--- "Horn, John" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I filled up yesterday morning at $2.39 per gallon. > When I went home > yesterday, it was $2.69. I just passed the station > on my way home > from work today and it was $2.99 per gallon. How > can that be? How > can it have gone up $.60 per gallon over the course > of a day? I > know Katrina hit the gulf oil platforms hard but did > gas prices jump > this much in past hurricanes? > > Can someone (anyone?) explain what's going on? > > - jmh
The problem isn't crude oil supplies (mainly) but refinery capacity. Quite a few refineries are on the Gulf Coast as well, so this causes a significant problem, particularly because there is (IIRC) little or no slack in global refinery capacity either, so it's difficult to make up the difference. We haven't built a new refinery in the US in ~25 years or so - one guess as to why. The oil industry has also adopted JIT inventory management along with everyone else, but this means that oil prices are much more vulnerable to supply shocks than they were when everyone was keeping huge inventories of the stuff on hand. So this sort of a price spike is unsurprising. Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour: http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
