At the risk of sounding dense... someone please tell me again exactly WHY the price of gasoline is rising so sharply and quickly. (yes, I am a blonde)

-- cin (cinlooo@aol.com), February 28, 2000

Answers

http://pub3.ezboard.com/fdownstreamventurespetroleummarkets.html

Excellent that will answer your questions.

-- Spoonfed (Spoonfed@spoonfeddd.xcom), February 28, 2000.

I believe the daily OPIS Alerts can be subscribed to at www.opisnet.com. Good stuff if you want to follow what is going on. Basically, the prices if wholesale gasoline keeps going up and there is a real shortage (at least compared to previous years).

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), February 28, 2000.

It seems as though there is a multiheaded dragon at work on the oil prices.The Arab/opec people are raising the price of crude by lowering production---the old supply and demand formula.At the same time there seems to be a number of crude oil producers who are below capacity for other reasons---the strike in Venezuela for example.Also there are a number of domestic refineries which are having problems,many of those problems have been reported on this forum.Adding all these together you can see why the price of gasoline is going through the roof.Inflation throughout the economy can't be very far behind.

-- just a thought (tigerpm@netscape.com), February 28, 2000.

Ah, let's not forget the 'stupidity' of American oil companies. When they were supposedly stockpiling in advance of Y2K it seems they decided that the price of oil was too high, so they'd wait for it to come down. (Long wait, it's still going up!!)

Then, shortly after the rollover it got cold on the east coast (who could have guessed......it never gets cold in Maine in January, does it?).

This caused a 'full speed ahead' attempt to produce heating oil for those shivering people in Baastan (or is it Boston?) who were actually using the stuff to stay warm, and relying on their jobbers (with empty tanks because they were waiting for lower prices) to fill them up.

When refineries are cranking out heating oil they are not producing gasoline. We need gasoline to drive cars, especially during the summer months when mom and dad load up the rug rats and head out for parts unknown. Now, because of all of the above (OPEC, reduced refinery capacity, lack of adequate stockpiles for the winter, full scale production of heating oil when we should be producing spring and summer gas) we have a shortage of gasoline.

So, the price goes up. And the world goes round and round.

That's OK. We'll run out of oil before many who are reading this have reached the limit of their lifetime. In the meantime, things will get expensive.

-- rocky (rknolls@no.spam), February 29, 2000.

anyway...simply that 30 percent of the oil producing refineries are not producing anymore due to some computer failure... some started in january...and rest have started after their patchwork failed... but lets not call the government a liar and say that 'y2k word 'word...

-- SB Ryan G III (sbrg3@juno.com), February 29, 2000.