Sneakers55
Champion Author
Houston
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Message Posted: Aug 20, 2007 2:28:45 PM
I know that the Chevron station I visited to top off Friday night was two cents higher a gallon Monday morning.
The Phillips 66 I usually go to (out of the way going home, alas) didn't go up any at all.
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profjake
Champion Author
Houston
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Message Posted: Aug 20, 2007 9:33:14 AM
Dont take this with offense, but are you really that naive with respect to gas pricing?
Here are my average Joe answers:
1) BECAUSE there is a hurricane in the Gulf.
2) Individual stations set the prices unless it is a company owned stations and those are quite rare these days, especially for Shell.
3) What is to be done? They are not breaking any laws and a 3% price hike is hardly price gouging.
The facts are that, as someone else posted, Metro has been telling people to keep the tanks full all week. This has really increased demand. Several stations I went to in SW Houston this weekend were either out of some grades, or very low. Plus Chevron (and probably others) have suspended drilling and moved their offshore platforms, plus the refineries have cut back production in anticipation of the hurricane. THis is all completely normal AND expected behavior.
NOW... a good case in point of price gouging would be when the Randalls gas stations hiked their prices some 50+ cents/gallon in 1 day when Rita was on the way. But how many Randalls stations do you still see operating? ;-) I think they went out of the gas biz pretty quicky, and will probably be out of biz pretty soon altogether, for other reasons than gas price gouging.
I encourage you to read the Recent Articles if you aren't already. Then you will understand that this behavior is not out of the ordinary.
[Edited by: profjake at 8/20/2007 10:36:17 AM EST]
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InfoMaster
Rookie Author
Houston
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Message Posted: Aug 20, 2007 8:38:16 AM
The few cents increase have a way of getting frequent and if left unchecked becomes a lot of dollars specially if you have multiple cars and a large volume of usage.
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POCONO
Champion Author
Houston
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Message Posted: Aug 19, 2007 9:14:34 PM
Metro signs all over town have been telling folks to keep their tanks full for days. Some stations were temp out due to this false demand. Price up of 3 cents not much to talk about though.
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mwjones
Champion Author
Dallas
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Message Posted: Aug 19, 2007 6:28:50 PM
Now the question is, since Dean is going south of the border, based on the computer models, how soon will these demand inflated gas prices take a turn south again?
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InfoMaster
Rookie Author
Houston
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Message Posted: Aug 19, 2007 3:14:50 PM
This Shell stations are the quickest to increase and they increased more. I noticed the Chevrons, Texaco and Exxons followed later with two cents increase.
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PGM
Champion Author
Houston
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Message Posted: Aug 19, 2007 2:19:10 PM
I think the sudden surge is due to demand. Including myself, there are a lot of people filling up "Just in case". I saw on the 59 south the signs were telling people to keep their tanks full. (I've got about 30 gallons stored at both work and home - for generators, cars, friends, ...)
I think gas was going up anyway -- I expected it.
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PTCruiserGT
Champion Author
Houston
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Message Posted: Aug 19, 2007 1:38:17 PM
come on, didn't you expect that?
expected it to go even higher
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