by "Supreme Chancellor and Glorious Leader SaveTheIntegras" (jegoingout)
Published 09/05/2017 at 09:30
by "Supreme Chancellor and Glorious Leader SaveTheIntegras" (jegoingout)
Published 09/05/2017 at 09:30
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I fail to grasp how, despite Texas refineries shutting down due to the Hurricane, how gas has spiked so high basically overnight. Gas has gone up as much as 40-50 cents in a span of fucking hours in some places; At the local Costco gas, prices were raised 40 cents for 87 octane within a 2 hour period. I thankfully filled up the Si before Harvey hit and paid $2.65/gallon; 93 octane is now hovering above $3.60.
And while apparently NJ gets its gas from Texas via pipeline, there is zero fucking logical reason for a HUGE spike in prices like this. Fucking price gouging.........
"Nibby" (nibby68)
09/05/2017 at 09:36, STARS: 0
The local gas station (which is a complete rip off and I never go there) is $3.42/gallon + 10c more if you use card.
The one I use was $2.64? or $2.66 last week but it usually is around $2.20-2.40
Saved $18+ by filling up there
"X37.9XXS" (x379xxs)
09/05/2017 at 09:38, STARS: 0
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/law-of-supply-demand.asp
"Tripper" (tripe46)
09/05/2017 at 09:39, STARS: 2
Might be the first time ever that it cost me more than $4 to fill up the Grom haha.
"pip bip - choose Corrour" (hhgttg69)
09/05/2017 at 09:40, STARS: 1
the oil companies know how reliant people are on their cars and gouge the crap out of you and your wallet whilst they can.
"Eric @ opposite-lock.com" (theyrerolling)
09/05/2017 at 09:42, STARS: 0
I didn’t even think we got our gas from Houston here, but our prices have also spiked. It’s because all the gas stations follow each-other and they’re trying to cushion the blow if the supply prices spike.
"LongbowMkII" (longbowmkii)
09/05/2017 at 09:44, STARS: 1
Capitalism baby.
"Supreme Chancellor and Glorious Leader SaveTheIntegras" (jegoingout)
09/05/2017 at 09:45, STARS: 1
>_<, a shame I don’t have one right now
"Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo" (thetomselleck)
09/05/2017 at 09:45, STARS: 3
I picked a good year to buy a premium-fuel only vehicle.
"TheTurbochargedSquirrel" (thatsquirrel)
09/05/2017 at 09:45, STARS: 0
I have no idea if Harvey has had any impact up here in northern VT but I don’t need gas until the end of the month anyway.
"duurtlang" (duurtlang)
09/05/2017 at 09:53, STARS: 0
The price gouging is deplorable. Having said that, imho fuel is way too cheap in the US. There’s hardly any incentive to design (and buy) fuel efficient vehicles and given the state of the infrastructure I witnessed a $1 a gallon gas tax hike wouldn’t be out off line.
"Sovande" (sovande)
09/05/2017 at 09:54, STARS: 2
Your inability to grasp basic economic principles hardly constitutes a price gouging conspiracy.
"e36Jeff now drives a ZHP" (e36jeff)
09/05/2017 at 09:54, STARS: 0
The refineries shut down in Texas supply ~25% of the country’s fuel. Since Drumpf hasn’t(yet) released any gas from the federal reserve, there is nothing to pick up the slack, hence the massive price spikes.
Having said that gas in my neck of NJ is still apparently $2.99 for premium, so it’s not bothering me all that much. Guess there is some advantage to living next to a tank farm.
"Sweet Trav" (thespunbearing)
09/05/2017 at 09:54, STARS: 2
"EL_ULY" (uly)
09/05/2017 at 09:58, STARS: 0
$2.15 at my usual spot after the storm. Checked this morning after a truck made a fuel delivery....$2.09. I bet in the next couple days it’ll shoot up big time!
Search Gasbuddy in Houston.
"SaigaShooter - He's got an Impreza" (saigashooter)
09/05/2017 at 10:02, STARS: 1
On August 31st The Energy Department said it will send 500,000 barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the Phillips 66 refinery in Lake Charles, Louisiana. So it’s on the way, it does however need refining first.
"fintail" (fintail)
09/05/2017 at 10:04, STARS: 4
A virtual absence of practical public transit for a huge amount of people, combined with wilting real incomes, makes cheap fuel a necessity to keep the mirage alive. Cheap fuel will allow the drones to keep preaching about “capitalism” etc.
It’s not cheap fuel per se as much as less tax compared to some other places.
"fintail" (fintail)
09/05/2017 at 10:04, STARS: 0
Hilarious, you live in Houston and the impact is less than 2000 miles away where I am, where we don’t get fuel from Houston.
"WRXforScience" (WRXforScience)
09/05/2017 at 10:07, STARS: 3
The problem is that the gas companies conspire to gouge the consumers. The local distributors and gas stations have little control over the price they pay for gas and run on slim margins (some stations even sell gas at a loss to increase traffic in their convenience stores). Everyone in the chain is willing to quickly raise prices but only slowly lower them.
As consumers, we didn’t have a choice. If you wanted to get to work, you bought gas. However, this bullshit won’t last much longer. You can now buy electric cars that you “fill up” at home or work for less than the gas equivalent, and at a much less elastic rate.
You could even install some roof based solar panels and completely divest yourself from the system. Panels, storage and installation are a fixed, one time cost and you amortize those costs over the lifespan of the system. For most current systems the break-even time is 6-15 years and there are plenty of variables, but in most cases if you can front the cost, you’ll end up saving money eventually and you’ll save time and the hassle of the current system immediately.
Once enough people switch to electric, gas prices should stabilize (they’ll probably go up though, since gas will be more of a niche market). In 3-5 years, increased EV market share will reduce demand and depress prices. In 15-20 years EV will be so ubiquitous that they could become the norm and the ICE cars will be the strange, “old” type.
The more asinine gas prices become now, the sooner the entire gas system collapses. The reason we didn’t see $4 per gallon gas for the last 15 years was because the Energy companies have seen the writing on the wall. They’ll happily keep supply artificially high to suppress prices, rid themselves of a doomed commodity, and delay the very technological innovations that will make them irrelevant (really they started switching and diversifying in the 90's, so I’m sure they’ll be just fine).
The losers will be places like Venezuela, Russia, and the Middle East who heavily rely on oil sales to support their economy. Venezuela has already suffered the effects of the fall of oil, they were the most dependent on oil prices and look what is happening there. We are a long ways off from ending the Oil Wars, but the next series will be about the chaos from the collapse of that economic system.
"EL_ULY" (uly)
09/05/2017 at 10:08, STARS: 1
insanitary
"Tripper" (tripe46)
09/05/2017 at 10:11, STARS: 0
Chat with your boss about it yet?
"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
09/05/2017 at 10:12, STARS: 6
Four logical reasons: the first two of which are replacement cost (it’s not what the gas in the tanks cost them when they bought it, it’s what it’ll cost them to put back), and inventory control (related to replacement cost). Everybody raises costs because they anticipate that next week (or even this week) it will cost them an assload to refill, and a station with empty tanks is a station that is a black hole of fixed costs with no revenue. If anybody doesn’t raise costs as much as everybody else, then their tanks will be pillaged and they’ll have to refill closer to the disturbance and pay *even more*, with a HUGE gap between their sale price and their replacement cost. Third reason ( or reason 2, part 2): panic demand, leading to potentially empty tanks. Price goes up to stanch the bleeding to manageable. Fewer customers, similar revenue, more in the tanks so they can lower their price next week and not get “surprised” in the butt in some of the ways above. Final reason: speculation/insurance. They don’t know how much costs are going to go up and what availability will be, so they have to place bets, on limited information.
The reason it’s always based on replacement cost is that they have to choose a direction in which to get fucked. If they charge exactly and only what it cost to get the gallon they are currently serving, then they get fucked coming and going - when prices go up, their tanks get nailed and they have to pay more and more for each replacement batch trying to make it up on volume, and when prices go down, they are the guy with the high price and can’t sell, as the prices slip lower and lower... Replacement cost-based pricing keeps everybody more honest in normal circumstances.
This isn’t that hard, nor is it wildly unfair or gouging. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just a complicated arms race/game of chicken in which the stakes are potential bankruptcy. It’s very, very easy for an individual station to lose assloads of money on their gas, because the margins are not all that at the best of times.
"Supreme Chancellor and Glorious Leader SaveTheIntegras" (jegoingout)
09/05/2017 at 10:24, STARS: 1
She gets back from vacation today, so hopefully before I leave
"Supreme Chancellor and Glorious Leader SaveTheIntegras" (jegoingout)
09/05/2017 at 10:25, STARS: 1
Run on doggo power
"TheRealBicycleBuck" (therealbicyclebuck)
09/05/2017 at 10:27, STARS: 1
It’s pretty simple. The cost of the next load of fuel has to be covered by the money earned from the fuel that’s in the tanks right now. The stations already have a good idea how much the next batch is going to cost, so they have to adjust their prices accordingly. The increased prices account for decreased production due to Harvey .
“As of Tuesday, Aug. 29, about 2.33 million barrels per day (b/d) of Texas refining capacity was offline because of shutdowns connected to Tropical Storm Harvey, according to S&P Global Platts. This represents about 12.6% of U.S. refining capacity. However, with many of the refineries still in operation running at 50% or lower capacity, the true figure of affected production may actually approach 18% of total U.S. capacity.
The Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast combined represent 8.64 million of the country’s 18.557 million b/d of refining capacity.”
There’s also some price gouging going on in the market, but gasoline prices are extremely competitive so they can’t gouge a whole lot or for very long.
"JGrabowMSt" (jgrabowmst)
09/05/2017 at 10:47, STARS: 0
Bro, you drive a Honda. No complaining about gas prices. When you’ve got 24 cylinders and 13.3L of displacement in the driveway, you can complain about gas prices.
I’m holding off for another day before getting gas in the HEMIWagon, but you just live in a ritzy area. Prices by me haven’t spiked that badly.
"e36Jeff now drives a ZHP" (e36jeff)
09/05/2017 at 10:49, STARS: 0
oh, cool. I hadn’t heard that had happened yet.
"I have another burner, try to guess it!" (ihaveanotherburner)
09/05/2017 at 10:49, STARS: 1
But, but, but corporations are evil entities that makes so much money they should do everything for pratically free!
/s
"I have another burner, try to guess it!" (ihaveanotherburner)
09/05/2017 at 11:03, STARS: 0
IDK what difference that’ll make since refineries have been the bottle neck in American gas production since the 70s IIRC.
"DC3 LS, will be perpetually replacing cars until the end of time" (dc3ls-)
09/05/2017 at 11:19, STARS: 0
"SaigaShooter - He's got an Impreza" (saigashooter)
09/05/2017 at 11:56, STARS: 0
Yeah, Having crude is not the same as having refined petroleum. Better than nothing, especially if you are Phillips 66