World's Most Expensive Gas Station' Cost Taxpayers $43M

a reply to: PraetorianAZ

wait a minute, according to some here on ATS, I thought only poor black people on welfare was a waste of money.

Off the cuff, this seems outrageous. My outrage by this, however, is tempered by certain questions I have regarding the accounting. Were things like man-hours spent by patrolling servicemen and women billed to this project? All their support costs billed to the same project? You can make "cost" add up quick when you start looking at itemized projects.

Was it TFBSO's goal to construct the station minimizing costs, or to pump money into the local economy creating jobs for locals to incentivize them from turning to insurgency in their spare time? Like I could repave two intersections and the mile between them overnight given the Army Corps of Engineers and a green light. It's not rocket science, but for some reason in cities across the world resurfacing takes four months in several phases and ends up costing a horrendous amount of money in labour, etc. That's because officials view these publci works projects as opportunities to resurface (for example) and also pump money into the local economy instead of mainly just constructing x,y,z.

I'm not in a position to say what TFBSO's goal was, or who gave them the goal, or the conditions on site that would let me lean one way or the other as to whether it was wise. But that's a lot more nuanced than you can get in a two page online article, and won't generate the same number of clicks

That service still exists at FasGas, they still have a pump jocky who will fill you up to your desired amount and take your money to the register.
I don't know if it's offered at FasGas station everywhere but they do it where I live.

For 43 million i want more then a windshield wash I want a charcuterie board with fine cheese meats and fruit delivered and perhaps a blow job.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

hey it costs alot of money to custom order those toyota pickups fitted with machine guns and rocket launchers for ISIS!!

wonder how many gas stations all together they built in afghanistan??

So when it starts showing a profit...around 2060 are we going to get the lion's share? Or is this just another bendover for the taxpayer?

originally posted by: WeRpeons
a reply to: PraetorianAZ

Our government can waste millions of dollars on things like this and not bat an eye. Yet a program like Social Security and Medicare in which millions of elderly people rely on is being threatened.

It's not government, they don't build anything they just sign the check. It's the independent contractors that figure out what to charge. And that's precisely the way most of the country wants it. To flip things around, do you want the government to step into the business of an independent contractor and start dictating to the people doing the work exactly how to do the work, and take the responsibility of that work in order to make sure it's done properly?

Most of these projects work on a concept called necessary profit. Essentially what they do is they bid and whoever puts in the lowest bid gets the job. However they are then able to inflate costs in various ways, perhaps the area isn't completely safe so all of the goods need security convoys, or they need to import food and water, sometimes that hammer costs $30,000 because you had to fly it over in a military convoy complete with fighter escort, then put it in a fleet of tanks and drive them to the construction site. Once all is said and done, your costs are much higher. But if costs are above the bid the company can't stay in business, so instead what the government does is they take the final cost of the project and add on x% as your profit margin.

This creates a system where the contractors can stay in business, but it also creates a system where the path to the most profit is to waste the most money. If your necessary profit is 10%, then if you find a way to waste $100 you're rewarded with $10. This also happens to be why it was so expensive to rebuild Iraq.

originally posted by: MotherMayEye
It sounds to me like there is zero fear of any oversight. And why should they fear it? There is no oversight. Democrats and republicans will never offer us a candidate that runs on a platform of government spending oversight reform.

Do you know why they don't do that? Oversight to make sure money is being spent properly is called government intrusion. It's big brother stepping into your business and telling you how to run things. That's an extremely popular notion in the US. Unfortunately we can't have things both ways.

originally posted by: jamespond
a reply to: Nicorette

Great post! I'd just read the story on vice myself and was going to post about Central Asian Engineering, but you beat me to it. Although I would add, don't let the name Central Asian Engineering confuse you too much, I'd bet without any doubt there is a privately owned American company behind this somewhere.

Thanks. And it would not surprise me at all if some of the money officially listed as spent on a gas station, but "unofficially" went to bribe warlords, secretly ended up in American pockets. It's easier to take from the government if there's no paper trail and your actions are covered up by "national security."

The Sheberghan natural gas station ribbon-cutting ceremony:






Source: Afghanistan's U.S. Embassy Facebook page.

a reply to: PraetorianAZ

Trace the contractor who built it, probably a dummy corp.

This is embezzlement at its finest.

a reply to: PraetorianAZ

Why do Americans refer to petroleum as gas it is not a gas.