Yet another "gas prices" thread.

That's true too. It was at ~80 at the beginning of the year and it's at ~79 now, so it's a much smaller contributor than oil prices at this point, and evidently way way smaller than refinery output. CA keeps on bouncing off of $3.25 a gallon, so it looks like prices are going to stabilize at about $3.85/gallon or so barring more trouble with Cherry Point or some other refinery going down. The rest of the country tends to lag CA by about a month or so, so prices could come down substantially in April. Otoh, that's really close to memorial day, so prices may stabilize until after that, then drop (barring some other abrupt change of course).

 

As a whole they're all likely temporary. It's just that a refinery or two may have to shut down for a year for industry margins as a whole to increase the ~5+ cents they need to be profitable in the long run.

What's really interesting to me is how west coast gas prices are below the NYMEX RBOB gas futures. Based on past behavior US gas prices may drop in a month or two.

US WCoast Products - Gasoline continues slide | Reuters

 

On the plus side, there were a ton of Prius listings on CL (I have a script that looks for changes every half hour) within the past few days. It looks like people are trying to sell before gas prices go down across the board (It appears to take a couple months for any drop in wholesale prices to fully work it's way through). I have a feeling I'll be picking up a gen II at a very fair price next month. And if not next month, probably by June.

 

Talk about a huge spread. Check out prices in LA.

Los Angeles Gas Prices - Find Cheap Gas Prices in California

On the low end they're rapidly approaching $4/gallon, and on they high end they're just shy of $6/gallon. I don't recall seeing a $2/gallon difference, especially within a city.

Another interesting tidbit. While the cost competitive stations have been dropping their prices for the past two weeks, from about $4.35 to $4.05-$4.10, only recently did the most expensive stations start to drop their prices. Given how slow stations are to change their pricing, how easy it is for them to behave like a cartel, and how uneven the last reduction in prices has been (The reduction from $3.75 to $3.50 was abrupt, but the reduction from $3.50 to ~$3.20 has almost been sinusoidal, or at least "bouncy", over a longer period of time), I imagine it'll take another month or so for prices to decline another quarter.

 

Finally dropped below $4/gallon (On the low end) in the LA area. It's so weird seeing gas prices falling in CA while they're rising east of the rockies. TWIP had an interesting chart forecasting gas prices.



Apparently they think there's a 50/50 chance gas will go above $4/gallon nationwide before it drops back down towards ~$3.50 this winter.

This Week In Petroleum

 

Well that's interesting. In the same TWIP release there was a chart in the gasoline section showing last year's RBOB futures dropping by ~$.25/gallon.

 

Yeah, the west coast has been where most of the refinery issues were centered. Recently four out of twelve refineries in CA went down, which led to a brief spike in the spot price to ~$3.50/gallon from ~$3.25, but as of today it's down to ~$3.10, so prices will probably drop again unless spot prices bounce back up.

 

And it looks like Los Angeles CA spot prices aren't going to bounce back up. They're down to $2.85 as of 5/31/12, which should translate to ~$3.70/gallon at the pump within a couple months, provided they stay there of course.

 

Looks like the price decrease is sticking. I'm seeing stations below $3.70 in the OC/LA region. In fact, LA spot prices are below the NY RBOB gas futures, which is abnormal. I'm thinking that there's a local supply glut from all the west coast refineries coming back online at the same time while demand is still a bit low.