This week's inventory report from the Energy Information Administration showed big jumps in both oil and gasoline inventories which has in turn applied downward pressure on oil prices. After larger than expected inventory gains the price of oil has now fallen by $1.02 today to $62.15.But what is bad news to oil investors comes as positive news to those struggling to keep up with the price of gasoline. Analysts had been expecting to see gasoline inventories rise by about 1.1 million barrels last week but we were treated to a nice surprise jump of 1.7 million barrels.
One of the big reasons for the current record high gasoline prices has been the lack of refinery production over the last couple of months so it is definitely good news to see inventories rising faster than expected. But they are still operating a bit under where analysts had been hoping to see. Production rose to 89.5% capacity last week, which was a rise of about 0.5% over the previous week, but still slightly under the 90% output that analysts had thought we would be seeing.
Oil inventories showed an increase of one million barrels while analysts had been expecting to see a jump of 100,000 barrels.
So hopefully we are seeing a trend that will ultimately lead to gasoline prices stabilizing. I still don't think that we are going to be seeing prices retreating anytime soon with the summer driving months coming up fast, but I do believe that prices should begin to level off. Now that the refineries are getting back up to speed things should slowly start to get back to normal.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-21-2007 @ 10:11PM
William Ehlert said...
We can see lower gas prices if we have
our railroads switch to electric energy
instead of diesel or diesel electric.
If we put up a sytem over them to give
them power and also use it to harness
the energy of them when going down
grade or as they stop. With wheels
which tuck up under the railcars when
not in use. these could be promted to
come down by an onboard computer that
is wireless to help with weight. These
rail cars are independently owned but
each owner could see income from
adding them to their cars.
Less diesel being used would lower
the price of oil per barrel but it
also would lower the price of gas at
the pump. With diesel being cheaper
right now, it would let the price
of it cause more to use diesel, that
in turn would lower the price of oil
per barrel, lower the price of gas
and lower the price of our airlines
fuel as well.
Simple supply and demand at its
best. Less demand equals lower
prices. Remember when it was warmer
than normal this last winter? with
that came less people heating with
heating oil. This in turn lowered
the price of gas at the pump as
well as the price of oil.
I know, where will we get all
this new electricity to use for the
trains? From a host of ignored
energy which for the most part
goes to waste today. Our nations
tides on the coast, our nations
rivers and oil refineries. why
oil refineries? Easy, have you ever
seen the huge fires which burn off
waste gas. Well this would power
a steam plant equal to a nuclear
reactor. Tax the refineries twice
what they have wasted over the
last five year time period on
average. Give this free to whoever
builds the steam plants to harness
this waste. Use the resident
domain laws to get the land and
vote out everyone who votes against
us being able to put barges on
rivers or our Nations inlets as
well as not voting for us to
harness all the other ways we
need to make clean energy.
Everyone who is for new ways to
fight global warming should be for
this. Everyone that wants cheaper
gas and diesel should be for this.
Everyone should actually be for
this but big oil. Who cares about
them?
I need people to join me in
this. There is an extreme amount
of other things I could share
about this.
williamehlert@aol.com