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To: Bob434
Crude oil prices have been slowly rising this year.

More importantly, gasoline prices are based not just on the price of oil but on the cost of refining it.

If you go back over the last 10-15 years, you'll find that there is a spike in gasoline prices right around this time almost every year. That's because refineries generally switch to their summer fuel blends in April and May. This does two things that affect gasoline prices:

1. Refineries have to shut down briefly to make the change, so gasoline supplies may be constrained even if oil supplies are not.

2. The summer blends are generally more expensive because they require additives (including ethanol) that are not used in the winter.

By the time we reach Memorial Day you're probably going to be seeing media reports about how much they expect gasoline prices to DROP during the peak driving summer months.

30 posted on 04/28/2019 12:28:36 PM PDT by Alberta's Child ("In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey.")
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To: Alberta's Child

I keep telling people there is no oil shortage, there is a refinery shortage.


33 posted on 04/28/2019 12:43:39 PM PDT by Jeff Chandler (This Space For Rant)
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To: Alberta's Child

What’s more, retail prices are not directly determined by crude prices. Each step in the process is it’s own market. So wholesale gas prices are not locked to the price of crude.


69 posted on 04/28/2019 4:00:06 PM PDT by gogeo (Liberal politics and mental instability; coincidence, correlation, or causation?)
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