What we really need is an investigation into why gasoline costs so darned much. I paid $3.98 this weekend for premium unleaded -- cash, please -- and I swear that's the same price I paid when oil traded at $100, even though oil's plummeted to $84 on the back of the newfound weakness in the economy. I want to know why. Why is it that I'm still paying top dollar even as our benchmark West Texas Intermediate has nosedived?
Oh, I hear a lot of chatter about how that benchmark is now irrelevant and we are priced off of Brent, which is about $25 more than the oil we've got here. We are told to ignore that Texas pricing as the refiners use the Brent price.
To which I say two things: First, why? Why do they use the European benchmark when about half of our oil is produced here? Why do they use the European price when we are awash in oil in our own storage terminals? Second, why the heck is Brent so high despite all of the chatter about a gigantic European slowdown? Sure, Libya's been taken offline, and that's about 1.7 million barrels a day. But we've added about that much in the last year -- and let's be honest, demand's down big in a lot of European countries.
Oh, I hear a lot of chatter about how that benchmark is now irrelevant and we are priced off of Brent, which is about $25 more than the oil we've got here. We are told to ignore that Texas pricing as the refiners use the Brent price.
To which I say two things: First, why? Why do they use the European benchmark when about half of our oil is produced here? Why do they use the European price when we are awash in oil in our own storage terminals? Second, why the heck is Brent so high despite all of the chatter about a gigantic European slowdown? Sure, Libya's been taken offline, and that's about 1.7 million barrels a day. But we've added about that much in the last year -- and let's be honest, demand's down big in a lot of European countries.
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