I posed this question to a Consumer Activist who works in the area of gasoline pricing, and their response so far is that "No" the Oil Industry cannot be trusted generally.
I don't know anything to say that they're calculating or stating the average price wrongly or unfairly. In fact, I've always assumed they were doing it properly if only because they had to know someday the matter would be questioned. Nevertheless, I just want to state the question in case anyone has any thoughts or information. An accurate statement of the average U.S. retail price per gallon, in my view, would be to take the total number of gallons sold and divide this by the total price paid. I"m guessing that Industry Participants (Producers, distributors, refiners, station owners, etc.) might say that this isn't really possible to do, so we must take some statistical sampling as done by, say, Lundberg, but that this is "trustworthy". I'm guessing they'd say that they take meticulous readings of stations in a wide variety of areas with a strong eye to accuracy if only for the sake of giving their own industry an accurate statement of what is really occuring, and that they employ valid mathematical principles to extrapolate a nationwide average price.. But what does this tell us? Doesn't this leave open the possibility, say, that they could take a reading in a low volume sales area which might happen to have a very low price, and a reading in a very high volume sales area, which might happen to have a very high price, and somehow "average" these readings in a way that gives a false statement of the average? They'd probably have some response, based on mathematical principles, but I thought I'd throw the question out there in case any internet discussion group participants might act as a third-party check here. While it's probable that they're more or less stating the actual average, I sometimes think it's possible that they fudge things a bit. My own view is that we have, in effect, an agreement with them (whether formalized or not, whether liked by all or not) We (the people, the car owners, the drivers) have built up a system with them such that they have stations. The only fuel for sale in the country is, in effect, from the Oil Companies. They agree not to take advantage (i.e., push the price to $20 per gallon one day for their own amusement). I think what they're doing is milking this agreement masterfully, drinking deep at the lake Of Profits, but never quite so much as might arouse enough ire in us to question the exterior manipulations of the process that might be occuring, such as prevention of E85 wide availability, prevention of EV availability, discouragement of strategies and technologies (public transportation, higher-mileage vehicles, other alt-fuel-burning vehicles and fuels) which might weaken the de facto oligopoly. Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
