I know judging by the title of this thread it sounds like it might be about discussing futures. But, I am starting this to vent about a peeve of mine.

Like many of you I follow, and have follwed, the price of crude per barrel for over a year now. For quite some time there seemed to exist a linear correlation between the price of gasoline and the price of crude. If crude went up a dollar, gasoline would be up 10 cents (hypothetical example).

But lately, there seems to be a disproportionate increase in the price of gasoline relative to crude. If crude goes up 27 cents per barrel gasoline will increase 33 cents per gallon (actually happened). This is just one instance where I have noted, mentally, this disproportionate increase.

I'm not naive to the partial independence of gasoline from crude oil due to refinery shortages or scarce supply of ethanol. But, this seems like a substantial increase, dare I say gouge?


Another thing that irritates the hell out of me is the rate at which these prices increase. Gas will jump 30 cents a gallon in a day if oil is up a buck but no one came to change the gasoline in the ground that day. I asked a station owner about this phenomenon and he said he recieves notice from, in this case Marathon, on what to charge. But my understanding is that is the floor. He can charge higher if the owner across the street decides to as well. This is why you see the rates higher typically around highway exits. Higher demand allows these gas stations to engage in collusion.

But back to the rate of increase. What bothers me is it will jump 30 cents a gallon in a day, but may take all week for the price to come back down. Even with oil tumbling I saw stations around here charging $2.95 for 87 octane. They're real quick to jack up the price but when it comes to lowering it...eh, that can wait. These ppl are a bunch of asses.

There ought to be a proportionate relationship between the price of the futures and the price at the pump. These ppl are making a killing being lazy in changing the signs to the downside but jacking them up at the first sneeze of some sheik.

So what are prices where you live? I'm in SW Ohio and it's on average 2.82 with $2.95 being the highest and $2.76 the lowest. It should be coming down with oil tumbling since these ar the same prices of petrol when oil was above $70/barrel, but don't hold your breath waiting for these crooks to lower it.