I predict that Oil Prices will rise magically and gas prices will go up

[liberal N proud]

Just ahead of the Easter Break period.

This phenomenon has been going on for several years. Each year they proclaim they are switching fuel blends ahead of the summer season but it always happens in coincidence with the Easter Bunny arrival.

Do they suddenly realize that Easter is a few weeks away and think it must be time to switch the fuel blend?

A very large number of population travel around the Easter Holiday and Spring Break so they can always say supply and demand effects it too. Only because they allow it to.

When you have these cyclical demand cycles, manufactures usually prepare for them so they can have the product in demand available when it is necessary. The oil companies just use it as an excuse to jack up prices.

[Uben]

1. They are required by law to change blends.....

...in the spring (in some states and cities). And, demand does spike at this time, so it's no surprise that prices rise each spring.

Put your crystal ball back in the closet.

The summer blend is more expensive to manufacture, reduces emmissions by reducing evaporation, and gives slightly higher miles per gallon.

[madokie]

3. I don't know about the law but summer gas doesn't work very well in the colder months

and winter gas not so well in the summer. I save gas during the winter months to use in our welder/generator in case of a power outage and most times I recycle whats left over in one of our autos by mixing it with a partial tank of the seasons gas. I use safety gas cans to store it in or otherwise it will go bad on its own after a few months.

[Uben]

4. True....

...that's why they switch back in the fall.

[madokie]

5. Yep and if you have an older vehicle that has been sitting for a while

and was last driven during the summer months and you want to start it and you aren't aware of the volatility of gasoline and what it means you'll spend every dime you have trying to get the damn thing to run right if you do somehow get it to run. I've been there and seen it happen many times with others. If you put new gas in it it'll be ready to go from the start. Most people i know that work on cars on their own will go for the carburetor first every time and shortly have it so out of adjustment that they'll still have problems even after they do finally put new gas in. If a gasoline engine doesn't run most likely it is not the carburetor thats at fault. One of the best moments in my motor head days was the day I realized that.

[pampango]

2. For decades the price of gas has peaked in the summer, gone down in the fall, bottomed

in winter and risen in the spring. Obviously there have been exceptions and many short term fluctuations, but if you look at the annual charts the seasonal pattern is there.

[sinkingfeeling]

6. They've already said gasoline will be $3 or more by summer.

[Statistical]

7. It isn't just fuel blends that changes the gasoline partial % changes too.

I think most people don't realize how gasoline is made.

You don't dump a barrell of oil in and get a barrel of gasoline out.


Oil isn't uniform. It basically is a soup of hydrocarbons and only some of them are good for making gasoline.

So oil is cracked into a multitude of products.

It isn't that oil makes heating oil OR diesel OR gasoline. Oil makes heating oil AND diesel AND gasoline.



So one barrel of oil makes a whole bunch of products. Notice two of the products. Heating Oil and Kerosene. Think there is much demand for heating oil in July?

In winter months the refining stack is setup to optimize output of heating oil and kerosene. When spring approaches if they kept things the same two things would happen
1) we would have billions of gallons of "worthless" heating oil
2) we would have massive shortages of gasoline as demand rises

So they alter the stack. By changing the temperature and pressure they can make a barrel of oil produce less heating oil and more gasoline. However this takes time to convert the refinery.

This happens every year, twice a year. Yet somehow people are "surprised" when it happens.

[ThomWV]

8. One thing you omit is annual refinery maintenance, which is generally scheduled in spring

It is difficult to imagine a heavy increase in demand from a public which is enjoying heavy unemployment. That said, annual refinery maintenance also reduces output in the spring. Better to do it at a time of the year when demand is at its lowest, on the thinking that that time will coincide with the lowest price for the refinery product.

[Javaman]

9. Isn't even weirder that you never see the easter bunny and oil in the same room? nt