Gas Price Hike: Refinery Repair A Month or More Away

[Jimaz]

Gas prices to fall after Whiting refinery restarts unit

[14 hours ago] Motorists should expect some relief at the pump because the BP Whiting Refinery has fixed a crude distillation unit that caused gas prices to spike across the Midwest when it went offline two weeks ago.

Gas prices are expected to plunge, but not as fast as they climbed when the markets learned the BP Whiting Refinery, the largest in the Midwest, would not be able to produce as much fuel as normal. The 250,000-gallon-a-day crude distillation unit is the largest of three at the refinery....

Prices could drop by up to 50 cents a gallon over the next two weeks....

Prices will fall more gradually than they rose because gas station operators will be careful about dropping retail prices to make up for the profits they lost when wholesale prices skyrocketed, [senior petroleum analyst Patrick DeHaan] said....

Gentlemen, start your engines.

[emu steve]

OK, gallon of cheap leaded regular in 1955 was $0.22 a gallon. I just filled up with more expensive unleaded regular at $2.52 a gallon [[more expensive to refine).

In 1955, I could mail a 1st class letter for three cents and now it is 40-plus cents.

Who is ripping us off, the oil sheiks or the postal unions?

Neither? I'll answer the USPS below.

Curious what someone at McDonalds made in 1955 [[isn't that about when McDonalds started???)?

Ten years later [[say 1965) someone working at Fords in Dearborn made THREE bucks an hour.

So everything [[e.g., prices, wages, etc.) probably went up say 10 times [[give or take) 50 or 60 years ago.

So if gas was 22 cents 60 years ago and $2.20 today [[or will be in the next week or so), "What's the problem?"

Relax and by Labor Day [[or the week after) $2 gas will be back. Enjoy. Fill up. Drive to a college FB game in Kalamazoo or Ypsilanti or wherever... [[MSU opens at WMU).

Inflation happens... As far as USPS [[and schools), both are LABOR INTENSIVE employers. Both utilize domestic labor and don't benefit [[like computer parts or auto parts) from dirt cheap labor in China, Mexico, etc.

Dirt cheap things like all of these PCs, HD TVs, tablets, smart phones, etc. etc. are possible because there are tremendous cost savings on foreign labor.

We don't have $400 40" HD TVs because the foreign laborers are making 20 - 30 dollars an hour. A buck or two, max?

Think back 25 or 30 years about the price of PCs. Thirty years ago folks paid, I believe, $1,500 for a bare bones IBM PC. Equivalent of say 5K in today's dollars. American made with domestic labor and as expensive as hell.