The cost of a barrel of oil dropped a dollar on the market this morning and the price of a gallon of gasoline then rose several cents.

Go figure.

Have your broker buy petroleum options, it’ll take the sting out of it.

If a refinery decreases output of finished gasoline, that would tend to raise gasoline prices at the pump and slump demand (and lower prices) of crude.

So, not as illogical as it sounds?

New fuel taxes from the government just hit.

The OP is in PADD 5 (CA, AZ, NV, OR, WA) and here is what the March 6th EIA data shows for PADD 5:

Gasoline inventories have dropped 10% since 4Q22

Weekly gasoline price went up 9.1 cents, but it's down 43.6 cents from this time last year

Refinery peak capacity is stable since April '22, but utilization is down ~12% since Thanksgiving. Peak gasoline demand season is summer so this time of year is peak turnaround (i.e. major planned maintenance) season for refineries.

Arizona has zero refineries. All gasoline comes from either Texas or California.

Looking at a single data point on crude oil price versus gasoline price is too narrow of a timeline to determine a trend. Here is 6 months for crude oil vs US gasoline vs Los Angeles Gasoline vs Phoenix Gasoline:


Trends from 6 months of data:

US gasoline prices are moving somewhat consistently with crude oil prices

Los Angeles (much of Arizona's gasoline comes from Los Angeles) gasoline prices is moving closer to crude oil price than Phoenix's.

I didn't screen capture the trend for Tucson, but it's moving much closer to national gasoline prices.

Went up to $3.49 from $3.29 here in the Yoop first of the week.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
If a refinery decreases output of finished gasoline, that would tend to raise gasoline prices at the pump and slump demand (and lower prices) of crude.

So, not as illogical as it sounds?

Yet, in the past 40 years, gas stations have never run out of all of the grades of gasoline here, unless a hurricane is coming and the trucks can't keep up with the demand.........and then the gas stations have gas again the next day......the pricing is all BS.......it goes up on ANY news at all immediately.......then takes a month to start dropping, if oil has dropped.

It takes a LOT to make the gas prices to go down. Because who wants to get LESS money? As you saw, the fact that it MAY go down is enough to drive it UP. It means "we need to charge more now, to make up for what we won't get then!"


On the other hand, it takes almost nothing to make the gas prices go up. Any excuse will do. Heck, someone in the automotive isle at Walmart spills a quart of oil, that's reason enough to raise the gas prices.