Oil prices, price at the pump

Shocked (SHOCKED!) that local news broadcast opened with pertinent piece that posits: With oil prices dropping, why aren't seeing correlating prices at gas pumps? Of course, they did no real reporting, just letting people bitch on camera, but they did insert a few interesting points:

• The last time oil was going at the current rate (Sept. 2010), gas was $2.68 locally. Today, it's nearly a dollar more.
• When oil prices rose sharply (and they pointed out several dates), gas prices rose accordingly within a day. Oil's been dropping for more than a week, and gas prices have only dropped five cents locally.

You may pick up torches on the right, pitchforks on the left. Let's keep it orderly, now.

 

Must be Bush's fault with his ties to oil cronies.

 

They're all bastards.

 

Old story . . . as one news report aptly put it, "gas prices go up like a rocket, and down like a feather".

It's horseshit, and the broad industry deserves the abuse it's getting in this area, but it's not as if this is anything new.

 

Gas prices in my neighborhood have gone down 20 cents in the past couple weeks.

 

I'm sure it will be another year of record profits for the oil companies.

 

They'd go down a hella lot faster if this was an election year.

 

No surprise. The oil companies really need tax breaks, don't they?

 

They sure do. Last year, a couple oil CEOs damn nearly defaulted on their vacation mansions in Tahiti and Tonga.

 

I read this thread last night and thought, yeah, the Shell station at the corner has been at $3.85 for regular for several weeks. Drove home past the Shell station on the way home and it was $3.75.

 

I read something that initially I didn't believe that said that gas prices usually go down on Tuesday or Wednesday to lure the credit card customers in. Then, they bump prices back up in time for Friday, when people get paid.

I didn't believe it and then it happened two weeks in a row...

 

I thought gas stations were trying to dissuade people from using cards to pay for gas because the fees were such that they were making less than a penny/gallon profit on CC gas transactions. Some places around here have gone back to charging five cents a gallon more on card purchases. Problem is, everyone is used to using plastic (and you can't fill up your tank with a single bill unless it's a 50 or 100).

Notice also that you don't see Super Saturday/Thrifty Thursday/Manic-Depressive Episoides Monday promotions that much anymore. They probably don't have the margin to cut five cents from the posted price even temporarily.