Is it just me, or are we getting the butt end of the stick on the price of gasoline. Without giving up my real age, I remember when my Father would fill the tank on the old Chevy at twenty-five cents a gallon. Now I understand that inflation and other various financial factors are built into the median price of commodities in the world today, but damn, according to everything I’ve read, the oil companies haven’t shown a loss in a decade. No doubt, since they change the price of gasoline every time the price of oil jumps. Did you ever hear of them lowering the price when the price of oil goes down? No.
     I offer the following illustration as a case in point: let’s say on Tuesday, the price of a barrel of oil rises from seventy-five dollars a barrel to eighty dollars a barrel. Predictably, on Wednesday the price at the pump will rise from three dollars a gallon to three dollars and ten cents a gallon. Now the barrel of oil that on Tuesday (try to keep up) shot up from seventy-five to eighty dollars hasn’t even been moved from the oil field to the refinery. But the oil companies have already increased the price of the gasoline at the pump, which was refined from oil purchased last year when the price of a barrel of oil was twenty dollars cheaper.   Now how do you suppose the price of gas at the pump can be affected by the price of oil still in the ground? Rationally, it can’t. However, the oil companies have developed complicated financial models that somehow apply the price of today’s barrel of oil to tomorrow’s pump price per gallon.
An accountant friend of mine looked over the formula I just gave you and still hasn’t stopped stuttering and talking in his sleep.
     Courtesy at the gas pumps is another related topic I’d like to briefly touch on. If you see all the cars in line going in one direction, why would you think that it’s okay to come into the pump area from the opposite direction? Think about it. And, once you get done filling up, it’s NOT a good idea to go shopping at the mini-mart while still parked at the gas pumps with a line into the street.
     That’s enough of that.