference between brands is their additives. And many brands use the same additives since they buy them from the same supplier.

Believe it or not the different octane grades even come from the same pipeline. I bet you can't figure that one out. :D

 

Wrong for two small details. First, Chevron have their own distribution system and is not tied in with the National Gas Pipeline System. Second, it is crude oil that they all share together in the national pipeline and not refined gasoline. It's like a bank. Each oil company "deposits" crude oil at whatever port they get the tankers in, then "withdraws" it where they have their refineries. After the refineries the gasoline gets shipped via railcars or your familiar oil trucks. This means each oil company can and will have different quality gasoline when you get them at the pump. And yes, 89octane is a mix between premium and regular grades.

 

Good tip. I'll check into it. I was getting 5% back on any brand of gas before the card company decided to cut it.

 

You wanna bet? I dare you to google "gasoline pipeline"

 

babylou is right. I watched a show on discovery or tlc about it a few months back. All the companies fill their trucks from the same pipeline then put in their own mix of additives. I think these additives are part of what makes some gas better or worse for your engine than others. That and the fact that therehave been some of those hidden camera exposes revealing the cheap gas stations filling all their underground tanks with the same gas then selling it as 87-89-93, as well as the old economy 85 gas being sold as 87.

I like to stick with the a major brand from a station that does a lot of business. Most of the time I use Hess premium because it's right on the way during my 3 mile commute to work.

 

Viking, how do you never notice a difference no matter what brand, yet sometime the cheap no name gas makes the car run better? :D

 

Crap I was editing my post and deleted it somehow, Anyway, my point to all this was that it's whatever you want to be the best gas, will be the best gas. It's all subjective, and pretty much meaningless. Fact is I don't notice any difference really, unless I force myself to think one is better because I want it to be, and to justify why I paid more for it. My car simply runs great no matter what gas I put in it. Sometimes you get bad gas, and it did happen twice to me, and car did run badly. The two times it happened, was at an Exxon and a Amoco.

 

1> Chevron does have it's own pipeline network, like all Big Oil companies do. But that's not all that it uses, just like all Big Oil. In fact Chevron's owned pipelines are less than 5% of the pipeline in the US -- not even close to enough to support all its' own operations. And just because it's a Chevron-owned pipeline doesn't mean that only Chevron products run through it -- it just means that it gets paid when they do. The pipeline system in the US functions much like the rail system does.

2> If they shared just crude oil in this National Gas Pipline System then it wouldn't be called the National GAS Pipeline System, since the two things are completely different items. Such a huge misnomer wouldn't continue. And that's precisely where there really isn't a National Gas Pipeline System, it's simply the "National Pipeline System" as it makes up the pipelines of a large number of commodities. Also a pipeline isn't a "Crude Oil Pipeline" or a "Gasoline Pipeline" or a "Diesel Pipeline" -- any petroleum product pipeline can handle any or all of those products interchangeably or even simultaneously.

3> The pipeline system is used equally for both crude oil and refined products. Actually, if you want to get technical, it's slightly biased towards crude oil because the process of creating refined products isn't 100% efficient so you get slightly less out than you get in. And a small percentage of refined items are shipped from the refinery via other means, but it's a tiny percentage -- less than a couple percent. But that's nit-picking. The point is that the system is most definitely NOT for just crude oil, over 40% of pipeline capacity in the US is used for refined products, largely gasoline.

Sorry buddy, but depending on where you live, you are actually significantly more likely to be pumping Sinclair-refined gasoline or Sunoco-refined into your car at a Chevron station as you are Chevron-refined gas. Of course if you live near a Chevron refinery you're more likely to be getting Chevron-refined gas both at a Chevron and at the local Wal-Mart Supercenter. Tthere is a difference between gasolines though -- in the additives that each particular manufacturer may or may not add when the product is in their storage tanks. But there's no telling whose actual gasoline you're getting when you're at the pump.

Only a small fraction of refined gasoline is transported via rail or truck. There simply isn't enough rail-cars nor rail infrastructure out there to even come close to moving all the gasoline demanded in the nation everyday and it's FAR FAR cheaper to pipeline the gasoline than it is to ship it via rail. Gas is only shipped via rail to remote locations.

Go to a refinery and see just how few (in a relative sense) rail-cars and trucks there are going out. Most of the rail-cars going out are full of other chemical byproducts that aren't economical to pipeline due to the quantities and the trucks that depart are going to the very nearby area.

 

Sorry for the off topic here, but at least you all dont have to deal with the BS in Colorado where you can mostly only get gas at 85, 87, 91 octane, but still pay 87, 89 and 93 prices for it. Most of the places you can get 93 are small stations that are not brandname!

 

I agree with this. The fact is, you can pick your gas station that you may feel is the best gasoline and will give you peace of mind. The truth is, you have no idea what you are getting, and if what you are using is better then something else, so the differences between gasolines doesn't mean a whole lot. I guess whatever you feel your car runs better on is all that matters, and what you feel might be the best gasoline will make you happy and give you peace of mind. It''s still all just subjective opinions. It's just one huge guessing game, and in a realistic world, there is no way of knowing which gasoline is better then another. Some no name gas station may have better gasoline then your station that's tagged with a certain brand. You never know. Whatever makes you happy, is what you go on, but people should not try and argue that one brand is better then another, because you have no way of backing that up, nor if you are even getting what you think you are getting, and if it's good or not. Just find a gas station, filler up, and hope it runs well.

 

While everyone is touting the advantages of Big name vs. Small name gas, or how everything is the exact same, I'll just chip in my 2¢ and say that's not always accurate.

Here in MN, we have a law that stations within the city limits have to contain ethonal in order to reduce emisisons.

Every station in the metro area contains this 10% blend, and it sucks for your car.

However, there are a few, smaller, independant stations that fill out the paperwork in order to serve non-oxy gas. No ethonal. You might want to check the stations in your area to find out what's what before saying that everyone is the same, or that small stations will always have worse gas.

The state lists the nonoxy stations, so I know they're legit. I also notice a high percentage of high performance cars pulling into these stations to fill up. Makes at least 2 to 5 MPG difference in every car I've ever owned.

 

I stick to shell and bp out of personal experience. I used to fill up my old camery at the cheapest station I could find... usually Extra or something. I noticed my car stalled sometimes and had problem starting, I couldnt figure out why until someone suggested to me it could be the gas. I switched to shell gas and the problems never happened again. I firmly believe that Shell has better refinery technology and better quality control, so Im sticking with it whenever I can.

 

are we really having this big a discussion about oil without the politics of it.

 

IMO chev. is has much better additives then BP or anyone else, the shell V thing is a waste there is no diff between that and chev.