Gas Prices

[johnhurd]

the .gov's get almost DOUBLE and they can't even fix the damn bridges and potholes.

Can't or won't????

[GeorgeInNePa]

the .gov's get almost DOUBLE and they can't even fix the damn bridges and potholes.

Can't or won't????

I believe it's can't, too many pet projects and wasting the money that should be spent on the roads.

I can accept a tax on fuel being used to repair the roads. That's fine, but don't squander the money on other things then cry that there is no money to repair vital infrastructure.

[Front Man]

Down here I-29 is down to the rebar and 45 miles north of here they are building a pedestrian bridge across the Missouri River for 2-3 million$.

FM

[SiG Lady]

"Down here I-29 is down to the rebar and 45 miles north of here they are building a pedestrian bridge across the Missouri River for 2-3 million$."

Sounds like priorities in Eugene, Oregon......

[D.Hayden]

OHMYGOD...!!!! That $3.32/gal I quoted you yesterday just went up to $3.38/gal today!!!! WTF?!?!?!?!

Pretty soon it'll be too expensive to even drive to the gas station to buy the gas!!!

Siggy.. why is Oregon so high? You don't even have sales tax!

Here 87 Octane is $3.15 at the no-name-cheap-guy.

[dajarrel]

What I hate is the way gas prices change. The Liberal news network reports that crude goes up by $1.00/gal and before the day is out the price of gas at the pump is up another dime. If I must pay the increased prices, at least don't charge me on the gas that is already in the ground and paid for.

You know it doesn't work the same way when crude goes down does it?

Just my ramblings.

dj

[Steve Anderson]

yeah, profit tax is a very bad idea.

remove the incentive for excellence (or existence) and you get no excellence.

gas prices suck.

taxes are too high.

[stingerjg]

I should have bought gas yesterday when it was $2.69. Today it was $2.77.

[SiG Lady]

I'm now paying $3.60/gallon. I knew it was coming. That's the most IIRC that I've ever paid. I get the distinct vibe that it's not necessarily going to stop at $3.60......

[JD45]

If you want to try and get a jump on the local gas station go to this website right when the markets close: http://www.advfn.com/p.php?pid=commodities...CgdHzCRyg%3D%3D

Looking at crude prices,I've been trying to find a pattern for this past year. If the numbers are stable the price at the pump usually will remain the same.

You can also watch the price per barrel fall two or three dollars and the pump price won't move. I watched crude fall over seven dollars a barrel within a few days this year and local stations dropped only 2 cents.

Now, if crude goes up one dollar two days in a row, it will jump up at the pump 10-30cents. If crude increases steadily for 4 or 5 days, totaling $3.50 or more, then all hell breaks loose. $2.05 gas will all of a sudden become $2.89 gas.

Let's say crude prices fall $4.00 in the next week. Gas won't move at all. If it stays down for two weeks you may see 10-12 cent reduction in gas price. Now we are at $2.77 a gallon. Crude can fall another dollar or two, but it won't matter. Maybe one day if crude falls $12 a barrel, but not yet.

This is usually the point where you'll here something in the news about refineries, people all of a sudden driving too much, or Iran, okay maybe North Korea, but Iran for now. Gas will then go up really fast.

This is all I have so far. I'm still learning.

[SiG Lady]

Some years ago I routinely edited a newsletter page monthly on a Website for a farm supply store, and the newsletter part concerned their CFN (Commercial Fueling Network) station at the same location. The petroleum industry specialist who was my contact there would often tell me which refineries were "down" for repairs/renovations, and where oil was moving and where it wasn't. It was really interesting. There seemed to be many factors involved in the transportation of oil/fuel, and therefore its availability. But when this or that refinery "went down" (for whatever reason), then all hell usually broke loose in the way of prices.

[Chris Keen]

This topic is like the weather (to me) .................. I can't do anything about it, so I don't get too excited as to whether it will go up or down.

Of course I complain rightfully so if it goes over $2.60, and right now it is hovering at $2.99 here in Ohio.

[GeorgeInNePa]

Here's a quick thought from a gas station owner.

The price of gas is higher this year compared to the same time last year.

Our volume has picked up over last year, same time period.

Not only are people driving, they are driving more.

You do the math.

[JD45]

Crude is down around $3.00 a barrel from the high point last week. It fell over a dollar per day the past two days.

Did your local station quickly lower the price 20 cents today?

[sargenv]

Um, it was kind of weird, my local station was about the lowest in the area ($3.29) and with the drop in crude prices, they actually raised prices $.09 a gal over the last week.. though being in California that doesn't mean anything since being the reformulated stuff, if we lose a refinery to maintainance, the prices go up.. I remember when I bought my jeep a fillup was... not usually more than $20 (this was 2003) now I'm lucky for it to be under $40 and I only have a 15 gallon tank. The only good thing in all this is my daily commute is only 16 miles round trip.

Ugh..

Vince

[bulm540]

Crude is down around $3.00 a barrel from the high point last week. It fell over a dollar per day the past two days.

Did your local station quickly lower the price 20 cents today?

Nope actually it has gone up. Maybe in a day or 2

[walangkatapat]

Eight bucks a gallon here. No idea how the taxi drivers stay in business.

Ask not which greedy corporation makes 10-15% on your gas, but ask which government makes 20-25% on your gas and then disallows all new refineries

Alex

Not too amusing when the biggest crook of them all GOVERNMENT tries to make the oil companies look bad.

[Huston in Austin]

Diesel has stayed about the same here in the Austin area. Now it is the least expensive thing they pump. I won't say cheapest, ain't none of it cheap. I filled up today and it was an even $100.00.

[JD45]

Once again, crude fell .71 per barrel today. That's over $3.00 in three days.

Our local stations raised gas about .09 today !

[Jake Di Vita]

3.14 in mid-Michigan today.

[GeorgeInNePa]

Once again, crude fell .71 per barrel today. That's over $3.00 in three days.

Our local stations raised gas about .09 today !

Google is your friend...

http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto_News/...173.A12294.html

...snip

While the price of crude oil has been relatively steady in recent weeks, the price of wholesale gasoline has risen sharply, causing many to criticize the oil companies and refineries as pocketing the profits.

What started this latest price spike was a refinery fire at a facility near Dumas, Texas, in February. The refinery, a leading regional production facility, was shut down for part of February and March. AAA spokesman Elliott Eki said that this single incident brought a lasting ripple effect, especially through the Western states, as Arizona then turned to Southern California refineries to make up the difference and Southern California looked north for more supplemental supply.

Now those issues are being compounded by overlapping downtime at a refinery in Anacortes, Wash., and another in Southern California. And the region can't as easily import already-refined gasoline as the rest of the country, according to Eki, as very few foreign refineries meet California's fuel specifications. "The West Coast is isolated from the rest of the world," added Eki, both because of geography and because of California's different formulation requirements.

"Daily consumption is right now far outpacing production, and it doesn't take a genius to know what that means," said Eki, predicting that there will be little immediate relief for the West.

...snip

What would your suggestion be? Get the oil companies to build more and better refineries?

OR

TAX 'EM!

If you chose the second one, who do you think will ultimately pay a "windfall profits tax"? The oil company and it's share-holders or the customers of the oil companies (in other words, YOU)?

[Hank Ellis]

I'm probably pushing the no rebuttal clause of this forum but I'll post anyway.

Rant all you want about "excess profits". Here you will find a deaf ear.

BP in the first quarter of '07 had income of 4.66 billion on revenues of 62 billion. Or to put it another way they made roughly 7.5% profit on their revenues. Not unreasonable.

GeorgeInNePa beat me to it. The problem is not an oil shortage but a gasoline shortage. Not a single new refinery has been built in 30 years in the US and nobody wants one 'in my backyard'. Any tiny glitch in a refinery turnaround results in a disruption in the supply chain and reserve stocks being depleted. Supply goes down. Demand remains the same or goes up. Price goes up. Basic economics.

And I do have a refinery in my backyard. Well OK it's a block over and down the street. A little micro-brewer who does small batches of custom chemicals. Good neighbor. Don't even know he's there. There's two more refineries in a 5 mile radius of my home and the third largest refinery in the nation is 6 miles from my house.

You can do your part in getting prices under control. 1. Get green and reduce consumption. 2. Figure out the blocks in social attitudes and government redtape to building new refineries and get them changed to get the ball rolling in getting them built. Supply stays the same or goes up. Demand goes down. Prices goes down. Basic economics.

[raz-0]

Crude is down around $3.00 a barrel from the high point last week. It fell over a dollar per day the past two days.

Did your local station quickly lower the price 20 cents today?

Crude may be down, but distillates are up. I wondered the same thing myself, so I actually went to the bother of looking at the charts for gasoline.

People are drivign more this year, so far. For whatever reason.

On top of that you have mandated ethanol content. We are basically paying because the interest group that lobbied for that to be the legislated solution to.. well whatever.. lied about capacity and cost. (also assuming the politicians would have cared).

Bascially they said ethanol should run about a buck a gallon, intially it was going at almot 4 times that rate. Now it's in the neighborhood of $2.20 a gallon.

Then you have the refineries. Between environmental regs and government pushing ethanol and other non-oil fuels, they aren't interested in making new ones here. They have been expanding capacity, but that means some capacity has to go offline to get more capacity later. We are currently experiencing "delays" in getting capacity online, and capcity has "doubled" over last year. If you listen to the industry reps making talking head appearances on the news. The former is awfully convenient, and the latter is clearly a lie if you look at any of the numbers on gasoline production. officail numbers have us down slightly over a year ago. You want to point fingers, this is a good place to point them. While not "gougiing" pre-se, they could very well be manipulating the price by delaying additional capacity. Upside is that much like last year, they may just be ramping the rices up very rapidly to let them sit there all summer long and reap maximum profits, rather than forcing a continuing upwards trend.

[Gameplayer]

As if the rising gas prices aren't enough. Now you don't know what your getting.

http://www.wthr.com/global/Story.asp?s=6447256

[SiG Lady]

That's amazing. But not overly surprising. Jeez.

The latest from our local newsrag* this morning indicated that Oregon is paying the third-highest rate for petrol in the nation, and that Eugene is paying the second-highest rate in the state. Now you can see why I cluster my errands when toodling around town and grit my teeth the rest of the time! (Washington and California are the other two highest-priced states in the nation, according to the report. Living in the West is such fun, I swear.)

* The Register-Guard, p. A-1, by Tim Christie