Gas prices up
 

I just wanted to let everyone know that gas went up as much as $.50 gallon over night in the Charlotte, NC area. Stations that were $3.699 last night were 4.199 today and I heard one person locally say gas might be $5.00 or more per gallon by tomorrow. The stations have also placed a 10 gallon limit on gas sales because of low supply. I don't know whether this will be a national trend or not, but if gas hasn't gone up or been limited where you live you might want to fill up.

it's all from speculation from hurricane ike. I'm feelin it too. I am near greensboro. about an hour and fifteen from charlotte.

its about the same here in jacksonville. the store up the road was 3.65 yesterday and 3.84 today. not as drastic as other places, but enough to piss people off

I'm glad I filled my tank Thursday morning ($3.389). :)

-Jay

i am in atlanta. i filled up my vx for 359 gal last night and my truck today for 365 gal and watch them up the price 14 cents while i was filling up! at one gas stating it was up to 525 for regular!!! price gouging mf ers!

I heard on the news a little bit ago that some stations in the Carolina's have gone up as much as $1.00 gallon in the past 24 hours. The news station said they had contacted our local congressman to get a price gouging investigation started. The representative stated that he had filed federal paperwork to get the investigation underway.

it does seem to be a trend. a few stations have mandated a 10 gal limit here.

i just went to fuel up at my regular newly(like today) reopened shell. lots of gas obviously(fresh fill in new tanks). got 24 gallons(11 extra in jugs). thanks for the heads up!:thumbup:

on a side note: i found out i have an $80 fill limit on my shell card. had to use another card to finish filling. what if i had an SUV?:eek:

Prices were the same this morning as yesterday. I filled up this morning at $3.59 but I am not sure if they have gone up since this morning.

As a note, they just said on the news that the refinery being shut down is making home heating oil and not gas.......so if that is true, what does that have to do with gas prices???

Bunch of thieves..................

up to 3.89... will be 4 bucks before tomorrow i think

Are you sure the limit isn't the station limit, and not your card limit? I've had pumps click off @ $50, reinsert my card, and pump another $20.

-Jay

I've always wondered that. Some stations pumps have a sticker that says $50 Visa and $75 master card limit. And the sticker says it isn't from the station, that it is mandated by the credit card companies. Then other stations have a $75 limit on visa. Then still other stations have no limit. When filling up my SUV I just put my Visa back in and run it again.

I've never seen a sticker posting card limits on a pump. Right when the price first spiked I had problems with some stations stopping @ $50, but all I ever did was just put the card back in and pump more.

-Jay

oh man i am glad i sold my car hahahaah remember oil recently dropped to $101 a barrel gas prices will go back down.

I hope everyone is preparing for the next few months, Hurricane Ike will be added to a long list of excuses for why fuel prices will go throught the roof in the next few months. (as if they are not already there....)

I just hope the oil rigs are ok down there. the price of gas does affect me since im jobless for now, but i drive very little in the city. i just feel bad for the low wage workers who have to feed their family and still have to drive to work.

Went up 40 cents for regular overnight, here south of D.C.

Its been 20 days since I got gas, so this weekend, around 1/4 tank it's time to go get some gas... :( Stupid bad luck.

I will need to do some heavy hauling next week, I guess I need to drive the Buick some more to save that gas in the truck for the hauling so I don't have to buy any gas next week. Give these storms a chance to clear out and get fuel production back online.

-Jay

There are gasoline contracts traded too. Those are up.

When something is in short supply, prices go up. There is no such thing as "price gauging". If you don't like the price, you're welcome to not buy it. 20% of the refinaries in the US are shutdown for this storm. Don't be surprised to see $6 and $7 per gallon in the next few days as oil drops below $100 per barrel. This too shall pass. The oil bubble has burst and with the world in recession it will continue to collapse. This hurricane is just a blip.

So far, as of this evening, I haven't seen any rise in prices here in California. Not to say they couldn't shoot up tomorrow morning, but so far nothing.

looking on gaspricewatch.com I see that there is still gas for $3.39 in Manassas (price updated 15 hours ago). I was planning on driving down to visit my folks today. I may top off the Buick's tank if I find a station that cheap along the way. I can't top off the truck because I added a bottle of BG 44K to the fuel on Thursday. I need to run that tank as low as I comfortably can to get the most out of the 44K. I don't want to top off and dillute it.

-Jay

Those high price due to hurricanes are temporary, and by 1-2 weeks it will go back to normal. So if a person conssume a reasonable amout of gallon per week, he should be fine if his tank is full (10+ gallons, depend on the car...). So those temporary high should affect that much people when its not on a long period.

The fact is that raffineries are built in the hurricanes territory, so we have do deal with it, oil is getting thougher to get and each and every day, we have about 84 million barrels less.

Drilling in the Artic wont be much easy and less expansive... unless Alaska, but what is alaska, 2-3 years...

At least there's no tropical storms in Alaska.

You might be snowed out for a while, but once the snow melts there shouldn't be much damage.

I think that there is such a thing as price gouging. When a station is selling gas they already have on hand for $4.50-$5.00 a gallon that they have paid $3.50 a gallon for. Yes, it will cost more for them to replace the gas, but that is when the price increase should come to the consumer and not before. Just a few weeks ago when the storm was threatening LA our gas went up about $.10-$.15 overnight and the storm didn't effect anything I am aware of but offshore drilling.

All gasoline and diesel pricing is based on speculation. Additionally, it's a fluid in a tank: you can't sell the $3.00 a gallon fuel before the $4 a gallon fuel. Pricing based on speculation is what keeps stations relatively competitive with each other in their prices and keeps supply relatively consistent all over.

Similar issues in production. That gasoline was made with petroleum that had a varing cost.

Yesterday when I filled my tank at the station I normally use, in spite of everyone else's prices being in the $4.10-$4.20 and gallon range they were selling out what they had left in their tanks at the previous price. I wasn't able to get regular at the advertised price of $3.659 because they were already sold out, but I got premium at 3.879. This was Texaco and not some off brand discount gas. This is why I usually buy my gas there, because they don't increase their pump prices until they have the tanks refilled.

Alaska is short therm, but the oil in the artic is in deep sea (the real deal, the real billion barils deal), up there, condition are extreme, sometimes.

you could be correct. however, the last time i used a card twice in a day to buy gas, the cc company called me to inquire about possible theft.

absolutely there is! i gas station just outside of the orlando int'l airport was charging in excess of a dollar over avg area pricing.

the question is, what or how much is illegal? people, mostly tourists, ARE continuing to pay it.

There's one spot in my hometown that gas is ~50 cents more than anywhere else. Its right off of I-95. As soon as you get off the highway all you see are 4 fuel stations witin 100 yards of the highway, and then trees & nothing else. If you actually drove 1/2 mile down the road gas is much cheaper. Locals don't buy gas there. Those stations survive on traffic coming off of the highway.

-Jay

I-95 is notorious for that in some places. But around here it is the same also. All the stations right off the interstate are high priced. The ones in town are lower. But people driving on the interstate that stop for gas get ripped off because they don't know where the other cheaper gas is when they are not familiar with the area........another form of price gougeing.

I get around this. I check gas prices along my route on gaspricewatch.com before I leave, and plan my fuel stops ahead of time. When I hit my designated fuel stop I buy gas whether or not I need it. This way I always have the cheapest fuel available. I can also check prices using Microsoft Live search on my cell phone.

-Jay

It's not illegal. It's only illegal if the entity has a monopoly. It may extend to if the entity has just a vast majority of the market share, too, though, I forget. Other than that, they can charge whatever they want if the people will pay. After all, if there is another gas station a block away that's a dollar less they're just losing business for themselves, so that's their own problem.

An example, I have a business that depends on gasoline sales for a significant portion of my profit. My supplier has just told me that I will be lucky to get 50% of my normal supply for the next month, and also expect the price to rise significantly.

Do I sell my inventory at my normal percentage of markup, or raise my price to cover the future loss of income due to my suppliers shortage.

I remember the original gas crisis. One dealer was charging twice the normal price. I think it was $1.69 a gallon in 1973 (old old memories). People were paying the price when it was not available anywhere else.

When you have been in business, you might understand some of the complexities of protecting your income.

The customer has the choice of buying elsewhere, if it is available.

I bought 26 gallons today at $3.549. 16 gallons in gas cans to put in the garage in case it gets tough to get gas, and I live less than 10 miles from an oil refinery.

regards
gary

correct! it is gouging either way however.

if after a hurricane, for example, only one supplier has water, and charges several times the normal price, that COULD be investigated as illegal price gouging.

if consumers are ignorant enough to pay above fair market value of a particular product under normal circumstances, that's likely not going to be busted as illegal.

Jay.....yes I realize this. There are several websites for gas prices. But I do not have a laptop or internet on my cell phone.......ok so I am in the technological stone age....... So for instance, I go to Maryland occasionally and can check prices before I go, but with the way they change so rapidly, I just use the places I know along the way and in MD.

I'm very technologically connected. My phone is a Windows Mobile 6 HTC Tilt, and I have an unlimited data package on it. I can surf the internet on the phone, or I can connect my laptop to the internet over the phone. Most often I check gas prices in the morning before I leave. I look and see what exits on the highway offer the lowest fuel prices. For example when I go to Florida I look for the cheapest station in Virginia to start off the trip, then I won't need fuel in NC so I look for the cheapest fuel in SC, which is usually around Florence. Then I need to top off the tank right before the Florida state line because Florida's gas tax is so high. I usually either fuel at the Petro @ exit 3 in Georgia, or the Flying J @ exit 29 in Georgia. I can usually drive around Fl, and come back to Georgia before I need fuel again, and then repeat the same stops as before.

-Jay

Whenever I get down that way, that's exactly where I gas up in Georgia ......just before going into Florida, and I also stop there on the way back. That exit #3 has the best Georgia prices and there are 5 or 6 places to choose from too.

When I drove by Exit 10 it was at $3.69, I wasn't there yesterday but I suspect it was $3.59 or lower because everything else in CP was just above this yesterday.

Where in Upstate are you?

As for gouging. Clearly if a station down the street is charging $1 more than average it's just his business choice. If they all do it then it could be price setting or gouging or just price fluctuation.

The 10 gallon limit is there to prevent gouging. I thought the typical usage for gouging would be for the guy that went around and bought all gas in the area and then started to sell it for $2/gal more than usual.

Especially if there's a shortage coming I would definately increase my price like crazy if I owned a business. I'd even go $2/gal higher than the guy down the street because I know that will drive more business to him and more quickly empty his tanks and then I can raise it even higher and people will still pay because it's the only spot to get it. Of course that all only applies to shortage conditions and how greedy of a person I am, too bad I don't own such a business and instead I'll just have to pay whatever they charge :(.