There are players who can increase/decrease the flow and others who try to manipulate prices in various ways, but it's such a ubiquitous, diversely-held commodity used by all humans that it's very difficult to manipulate prices in any significant way outside of supply/demand.
The Arabs and Iranians can't really control oil - or they would. Neither can the Americans - North or South.
"Rigged" is actually why I stay out of stocks and why I'm in oil
I am going by the current retail price.
The price in may area has spiked up since mid January.
Maybe it something at the refinery, changing to summer gas???
Maybe its Biden and All out Crazy with her green plan.
Maybe its the expected inflation
Maybe the price will come down to President Trump levels
Let’s see what happens
Oh, and commuters are now working from home, driving down demand.
Same with vacation driven demand.
One of my conspiracy theories:
Collectively, the automobile gas tank is a huge WIP inventory of gas.
Refineries run at a constant rate.
When the price goes up, folks do not fill up
When the price goes down, people pull over and fill up
Price competition and supply line management drive local prices
Warren Buffet lost a billion dollars trying to run up the price of oil while Bush was in office.
The guy is a rich idiot
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063050681
BUSINESS
Warren Buffett regrets $10B bet on oil
Corbin Hiar, E&E News reporterPublished: Tuesday, May 5, 2020
Warren Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., this weekend lamented the $10 billion investment he pumped into Occidental Petroleum Corp. last April and said he plans to invest more money into wind and solar power.
“If you’re an [Occidental] shareholder or any shareholder in any oil-producing company, you join me in having made a mistake,” he said, referring to negative oil prices late last month that happened as a result of the oversupplied U.S. oil market and collapsing demand (Energywire, April 21).
“It was attractive at oil prices that then prevailed,” Buffett said of Berkshire’s Occidental bet. “It doesn’t work, obviously, at $20 a barrel. It certainly doesn’t work [at] minus $37 a barrel.”
The famous investor predicted that “oil production is going to go down a lot in the next few years because it does not pay to drill.”
Buffett’s comments were made in Omaha, Neb., at the conglomerate’s annual shareholder meeting. The closely watched event — a largely online affair this year due to the coronavirus pandemic — stretched nearly 4 ½ hours. Climate change never came up.