Subject: Speaking of wood shavings....
Name:
ludi Date: 11/6/2008 8:47:41 PM (GMT-7)
IP Address: 65.101.253.192 In Reply to: Re: over posted by
MS Message:
...the oil companies have very little control over the pump price. As I've read it, most of the garbage in that realm comes from:
1. Refinery NIMBY that forces existing infrastructure to run near capacity and makes any routine maintenance or unnexpected breakdowns be unnecessarily disruptive to the market;
2. Per-state (sometimes even per-city) anti-pollution blending regulations that create artificial surplus/scarcity pockets if the refiners' esimtates are even slightly wrong on what each region's demand curve is going to look like this week, with force-of-law preventing the shipping of the surplus into the scarcer regions to balance things back out;
3. The industry oddity of having to sell speculatively at the pump -- the sales from this week's reservoir tank must be capable of buying a refill of the reservoir tank at whatever gas is expected to cost next week;
4. The fact that (3) is somewhat driven by the general mood in oil futures, and oil futures are traded by the same short-sighted people that made the Dow whipsaw +/-500 points just in the last week.
But, if you really need some sort of boogeyman, don't let me stop you.
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