$4.29/gal in Omaha. Redamndiculous!!!

I think we've had this discussion before. The national average is the only relevant figure. I understand that you don't like that, but that doesn't change the fact that local spot prices are simply part of the overall picture.

Oh, and the price in Chicago one year ago was $4.16.

You should tell them you're only going to pay the national average. Donger said so.

Oh, and I did find out the reason for the spike in the Midwest: refinery maintenance and outages at the following locations...

Eldorado KS
Joliet IL
Whiting IN
Tulsa OK

That's nice. I'm sure none of it was intentional.

Of course it was intentional. They have to perform maintenance and they also have to switch from winter to summer blends, by law.

That's what I heard, but I was curious. It seems a bit ****ed to me that they decide to do some maintenance on their facilities, and then outages hit the rest of them. Oil is one of the shadiest businesses on the planet.

No it's not/Donger

The best time for them to do maintenance is during the switch from winter to summer blends. If you've ever performed maintenance on any equipment, you know that sometimes things happen during the maintenance that you weren't expecting, which can cause delays in getting the equipment up and running again.

This will probably end up with the refineries losing more money than they would if the refineries had no issues, by the way. The retailers are the ones raising prices, not the refineries.

So those guys who swear they only make a nickel a gallon, are now jumping it up to 50 cents and more?

Possibly, yes. As has been discussed, the price that you pay at the pump is the retailers' replacement price. They've already paid for what is in their tanks. They're basically looking at the present and what they think will happen with the refiners, and price accordingly. Sometimes they guess right and sometimes they guess wrong. It's not unusual for a retailer to actually sell gasoline for less than they paid for it. In the end, yes, it works out to about 5 to 10 cents per gallon profit. They make their real profit on the other stuff in the store.

They're essentially selling gasoline out of the good of their hearts? What swell people!

Not at all. They are in business to make a profit, just like every other other business.

That explains the regional thing I mentioned.