My guess is that we in the US may be paying a bit more for the product itself than the people on the left bank, because our government is pretty much in the hands of big oil. ~ Ted R.

Currently, in London, the price of a gallon (US) of gasoline (petrol, we would say) has reached $5.60 or thereabouts. Just over 75% of that is tax, so we on the left bank are paying $1.40 for the petrol which has to cover all the refining and distribution costs and profit before you get back to the actual cost of a barrel of oil. I don’t know what the US tax rate is on gasoline so I don’t know how that compares. Any offers?

Of course, as AnnaS’s charts show, from that barrel of oil there are various other fractions cracked off for uses many and varied, a lot of which pay better per volume than gasoline. But that’s a whole other story.