Quote:
Originally Posted by Bownesian
I generated this chart from: http://www.gasbuddy.com/Charts
It shows that the gasoline price in the US and the price in Canada are tracking pretty much 1:1, and that the gasoline price does reflect the Oil price, though not perfectly. Part of the story is that there are fixed costs (taxes, refineries, retail) plus the variable cost, and part of the story here is that oil is priced in US dollars and we pay for gas in Canadian dollars and we've had a significant currency depreciation since the price was high.
The rest of the answer is there is typically a bit of a tighter market for gas in June because the refinery maintenance season just passed and the summer driving season is coming soon. This chart shows that for it to be price fixing, it would have to be across all of Canada and the US, which is pretty hard to imagine.
Usually prices drop in the fall and they will again, all things being equal. |
The main thing I can see from that chart is that the crude oil price looked somewhat correlated until about November, when crude oil dove hard and gas prices didn't follow. Then oddly enough oil prices started rising slowly and so did gas prices. It's as if the two are correlated on the way up and not on the way down. So bizarre.