Gas prices in Calgary

[keratosis]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Anyone expect anything less? It's summer and for a variety of reasons, gas prices are high.

Get your bike out, or put on your walking shoes if you can. You'll thank yourself for the exercise.

It's Stampede time, gotta gouge the tourists too.

[surferguy]

Gas was essentially the same price in Newfoundland when I was there last week.

[Harry Lime]

Originally Posted by BigNumbers

Given our province, city and my personal wealth's ties to oil, I am happy IF we see +$2/L gas (assuming that doesn't make demand implode).

PUSH'ER TILL SHE SQUEELS

By this point, the oil companies have pretty much detached gas prices from having any association to the value of oil.

[aaronck]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

By this point, the oil companies have pretty much detached gas prices from having any association to the value of oil.

Until the price of oil goes up again...

[Aleks]

Perhaps we should take a page out of Haiti's book and protest.

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

By this point, the oil companies have pretty much detached gas prices from having any association to the value of oil.

Or maybe it's just baseless complaining based on heuristics, faulty memories and falsehoods.

Alberta Synthetic Crude is C$93.30 per barrel right now. A year ago it was C$59.54 per barrel representing an increase of 57% year over year. Using para transit's cost per liter in July 2017 of C$0.88 cents per liter compared to C$1.34 per liter today, which represents a 52% increase.

Math checks out, but hey, it must be the refiners gouging you!

[Harry Lime]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

Or maybe it's just baseless complaining based on heuristics, faulty memories and falsehoods.

Alberta Synthetic Crude is C$93.30 per barrel right now. A year ago it was C$59.54 per barrel representing an increase of 57% year over year. Using para transit's cost per liter in July 2017 of C$0.88 cents per liter compared to C$1.34 per liter today, which represents a 52% increase.

Math checks out, but hey, it must be the refiners gouging you!

The problem with increased rates goes farther back than July 2017. I'm not educated enough on the supply chain to know the direct connection between Alberta Synthetic Crude and what ends up in local pumps.

I was under the impression West Texas Crude was used as the benchmark. If you take the current value and go back to the last time the oil was at that value, then take the price of gas at that time and increase by inflation you should get the what the current price of gas at the pumps should be, roughly. Hit several such points over the last 15 years to find a trend.

That it is much higher indicates that something else is going on.

(other people have done the math, I'm not going to)

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

Or maybe it's just baseless complaining based on heuristics, faulty memories and falsehoods.

Alberta Synthetic Crude is C$93.30 per barrel right now. A year ago it was C$59.54 per barrel representing an increase of 57% year over year. Using para transit's cost per liter in July 2017 of C$0.88 cents per liter compared to C$1.34 per liter today, which represents a 52% increase.

Math checks out, but hey, it must be the refiners gouging you!

Sure, but we live in Alberta, so we should get this for free, right? After all, it's our oil!

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

The problem with increased rates goes farther back than July 2017. I'm not educated enough on the supply chain to know the direct connection between Alberta Synthetic Crude and what ends up in local pumps.

I was under the impression West Texas Crude was used as the benchmark. If you take the current value and go back to the last time the oil was at that value, then take the price of gas at that time and increase by inflation you should get the what the current price of gas at the pumps should be, roughly. Hit several such points over the last 15 years to find a trend.

That it is much higher indicates that something else is going on.

(other people have done the math, I'm not going to)

In Canadian dollars. 1.03 dollar to .76 dollar adds a lot to oil price.

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

The problem with increased rates goes farther back than July 2017. I'm not educated enough on the supply chain to know the direct connection between Alberta Synthetic Crude and what ends up in local pumps.

I was under the impression West Texas Crude was used as the benchmark. If you take the current value and go back to the last time the oil was at that value, then take the price of gas at that time and increase by inflation you should get the what the current price of gas at the pumps should be, roughly. Hit several such points over the last 15 years to find a trend.

That it is much higher indicates that something else is going on.

(other people have done the math, I'm not going to)

Then don't make statements such as this.

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

By this point, the oil companies have pretty much detached gas prices from having any association to the value of oil.

The supply chain is the fundamental foundation of gasoline prices. Crude costs only make up around 40%-50% of the supply cost for a litre of gasoline.

Regarding WTI, yes it certainly is a benchmark for WCS. But the differential swings all the time based on many factors...transportation bottlenecks (e.g. pipeline bottlenecks), regional supply/demand conditions (e.g. maintenance on local refineries took longer than expected this year which cuts supply which spike price), US:CAD exchange rate.

And if you want to get real technical you could say its all benchmarked off of Brent.

So ya...more complicated than gouging. Don't like it? Don't buy it. That or complain to the Venezuelans and the Iranians (via Trump).

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

I was under the impression West Texas Crude was used as the benchmark.

I don't understand how someone can think that what price a particular crude grade sells for in Cushing, Oklahoma has more to do with what nominal price expressed in Canadian dollars gasoline sells for at a gas station in Calgary Alberta than an Alberta crude benchmark. Also even that Alberta benchmark is only the feedstock price a refinery pays and speaks nothing to refining and marketing costs and distribution.

Do you go into a Safeway store and call out management for gouging you on milk prices because it's not perfectly correlated to the price of dairy cattle in North Dakota?

[Harry Lime]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

I don't understand how someone can think that what price a particular crude grade sells for in Cushing, Oklahoma has more to do with what nominal price expressed in Canadian dollars gasoline sells for at a gas station in Calgary Alberta than an Alberta crude benchmark. Also even that Alberta benchmark is only the feedstock price a refinery pays and speaks nothing to refining and marketing costs and distribution.

Do you go into a Safeway store and call out management for gouging you on milk prices because it's not perfectly correlated to the price of dairy cattle in North Dakota?

There is a major diplomatic issue surrounding that very problem with dairy, happening right now.

Frequitude, I was simply responding to Cowboy on a very specific product that he was using as a reference to justify increases.

Is 'don't like it, don't buy it' really an option in north america? I understand that costs have risen, but the amount doesn't seem connected to the price at the pumps in any discernable way. They rise dramatically when a Sultan's farts smell like pancakes, but when the problem is corrected they don't fall at the same speed. It reeks of lack of honesty.

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

There is a major diplomatic issue surrounding that very problem with dairy, happening right now.

Frequitude, I was simply responding to Cowboy on a very specific product that he was using as a reference to justify increases.

Is 'don't like it, don't buy it' really an option in north america? I understand that costs have risen, but the amount doesn't seem connected to the price at the pumps in any discernable way. They rise dramatically when a Sultan's farts smell like pancakes, but when the problem is corrected they don't fall at the same speed. It reeks of lack of honesty.

A basic investigation into the underlying data behind this statement would reveal it is incorrect. Even with all the other factors between Alberta gasoline and WTI (FX, regional supply/demand, pipelines, differentials, etc.), the two are still extremely correlated.

[Harry Lime]

Yes, an 18 year correlation of 0.92, and a correlation in the last 3 years of 0.80. Once you eliminate the last three years from the first number, the difference between the two becomes a 0.14 variance. That's significant.

Public perception of Oil and Gas is that of dishonesty and game playing. I think that has gotten worse over the last three years, and your graph seems to support that one reason might be because the price of gasoline is not calculated the same way that it was even four years ago.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Yes, an 18 year correlation of 0.92, and a correlation in the last 3 years of 0.80. Once you eliminate the last three years from the first number, the difference between the two becomes a 0.14 variance. That's significant.

Public perception of Oil and Gas is that of dishonesty and game playing. I think that has gotten worse over the last three years, and your graph seems to support that one reason might be because the price of gasoline is not calculated the same way that it was even four years ago.

That correlation entirely ignores currency exchange without factoring currency in you cannot draw any conclusions beyond yeah it looks like it tracks.

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Yes, an 18 year correlation of 0.92, and a correlation in the last 3 years of 0.80. Once you eliminate the last three years from the first number, the difference between the two becomes a 0.14 variance. That's significant.

edit: never mind. I don’t want to get into a math game because the point of the exercise was visual.

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Public perception of Oil and Gas is that of dishonesty and game playing. I think that has gotten worse over the last three years, and your graph seems to support that one reason might be because the price of gasoline is not calculated the same way that it was even four years ago.

The graph really only supports one conclusion. Gasoline prices track the price of oil really damn well.

The public perception you speak of is not rooted at all in fact. The data proves that. It is rooted in unsubstantiated emotion. This back and fort is evidence of that.

[Harry Lime]

There are graphs to prove every viewpoint. This is what the people of BC are being fed on a weekly basis.

http://www.policynote.ca/gas-gouging...oil-not-taxes/

Graphs!

Anyway, I'm not invested enough to argue it. I'm just one of the dozens, maybe multi-dozens, of customers who need this product to get to work every day or choose to die of starvation. Kirk out.

[Frequitude]

Now that is entirely fair and understandable. I guess I’m just trying to defend against the overblown share of that pain which is attributed to our O&G companies instead of the demand side of the equation.

[Dion]

'Gas bar shenanigans'

Edmonton prices were 136.2 cents per litre, up 13 cents from last week and 47.8 cents from 12 months ago.

McTeague says the biggest cause of this week's surge in Alberta prices was "gas bar shenanigans", as retailers who hadn't passed on recent increases in wholesale prices decided to catch up all at once.

He doesn't expect the increases to stick, pointing out some stations in Edmonton are already retreating.

"These prices will turtle but the point is that we are testing levels that have never been seen before," McTeague said.

He says average prices in Alberta are below the September 2008 peak.

But most people are likely paying more for fuel, he said, because current average is brought down by Costco, which tends to sell gas at cost in order to draw members into its stores.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...ries-1.4735427

[btimbit]

Already dropping again. Down to 133 at a lot of the places I just went by