You guys can thank me for all that excess supply. Putting holes in the ground as quickly as I can.

There is no doubt that the retailers adjust prices for anticipated demand such as an upcoming holiday, because they know they'll be able to get the higher price without chasing off customers.

But since over 90% of all retail gas stations in the US are independantly owned or operated last time I checked, that doesn't reflect on the refiners or oil companies.
More likely it's Joe Blow gas station owner down the street trying to stick it to his neighbors so he can afford to get his kid a GI Joe with the kung foo grip.

It might be different in Cananada, don't know how it's done up there.

Oh, so you're the fracker they were talking about ;)

Get it? fracker? Fracking? never mind.

Thank you.

Ummmmm ..........cheap would be 2 bucks a gallon

We're paying $2.38/gal for crude oil and selling the gasoline for $2.70 (wholesale).

I doubt we'll ever see $2 a gallon again. I expect it to keep going the other direction.

Why haven't the commodities markets reacted to ISIS and the U.S. response? Especially considering Iraq is filled with light sweet crude. Why aren't the markets and price being manipulated like they were?

You know I bought my F250 Diesel right around the beginning of the 1st term. cost 2.14 per gallon to fuel up. I could get change back from a 100 dollar bill. now I use a credit card because I don't carry enough in my pocket to fill up truck.

How is three sumpin a gallon cheap?

Iraq is a minor player and has been subject to supply disruptions for seemingly forever, so maybe the market has already absorbed that. Maybe they think it's nothing new, or maybe the current over-suppy dampened the political unrest so much that it was a non-story.

The oil boon in North Dakota/southern Canada is most likely making up for it as there is still a glutt of oil, and that dakota oil is maknig it's way to the coast and having more of an impact. The US is becoming an oil exporter, producing more oil than we need. That's a big deal when less than a decade ago the nay-sayers were crying peak oil had hit.

But here's a kicker for anyone who follows these markets:

A year or two ago there was a large discrepency between west texas intermediate and brent crude.
As much as $18/bbl.

That spread has dropped significantly in the past few months, down to about $3.

IOW, US oil has dropped 'bout $10/bbl but european oil has dropped twice that much.
How come? Dunno zackly, still researching it.

It could possibly be a correction from when the WTI was cheaper due to the northwestern oil hitting the market several years ago but it appears to be more complex (political) than that.


Here's a partial copy of a post i made on the subject on 6/25/11, editted to keep it outa PARF:

It's funny how all the higher priced gas stations in the Chicago area are Marathon oil Co. I grew up and currently live near Findlay, Ohio (the home offices of Marathon Oil), and though the prices are no where near what Chicago has to deal with, all the Marathon gas stations in town are 5-10 cents a gallon more than the other stations.

Interesting.

My guess would be that, as usual, any pressure that can be put on US production will be seen as good for the ROW. First they got Team Obama to close all US public land exploration/access. That back-fired, when prices shot up, encouraging all sorts of new (private) finds. Now, all they can do is try to push prices down in hopes of closing the more expensive wells. --stuff the capitalist genie back in the bottle with good ol' fascist price manipulation.. (again, just a guess)

This.^^^^ Right on target.

During the last several years of escalating gas prices (the last 2 administrations), crude oil and gas prices fluctuated wildly because a butterfly farted in Zimbabwe. "Iran's got nukes". "The pirates in Somalia". "Unrest in Syria". Seriously?? This stuff has been going on for decades, but only now has affected the price of oil?

What about one of the most recent hikes, about a year or so ago? Some stupid little ancient refinery near San Francisco has an explosion, and gas prices shoot up .30 cents a gallon? Jeez, that must have been one hell of an operation. Saddam Hussein and his Scorched Earth Policy took out hundreds of wells in the Middle East, nothing happens. Some little-used refinery in California is going to have that type of impact? Puh-leeze.

And I would like someone to explain why whenever there's a precipitous rise in prices due to some temporary "crisis", why prices never go back to normal after the end of the crisis.

Oil (and gas) is just like any other marketable merchandise at Macy's or 7-11. If marketers know they can charge $10 for a Big Gulp, they'll do it all day long and twice on Sunday. Big Oil (and our administration, as well) have been attempting to push prices to $5 per gallon. The magic number (in most states, generally) seems to be $4 a gallon. Once that magic number is reached, the U.S. population parks their Hummers and start driving bicycles and Priuses, thereby causing a net profit loss for Big Oil. This is why, in the majority of states (excluding CA, HA and a couple of other high income states), gas hovers around $3.75-$3.95 per gallon. Big Oil doesn't want to shat where they eat.

Subsequently, Big Oil (probably in collusion with government) drops the price of oil/gas right after Labor Day all the way past Christmas....you can literally set your clock to it. After all, if people are spending XX% of their income on fuel, they are less likely to spend more money on holiday purchases, which affect the national economy. It happens like clockwork, every year.

The last two administrations lasted 16 years. that's not "several years".

That stupid little ancient refinery you referred to is actually a relatively big refinery, producing 10 million gal/day of finished product. That is 8% of all California refining capacity.
It's the second largest refinery on the west coast, (EDIT: it's actually the third largest, slightly behind Chevron El Segundo). guess who works at the largest?
I have no idea where you got your info on that particular refinery but I suggest you re-validate your source.
I've been inside that refinery several times over the past three decades, you?


Back to your post: There are two distinctly different subjects you are hitting on.
You mentioned supply disruptions and wildly unstable reactions, but they fit two different categories:
One is the California finished fuel market, the other is the world wide crude market. No two markets could be more different.

1) California is a closed market. The law says we can only use a special boutique fuel that is very, very hard for anyone else to make.
We in California have a limited excess refining capacity. it doesn't take much to overwhelm it.
You take away 10 million gallons in a closed market and it's going to make a difference.
Yes, we can import fuel from overseas to make up for a disruption but it takes many weeks to do that and it costs more, so the price goes up.
At the time of that Richmond refinery fire there were two other large refineries that were partially off-line so margins went through the roof and they were importing all the bbls they could.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1412180494.jpg

The world crude market is completely independent from California’s fuel market.
And up until a couple years ago was unstable because we did not have much excess supply to stabilize the prices. We had enough to go around but not much more, so a small disruption had a larger effect.
Like i said, that was in an era where people were saying we had already reached peak oil production and we were running out. Which was complete hogwash but they believed it.
Speculators gamed the system, exaggerating swings to make more oney off of futures markets.
Fast forward a few years to today where domestic crude production has increased exponentially, demand has remained steady and even dropped slightly in some regions.
That all adds up so excess supply.
That excess supply adds stability to the market and reduces the effect of supply disruptions.
See?

OPEC and specifically the Saudis are still playing games, buying crude futures from themselves and sitting on them to jack up prices, but that's another subject.

From your post i see you are impassioned on the subject but seemingly ignorant. You posted several knee-jerk emotional claims that are baseless in fact or knowledge.
I suggest you do more research, study the subject and gain some basic understanding before crying conspiracy theories etc. such as That type of rambling only makes you look foolish.

Econ 101 would be a good start with a focus on good old supply and demand.

Here on the 'wet coast' it's approx. $5.68 Cdn. per US gal.

Cheers
JB

I paid $3.34 per gallon yesterday for 100% no-corn gasoline.

I wouldn't mind the $1.59/gal I was paying in high school.

Filling a 32gal tank, once a week, in my lifted '89 ck2500. :D

$3.55/g this morning, credit price too!

I'm filling a 21 gal tank every two days. I need a new truck!

First time I ever noticed the price for a gal. of gas was with my dad at the station.
"Fill 'er up with Ethyl.", he'd say.
14.9 cents/gal.
I was 8 or 9 yrs. old.

high school drop-out spammer

Brent crude is at $93.86 /bbl today, roughly $2 over WTI.
It was at $115/bbl not that long ago.

I still have not found a reasonable explanation for the bigger drop in London given the unrest in the ME and eastern you-rope.

IMO the only ones who could manipulate supply enough to do that (and get away with it) are the saudis.

If they're over-producing and flooding the crude market and going against the pre-determined OPEC quotas you'd think other OPEC countries would speak up.
Unless ALL OPEC countries are playing the same game.

To partially answer a previous question: could OPEC manipulate the price of crude to benefit one political group over another? Yes. they could.
Are they? Dunno. It looks like they might be.
What would their motivation be to do that?
I'll need a better tin foil hat to answer that.

Cheap is relative to where you live. Hawaii has some of the highest gas prices in the nation and we'd love to see $3.30 a gallon gas. We're averaging $4.12 for 87. $4.12 would be cheap to people that live in Hong Kong or Germany. Their prices would be cheap to someone in Scandinavia...