Read this ; http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_25/b4089040017753.htm?chan=search

Thanks for the education. After reading the text that accompanies the charts, I see that Congress could/possibly/maybe affect oil and gas prices by not letting the ban expire. Doing so would possibly/maybe cause prices to rise and (he says hopefully) Congress gets the blame in an election year with no time to contain the damage to their elected posteriors.

One can only dream.

I happily stand duly corrected.

Standing high and happy with southerners has become my default setting, as Mrs Indy is of half-Appalachian stock, and my life wouldn’t be worth two cents if I ever dissed a southerner.

Cheers!

While our price of gas is tied to the cost of a bbl of oil, there are many other factors. Refining is a huge “rate determining step” (I know it is a chemistry term, but it seems to fit) and we don’t have enough refineries to process oil into gas efficiently. Also, that guy you buy gas from is the retailer, and there are many people in-between.

I have a friend that owns 2 BP stations. The morning after Katrina, he went to work and had a message from the company:
(paraphrased)
“Please do not overreact and raise prices. Let us see how this plays out. Right now our inventory looks solid and we don’t anticipate any supply problems in the near future.”
Jay, being an ethical guy left prices where they were. 6 hours later, BP raised the price of HIS gas .25/gal. Start of a 5 day trend up.

Despite what mother Pelosi says, I don’t think “Big Oil” is any more evil than “Big Grocery stores” or “Big Athletic shoe” company, I do think that every industry is driven by profit motive over all other motives. Right/wrong are part of the equation, but not necessarily top 5. Just remember, of every dollar you spend on gas, Uncle Sam takes just under FOUR TIMES the amount that the “Big Oil” nets on the transaction, then spends it on a Navy Base in Robert Byrd’s West Virginia…

Some interest charts are here, that show the direct correlation between the President’s announcement about lifting the offshore drilling ban, and the decline in the price of crude.

As we slouch our way to November, I was caught up in an interesting discussion. We have seen oil prices sink to $102 per barrel. Yet gasoline prices have yet to return to the same price per gallon when oil itself was at $102.

Kinda makes one curious if we drill and ’strike oil’ how soon gas prices will go below $2.50 per gallon.