This is buggin me too..

We were the cheapest town around for miles..

Yesterday the set ours up to 1.95!

Our gas tax is $.63 a gallon and the state wants to raise it again!

Is there a standard coorilation between oil to gas price. I know there is alot of variables but say 30per bbls is typically 1.25?

Gas futures are currently:

Nymex RBOB Gasoline Future 113.89 -2.88 -2.47 10:38

Add in delivery costs, gas station operating costs, federal taxes, state taxes, county taxes, city taxes etc and you're not going to get to 1.25.

Around the X-mas holidays the RBOB gas futures dropped below 79 cents a gallon.  So, the RBOB futures market is why the prices at the pump have risen over 30 cents a gallon.

This is the main thing that I don't get.  Everyone always talks about oil prices and how it should have a direct effect on retail gas prices.  However, unleaded gas is also a traded commodity.  Why would we not use this as the driver?  It's a full step closer to the actual retail price than the price of oil is (it's the SAME product!).  I don't get it.

The DOE site provides a good breakdown on gas prices.  Looking at their data it appears that distribution and marketing make up about 25 cents per gallon.  So, add that to the current spot price of 113.9 and you get 128.9 a gallon.  Now you have to add in federal taxes of 18.4 cents and you get up to 147.3 cents per gallon.  Then you have to add in the state taxes.  I'll do IL because that's where I live.  19 cents a gallon plus 6.25% sales tax and 0.3% storage tank fund tax.  So that gets me to 177.1.  I just paid 188.9 this morning.  So, that means that the gas station owner had a gross margin of 11.8 cents per gallon.  Credit card fees would've eaten up roughly 3% (or 5.7 cents) of that.  So, now he has to pay the remainder of his expenses (employees, buildings, utilities, etc) as well as himself off of the remaining 6.1 cents per gallon.

If you ever want to figure it out yourself then these sites are critical:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/info_glance/petroleum.html

www.bloomberg.com/energy

http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgastaxes.asp

Thanks for the sites Tyrius. I am skeptical of anything that has a Bloomberg link to is, as he is part of the problem/

Thanks Tyrius

I was under the assumption that Gasoline index was for future purchase not current.  

All makes more sense now.

Thanks Tyrius

I was under the assumption that Gasoline index was for future purchase not current.

All makes more sense now.

That is the futures market (but the most current month).  I don't have any information on the "buy it right this second" price or wholesale price so I had to use the next best one.  

Thanks for the sites Tyrius. I am skeptical of anything that has a Bloomberg link to is, as he is part of the problem/

The bloomberg site is just an aggregation of currect energy commodity prices.  There is no real industry information there, just actual prices (kind of like yahoo's stock information).

Here's the nymex site, which is where this commodity is actually traded.  

http://www.nymex.com/index.aspx

You can see there that the price matches the bloomberg price.

Thanks Ty, good toll for understanding what goes on. I knew something was up last year, I guy I grew up with, owns 2 seats on the Oil Commodities floor, one with his brother. He was dead set on retiring last year, and stayed, no wonder why!

$34.75

A week or so ago, everyone was hoping to get back below $35

and here we are. The glut has grown with more than 80 million

barrels floating around on tankers with no place to go.

;D ;D ;D ;D

$34.75

A week or so ago, everyone was hoping to get back below $35

and here we are. The glut has grown with more than 80 million

barrels floating around on tankers with no place to go.

8 to1 they say they have a shortage of the warm weather formula gasoline when the spring comes so they have to charge more. They have done this for the last 6 years!!!

;D ;D ;D ;D

$34.75

A week or so ago, everyone was hoping to get back below $35

and here we are. The glut has grown with more than 80 million

barrels floating around on tankers with no place to go.

;D ;D ;D ;D

There's 33 million barrels sitting in Cushings too.  The storage capacity there can only hold another million barrels!!!