12-29-07 by dugan
You never know what you’ll find out when the family gets together over wine and good cheer. Oil companies and even independent analysts link gasoline prices to the record price of crude oil. But Insider offers this holiday observation:
"I had Christmas with [relationship deleted], who is a petroleum engineer. He told me that his company was selling crude oil at a discount of $32 per barrel off the spot price.
"This is just one example of why the spot price is not a true price of crude oil. It also shows why the pump price of gasoline did not go up this year as much as the spot price or the futures price. Only some oil goes into the trading markets. The speculators shove up all prices, but not to $97 a barrel."
As they say in the real world, prices may vary. In this case, by about 33%.