Gas is creeping up again.....

Just paid $3.99/gal near Orlando Int'l Airport. The gas station is the nearest one to the airport and didn't post any signs advertising its prices. (Is that even legal?)

Another customer next to me was also shocked when he saw the price at the pump and asked me if I was seeing the same. Yep!

 

There is nothing forcing you to buy from that particular station. They can charge as much as they want.

Ever been to Death Valley? This was taken last summer.

 

It tends to go up every spring and summer.

 

The question was not whether or not the price was illegal, it was whether they were allowed to operate without posted prices (you know, like the healthcare industry. ) This sort of deceptive practice is what one expects in a second or third world country, not the U.S.

 

Yes, you can go back 6 years on gasbuddy.com The upward slopes usually happen between Jan and May. But last year it kept going until July.

 

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I expect this sort of thing most of the time.

Actually, I think this is common practice for stations that are close to airports. They are counting on you being in a hurry and not having time / knowing the local area.

 

They're probably in cahoots with the car rental agencies, since you need to return the car with a full tank.

 

Diesel takes less effort to refine than Gasoline, yet its more expensive?

They simply try to control supply as there is no place to put it all now.
I just took a cruise out of the Gulf of Mexico and saw numerous tankers anchored far out at sea just waiting till prices rise.

THey have tons or oil... they always have, they just want to keep the price as high as the market will bear.

Its a delicate balancing act.
If they raise prices too high, demand will drop and cause prices to drop.
If they lower prices too much, demand will increase and they have to work more for less money.

They would rather work "less" for more money... its really all about money.

They will be the chief opponents to alternative energy as they have tons of oil and don't want it to suddenly not be in demand.

Its like sitting on a mountain of Gold, and all of a sudden, no one wants gold.

If they were smart, they would sell as much as they could before we don't want it anymore!... then take all thier money and join the club and invest it in alternative energy engines to make more power.

But why sell eggs from the Golden Goose when you can just keep the Goose for yourself?


Always remember the Golden Rule:
He that has the Gold, makes the rules!

 

The stations just changed last night. Rose 10 cents over night to $2.59. Outskirts of Chicago, so I can just imagine what it is in the city with their taxes.

 

The fun thing is watch the news.. if they say crude oil went up today, you will see an immediate increase at the pumps as they sell you the gas in their tanks in the ground that cost them less. "pure profit".

But then when crude goes down, they drag their feet for a week or two and keep the prices up while they pay less until someone finally drops their price and they have to drop it too.. again "pure profit"

Many say "whats a few cents?"

But most gas stations sell serious amounts of gas every month.... 750000 gallons X 5 cents.... humm! 37,500.00 ... not bad for 5 cent difference in what it cost verses what you can sell it for!.. and thats just the markup!

 

Here it goes up pretty much every Wednesday. It's been a sawtooth working it's way up lately. Today it was 93.5 cents per litre (canadian cents).

I saw deisel cheaper today, which is odd. BTW, maybe it's cheaper to refine, but it's energy density and carbon density is higher, I believe.

 

From what I have read, most gas stations (not the gougers) make little profit on the gas they sell, and they rely mainly on what is sold in their mini-marts.

 

I know thats the story we hear but think about it and just do the math.
You would be astonished at home many gallons they sell in a month.
When you see prices fluctuate 5 and 10 cents in a few days... and it drops very slowly but rises instantly on news.... there is allot of room for profit in those flux times which seem to happen almost constantly.

Like the stock market, the money is not made when the market stays steady and moves slowly, its the ups and downs is where it gets milked both directions.

 

Effort in refining would be based on several measures, including desulfurization and capital investment. Diesel does not appear to be "less effort" on a cost/gallon basis from what I can tell, but I don't have the comparitive cost figures. Instead I looked up some EIA figures for percent refining cost of diesel and gasoline and took the ratio of them to the percent crude oil cost of the product. The ratio was higher for diesel. Plus diesel has a higher energy density, so it should cost more all else being equal.

False, unless the price change is extreme. We demonstrated quite definitively over the past several years that energy prices and gasoline price could increase several fold with only minor declines in demand. It has been demonstrated again on the way back down.

The inelasticity is textbook and well known.

They aren't setting the price, customer demand is. This was proven when oil prices shot through the roof and refiners were having trouble passing on the increase. They were losing money, not working more for less. They also lost money on the way back down. If they could set the price it would have been a lot higher than what it was.

Exploration & production are far different than refining. Many confuse this into a contorted knot. Refining is a middleman that has to pay for the crude and hope to profit off of the final product. So either talk about gasoline/diesel, or about crude oil, but don't treat them as interchangeable terms, because they are not. Production is akin to printing money as long as the price is above your production cost.

And later you go into even more tortured messes by adding in the gas stations which have extremely thin margins. It's grasping.

Yes, they all want to make some profit, but price is really in the hands of consumers. In the U.S. we have such a small tax rate on fuel that there is little stability in pricing. Doing so encourages us to waste a lot of gasoline, diesel, and energy in general, but it has been the consumer/voter's choice. If we were paying even a fraction of the cradle-to-grave cost then prices would be much higher, and much more stable. Americans think they have a Constitutional & God given right to cheap energy. That is leading to a lot of irrational decisions and fingerpointing when the real problem is that the average U.S. citizen is unwilling to pay for the long term cost of his/her decisions.

 

They don't have to be "in cahoots", they just are aware of the car rental policies and set their price accordingly. Its just capitalism. :madgrin:

 

I guess if I wasn't old enough to remember how much cheaper Diesel was than Gas I wouldn't be so contrary to some of their excuses.
True, desulfurization drives up the price, but I remember when we all started going to diesel in our cars and personal trucks to try and run cheaper is when they freaked and went up on the diesel price to thwart that effort to be more efficient.

Then it was propane.. was supposed to be our salvation.... clean pure energy for cheap cheap cheap... they freaked again and raised the price.

The bottom line is they are setting on volumes of oil and gas and want there to remain a viable market for it as long as possible so they can sell thier commodity.

We then went to ethenol... the price got so high it became more expensive than just plain gas.

Until we can tap the resourses ourselves, they have us by the balls.

As long as we are dependent upon someone having to process it, refine it, compress it, store and transport it, they have us because they can control the market.

We have the present ability to release solar panels at 1/20th the cost.. but they are stopping that the best the can too... we have hydrogen, etc etc....

I remember the oil crisis of the 80's.. we were out of oil, but I knew people in the bus and you could go to galveston and see the tankers dissappear into the distance in a row because there was no place to store it as we were full at Texas City.

You just recently heard last year how the Chinese are using up all the oil and we don't have enough for demand, in retrospect you see that was hogwash as now there is a glut because when they drove the prices up, and it then became profitable to pull resources out of the ground, to uncap wells and the false high prices are forced to plummet as there is such a glut of oil.

I live in Texas and last year there was still 40000 men they were trying to hire into the oil field. Now thats dried up as the price of oil fell, its better to cap off and store till prices go back up.

The speculators drive the price up based on fear and lies... then the price fell when they were stiffled by the government because of fears of a global economic meltdown.

Now that the economy is trying to stand up again on its own two feet with the help of massive amounts of debt, the speculators are at it again..... "we think 50.oo a barrell is a fair price".. when it gets to 50, they now think 70.00 is a fair price..... it all a big joke and we are the poor suckers.

Its all a bunch of lies controlled by greed, power, deception and corruption.
Did i Leave anything out?

Anybody that believes anything different is naive.

Just my opinion mind you!

 

The public is leery about gas prices. Most people don't know about oil futures speculation, and what caused the gas price spike last summer. When the stock market went down, the speculators cashed out of oil, too. Now that cash is flowing into the stock market again, don't be surprised if the speculators push gas prices up again.

I hope the government has done something about this, because the economy cannot
tolerate another round of $4 gas.

 

LET'S roll the dice and make our future predictions.

Since the market (real estate) has made an interesting upturn, i say gas will be $3.50+ by the end of summer.

 

Amen, but I fear they are all in bed with each other having a wonder orgy longing again for the days of Lamborghini bonuses and parties and caviar.

I think they will simply keep and eye on them for a while reminding them that they will get thier hand slapped if they get so greedy that they risk the whole economy again... meanwhile.. whatever the market will bear!...

Problem is "the market" is artificially propped up with loans right now.

Using loans to get out of a hole is one thing, but using them to feed the fat wolves again is quite another.

There is "still" no leadership in washington other than the motto... "don't sink the ship, or we all go down and the party is over again"

So they will load it down as far as it will tolerate.