Most people I think find this situation very frustrating, probably
because we feel there is little that we can do about it.
Where I live and where I work is not something that I can easily
change based on the price of gas.
And for me personally, I have over 1 year left on my current car
payments and cannot easily change over to
another vehicle, even if I could afford to do that.  And while gas
prices do change from place to place, there is
still not much you can do in the way of shopping around.  It would
cost more to drive to where there might be
cheaper gas, than it would to just fill right where you are at.

Another frustration that I see with the price is what is the cost of
goods sold?  Last week I purchased a tank full
of gasoline in Osakis MN.   What was the cost of that gas and when
was it produced.  My guess would be that
the oil was purchased before the hurricane struck, and that most
likely the gasoline was also produced before that.

So the price increase was just money in somebodies pocket!!  If a
grocer reads in the morning newspaper that the
orange crop in Florida has been devastated; should he immediately
raise the price on the oranges that he has sitting on the shelf in
the store?  After all, he has already paid a certain price for those
oranges and has his margin set based on
that price.  And he not only has oranges on the shelf, but in the
back room, and probably some on a truck coming
from the brand-x warehouse.  And brand-x has a warehouse of oranges,
already bought and paid for.  And maybe
some coming on a truck from Florida; from another warehouse full of oranges.
Now the COST of any of these oranges has not gone up...  Should the
grocer raise his prices now or later when
he finally gets a shipment of higher cost ones?   Which in reality
wouldn't actually have a higher cost associated
with them, other than the fact that higher prices is just one way of
rationing a short supply.

Somebody is making extra money when the price at the pump changes and
there hasn't been a delivery!

On Friday, a Twin Cities newspaper ran a story on where we get our
gasoline here in Minnesota.
Most of the oil comes from Canada and the gasoline is refined right
in the Twin Cities area by 2 refineries.

So why should our gas prices have been affected at all?  We don't get
our oil from the gulf states, nor do
we get our gasoline from any of the refineries that might be shut down.

Now some of argued that it is our complex regulations that cause the
high prices... this article refutes part of that in
that it stated that these 2 refineries have long-term contracts to
supply gasoline in the MN, WI and IA areas and
couldn't sell to other areas if they wanted to.

The end of the article also mentioned higher winter fuel prices,
while it also stated this is also governed by
long term contracts and that the winter fuel is already in
storage.    So if it is already in STORAGE, why should the
price go up???  Again, somebody is making a pile of money, while
everyone in the chain claims it is not them.



Paul D. Christensen
16777 Cty Rd 4 - PO Box 369
Osakis MN 56360-0369
320-859-3477 - home
320-766-3067 - cell

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