This is how it works according to a guy I know who worked in the Gulf and a spokesman for the Ashland Oil refinery.

Yes this is how it works

Not a businessman, eh?

No I am not lol

Those pricks raise the pump $ on just the THREAT of a gulf hurricane
And places like Chicago raise it every Friday because they know their buyers get paid
(used to be the 3rd of the month til DJT got em employed)

Yuuuuup it's all a scheme where the top 1 percent benefit & everyone else figures out how to take the ripples of those folks decisions.

So if the fair market price is abnormally high when filling the tanks, and the price goes down afterwards, the price at the pump should remain abnormally high?

And by the same token, when the gas comes in and it has dropped to the bottom of price per barrel & then the price of oil goes up... It should remain dropped until it's refilled.

Close. . .oh so close . . .but no cigar.

The price of gas should be treated like any other thing that can be bought a capitalist/free-market society and that is strictly applying the Laws of Supply and Demand.

And here's the thing - nowadays Low Supply of gasoline is a rarity in the US. In gas stations there is a computer type device called a Veeder Root that tracks the amount of gas in the reserve tanks. An annoying alarm goes off when the tanks get low. So does that mean it's time to raise the gas price to preserve what's left in the tanks before it all runs out?

No, it's time to make a couple of phone calls(duty of the store manager) so the the fuel tanker can show up, usually same day, to refill the reserves. Even if reserves get low and the alarm goes off and the tanker doesn't appear same day there's no reason to panic. That's because there's still plenty of fuel in the reserves for at least a couple of days until the tanker shows up.

Even in the worst case scenario of the tanker taking way too long, most cities, even small towns, still have another gas station or two.

Overall the problem is oil speculators messing with the prices on the global scale. That needs to be stopped in some way. Make that type of speculation illegal in the US. The other problem is government raising gas taxes or as Milton put it - "Inflation is taxation without representation."

You're correct about how things swing in prices so much, it's because speculators want to make a lot of money during a crisis situation. If the way gas was sold was changed - it would tank (get it, like a fuel tank) the way their speculations manipulate the market to bring prices up and down.

They don't just make $$ trading barrels of oil on the commodities market - they also make $$ being invested into the various Gasoline brands and their Stock Ticker. The Gasoline Companies make their money most - when the price per barrel is high.

So they manipulate the commodity market for the commodity - then manipulate the Gas Station prices to make even more money off of it.