The Oil Drum

Nope, unleaded gas opened this morning on the NYMEX up less than one cent from yesterday's close at 147.27. That will likely change in less than 30 minutes when this weeks inventory numbers come in.

Ron Patterson

VI,

I live on the other side of 70 (go cards!).  Gas was sitting at $1.98 and bumped to 2.18 yesterday afternoon.  I think anything within a $.25 change is pretty normal.  Now that's me, but it's still flat looking at the bigger picture.  It's going to gyrate around 2-2.25 in my area until Nov IMHO.

I fully expect to see $3 gas by the end of the year.  It's kind of like oil right now.  It's almost range bound.  It's just moving sideways and not really moving up or down week to week, like I believe, until Nov.  I'm not going to get into the manipulation camp, but only time will tell.

Nope, it's still $2.12 here, or was when I filled up on the way in.

Here is a chart on gas price/crude oil for the past 3 years.

Just Gas -

-C.

I have noticed that the retail prices are fluctuating quite a bit.  This leads to disparity between two stations right near each other of 15-20c or more.  I guess it depends on when they made their order for resupply or something.

You can expect to see some local variability.  

Currently gasoline is very much undervalued (nationally) compared to it's historical relationship to oil prices.  While it might be difficult to manipulate the global oil market in just the right direction at the right time to, say, win an election, it's alot easier to manipulate domestic gasoline prices (at least for awhile).  

Prior to 2004, the price of gasoline was pretty closely linked to the price of oil (by that I mean the cost of WTI settlement price averaged over the week).  In the late 1990's for a brief time, gasoline's value was much higher relative to oil prices but that was relatively short-lived.  

In 2004 (specifically July 2004) gasoline prices and oil prices "de-coupled."  Oil prices began to increase at the beginning of July while gasoline prices declined throughout the summer and into the third week of September when they finally began to climb back to price levels seen around Memorial Day of 2004.  Oil prices, however, were at levels never seen before and 33% percent higher than they had been during the Memorial Day weekend.  

After the 2004 election, oil prices and gasoline prices both fell AND began to track one another again (though with an interesting offset or undervaluing of gasoline relative to historical oil/gasoline price trends).  

In this election cycle, beginning in early 2006, there seems to be a similar (but smaller) decoupling of gasoline prices compared to oil price.  My guess is that there is only so much cost shifting that can be done for other oil-derived products before you have to raise gasoline prices.  But if you can decrease gasoline prices in the short term (masked by decreased oil prices) then you might be able to influence another election cycle.  

Based upon historical data, the national weighted-average gasoline price for the week of October 2-6 should have been $2.49/gallon.  Based upon the relationship since 2002, it should have been $2.425/gallon.  It was $2.31/gallon.  When the numbers are released this afternoon, I will update me spreadsheet.  However, the oil prices have largely stabilized while the (national) gasoline prices continue to fall.  

My guess is that the oil companies don't want to be the source of voter revenge.  But watch out for gasoline prices after the election.  

nah .. yours just got too cheap ..
We're still paying $2.50 here in CT ..

Triff ..