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I'm not surprised prices went up (although I didn't figure this much). I am surprised people paniced and stations are out. Alabama Gov. gave the same speech about gouging. Told people flat out if you do it you're going to jail.
sigpic WANTED: Boxed, Carded and Kresge Carded WGSH
Like Ramsey said, here in KY it's around $3.95-$3.99. Early last week it was down to $3.52 in my area. Early Friday morning local news outlets said gas was going to go up at least a dollar, with some stations already going up to $4.69. That never happened here, but it did jump from $3.75 (it had already risen during the course of the week) to $3.99. Friday night several stations were closed, and by end of night all were out of 87 octane.
oddly enough, this is the lowest it's been in months..well it was about 2 or so weeks ago....it was around 330 a gallon or so..now it's back up to 355 or so..but still a lot cheaper than it's been....
Filled up last Thursday at 3.74 in the Chicago northern suburbs. Today it was at 4.35.
I usually don't fill up, but I was anticipating going on a trip. I'll usually buy only 5 or 6 gallons at a time. By not adding the extra weight to your car in the form of a full tank, you can save on your gas mileage. In some cases, I was saving almost 10%. Of course, you have to fill up more often, but since I only put about 50 miles on my car every week, it doesn't affect me too much.
And that's exactly what it is. Speculation. They raise the price before anything actually happens. It's ridiculous. A family member has owned a small gas station for well over 30 years. It was his fathers before that. The usual way of paying for a drop off is a revolving line of credit. They drop it, you pay for it in x amount of days, you sell it, and then it starts all over. A few weeks ago the price went above his normal credit limit for a normal amount and because so many stations are defaulting because the price fluctuations are so great, that what you pay per gallon this week may be more than the actual selling price next week they wouldn't increase his limit, even though he hasn't had any payment issues ever. If he wanted a filled tank he needed to wait for the truck to get there and have a bank check or cash waiting for the difference. Many smaller stations are caught with gas they paid more for than what the current selling price in the area is. They are forced to sell at a loss if they want to compete. Larger stations turnover a fill quicker so they're not as affected. All caused because incorrect speculation makes the prices swing higher or lower in drastic amounts rather than the normal pace of fluctuation. It's simply insane.
Just checked the market and oil is down to $91.0 a barrel and dropping
Exactly! Nothing happened to the oil production so the speculation that raised the price 40 cents to $1.00 in the last couple of days was complete crap. We didn't see any storm effects here in the NorthEast and we saw a 20 cent swing in 12 hours. Any station that filled up at the higher price in the last couple of days is screwed if they can't sell it all in the next 24 hours because everyone will be slashing their prices after seeing the crude oil prices drop. They'll lose money if they don't sell out.
There is a supply problem. 25% of the nation's oil refineries were shut down due to the hurricane and although no major damage, it will take a few weeks to get them back up.
We have a local chain here called Sheetz which is completely out of gas because they rely 100% on the pipeline that was shut down.
With oil at $90 a barrel and the refineries running at full steam, gas prices would be around $3.00 a gallon. This is what we'll see in the next month if oil prices stay down.
"The farther we go, the more the ultimate explanation recedes from us, and all we have left is faith."
~Vaclav Hlavaty
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