I live in MidAtlantic Area, Near D.C.

Local -- wholesale -- Gas just jumped 10 cents a Gal. in a week. A close friend, a Local non-brand seller, told me about this when he told me why he raised prices after a steady dropping over the last couple months (held his price to a rise of 7 cents). Anyone else notice similar jumps in their area?

JB

-- Jackson Brown (Jackson_Brown@deja.com), May 06, 2000

Answers

It might have something to do with the strike
in Norway.

This from Bloomberg.

New York, May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Gasoline fell for the first
time in more than a week on expectations that a strike in Norway
will soon be resolved, making more oil available to U.S.
refineries from the world's No. 2 exporter.

Norway's largest strike in a decade has forced Statoil AS and
Norsk Hydro ASA to stop exports of 1.03 million barrels a day, or
one-third of the country's oil output. Prices rallied 14 percent
in the previous six sessions on concern that U.S. inventories were
too low with the peak travel season just weeks away.
``The feeling is that the Norwegian strike might in fact be
settled shortly,'' said Nauman Barakat, vice president of global
energy trading at ABN Amro Inc. in New York. ``These strikes tend
to have a very short lifespan.''

Gasoline for June delivery fell 0.53 cent, or 0.6 percent, to
90.35 cents a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Even
with today's loss, gasoline gained 11 percent this week, and is up
61 percent from a year ago.

Crude oil for June delivery rose 31 cents, or 1.1 percent, to
$27.29 a barrel on the Nymex. Prices rose 6 percent this week and
are 44 percent higher than they were a year ago.

In London, Brent crude oil for June settlement recently rose
14 cents to $25.29 a barrel on the International Petroleum
Exchange.

More than 80,000 Norwegian workers walked off the job
Wednesday in the country's biggest labor conflict since 1986,
shutting factories, building sites and hotels, and halting ferries
and freight transport as well as the tugboats that maneuver oil
tankers to export terminals. Norway is second to Saudi Arabia in
oil exports.

Gasoline prices rallied in recent days on concern that U.S.
inventories may be too low with only weeks to go before the
Memorial Day weekend kicks off the peak summer travel season.

Stockpiles of the motor fuel at 202.46 million barrels are
down 7.5 percent from a year ago, according to the industry-funded
American Petroleum Institute.

Elsewhere on the Nymex, heating oil for June delivery fell
0.89 cent to 67.31 cents a gallon. Heating oil futures, up 47
percent from a year ago, have lost a third of their value since
reaching a nine-year high of $1 a gallon in January.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), May 07, 2000.