Annual Gasoline Price Update

The price of 92 octane gasoline - that's the regular stuff for Toyotas, Kias and Chevrolets - has now risen to 2.60 EGP per liter.  That is the equivalent of about $1.26 per gallon - not too far away from Minnesota prices when we left home.

For the local Cairo driver, the price has risen from 1.85 to 2.60 over the last two years.  Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar has gone from buying 6.96 Egyptian Pounds to 7.84 EGP at official exchange rates.

Of course, everyone here figures the exchange rate at 10 EGP to the dollar.  That is what the word on the street is for the black market rate.  Except, they say, no one is getting it because the government cracked down on all the black market currency manipulation and put ten big traders in jail.  This is classic Cairo rumor-mongering!  But if someone would give you the black market rate, it would be ten.

And here is the obligatory pump picture for the post.  This was taken at a Total station near the Cairo-Alexandria Road toll-plaza.  What a nice clean modern station and pump. So modern and clean that when Linda returned from using the inside facilities she was waxing eloquent about its modernity.


Here are pictures from a more typical Mobil station near the Citadel.  I hate the modern digital camera viewfinder where you can't see the image in the sunlight and have no idea what the picture looks like until you are back in the shade.