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Old 03-30-2022, 11:48 AM   #109
Slowmo
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City: Lafayette, CA
Vessel Name: Esprit
Vessel Model: 40' Tollycraft tricabin diesel
Join Date: Oct 2018
Posts: 453
As prices go up some differences are just driven by the local retailer. They buy fuel from the distributor or refiner and add a mark-up. Typically fuel retail markups are small, as are refining margins. High throughput stations will quickly follow price increases they get on their deliveries, they have to or they go broke. Coming out of the oil industry I can assure you most of the increases we're seeing are the result of two things: increased demand as we came out of the pandemic and changes in US government policy that reduced investment in production and thus created the expectation of higher future prices. Prices can go down again but requires a major policy shift. Prices can actually drop pretty quickly since if the expectation is of lower prices in he future, speculators start to dump their higher priced futures contracts. The reverse is also true and is where we are today. One thing is a simple fact, the US has enormous energy reserves, one of the largest in the world, its mainly government policy that determines where our oil comes from. Threaten domestic oil companies and they'll invest elsewhere.

Luckily the current policy has been excellent for my stock options and performance shares.
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