[Jack Hydrazine]

What I find interesting for the past week and a half is oil prices have declined while gasoline prices have jumped.

GASOLINE PRICES:


OIL PRICES:

[thackney]

She says the problem is not the price of crude oil, which is holding steady at about $49 per barrel. The problem is at the refinery.

“In the industry we call this a first quarter climb. Every year around this time, nationally prices go up because we switch over to summer blend gas,” Mac explains. “Summer fuel gasoline is actually more expensive to produce.”

Refineries go through a maintenance cycle during the switch over. That means production is lower.

An explosion at the Exxon Mobil refinery in Torrance, California, last week made things worse and a strike by steelworkers at 12 refineries across the country is impacting 20 percent of oil production.

Nationwide, gas prices had been dropping since April but have now gone up for 32 straight days.

And if you needed one more reason to hate this wicked winter, it’s also costing you money. Extreme cold in the Northeast has slowed production at three refineries that account for more than two-thirds of East Coast oil output.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-are-gas-prices-going-up-again/

[thackney]

a strike by steelworkers at 12 refineries across the country is impacting 20 percent of oil production.

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I need to clarify that quote. First as we know, it has nothing to do with oil production, but gasoline/diesel/etc refined products productions.

Secondly, only one of the refineries are shut down, one in California, making CA’s pricing even worse. But at most (all?) the other refineries operating with non-union engineers, managers, contractors, etc, the production is scaled back and not running full out.