Gas Just Hit Below $2.99 in Sacramento

I'm not sure why anyone would argue with gturner in the first place. He's here to troll, nothing more.

Sure, man. You keep dreaming. :headpat:

Arguing with gturner can sometimes entertain. He's not a complete waste like some of the other trolls.

True. But the troll appears to have weakened whatever schackles have been keeping Oerdins demon constrained.

Are you enjoying your Monday, Flow?

Yeah, getting some things done, thinking BLT for lunch.

And here I thought you were having fun trolling.

Dude, BLT > Trolling, always.

If by "many", you mean maybe half of the 139 refineries being owned by two-dozen or so competing oil companies, with the rest independent companies with names you'd have never heard of, like Greka, Country Mark, Western Refining, Hunt Southland, Ergon, Northern Tier, etc, then yes. You can Google them and see which ones you want to invest in. You can even get a portfolio.

Perhaps your misperception stems from the way the left has always screamed about "big oil", constantly implying that there are a few big oil companies that own and control everything. That has always been a very simplistic message aimed at people who don't know anything about the oil industry, and don't need to, as long as they know to despise it as a small cabal of evil capitalist plotters who cause all our wars. They've been doing it for almost a century now, and even claimed WW-II was a war to save Royal Dutch Shell. They have made such claims about every war since. They're also wrong. The oil industry is quite diverse with a whole lot of small players, not even counting the hundreds and hundreds of foreign companies. It's not a near monopoly by any stretch, because having oil fields and a refinery gives a company, even a small one, an automatic customer base. This is in stark contrast to the semiconductor industry where the ability to make a slow, oddball CPU gets you nearly zero percent market share no matter how many you can produce.

Not only do I not know anyone who made claims remotely like the ones in your second giant run on paragraph but I have never even read of anyone like that. I suspect this is another example of you making a strawman argument and then spectacularly failing to knock your own strawman down.

I have already dealt with the issue of refineries but it seems you do not have the background or education to understand it. The tiny 3rd tier refineries produce only a tiny amount and so are too small to effect market price in an oliogopoly market structure. Take each refinery on your list rank them by output volume and you'll find that in most regional markets upwards of 80% of the market in controlled by just 1-3 companies.

Nine lines with eight sentences is not a run on paragraph. Am I supposed to use crayon or what?

So let's just look at a few states

Atmospheric crude oil refining capacity (barrels per day):

Alaska
10,500 BP Prudhoe Bay
15,000 ConocoPhilips Prudhoe Bay
78,605 Flint Hills Resources
74,300 Petro Star Inc
65,000 Tesoro Alaska

Arkansas
7,500 Cross Oil Refining
83,000 Lion Oil Co

Colorado
103,000 Suncor Energy

Delaware
182,000 Delaware City Refining Co

Hawaii
54,000 ChevronUSA
93,500 Par Petroleum Corp

Illinois
238,600 ExxonMobile Refining
212,000 Marathon Petroleum
172,045 PDV Midwest Refining
314,000 WRB Refining LP

Kansas
115,000 Coffeyville Resources Rfg & Mkfg
138,000 Frontier El Dorado Refining
86,000 NCRA

Louisianna
80,000 Alon Refining Krotz Spring Inc
78,000 Calcasieu Refining Co
21,320 Calumet Lubricants Co LP
57,000 Calumet Shreveport LLC
192,5000 Calumet Refining LLC
427,000 Citgo Petroleum
502,500 ExxonMobil Refining
522,000 Marathon Petroleum
473,000 Motiva Enterprises LLC
486,400 Phillips 66 Company
59,000 Placid Refining Co
45,000 Shell Oil
330,000 Valero Energy

Minnesota
270,000 Flint Hills Resources
89,500 St Paul Park Refining

Montana
10,000 Calumet Montana
59,600 Cenex Harvest States Co-op
60,000 ExxonMobil Refining
59,000 Phillips 66

New Jersey
70,000 Nustar Asphalt Refining
160,000 Paulsboro Refining Co LLC
238,000 Phillips 66 Company

New Mexico
105,000 Navajo Refining Co
25,700 Western Refining Southwest Inc

Ohio
135,000 BP-Husky Refining
155,000 Lima Refining Company
80,000 Marathon Petroleum
160,000 Toledo Refining Co LLC

Oklahoma
155,300 Holly Refining and Marketing Co
200,000 Phillips 66 Company
86,000 Valero Refining
70,000 Wynnewood Refining Co

And so on and so on. The refineries started out pretty small in the early days, but were quite profitable, and so they kept on growing and expanding. The successful ones never had a need to sell out to a big oil company, and the big oil companies weren't going to buy the unsuccessful ones, so about half our refineries are owned by companies you've probably never heard of. In most cases if a big oil company had some producing fields in their area, the big oil company would just run it through the mom-and-pop founded refinery because they couldn't financially justify building another small refinery from scratch, nor justify shipping the crude product cross country to get refined at their own facilities, just to ship the refined product back to where they started. Basically, they do what's cheapest to keep production costs down, because losing money on every sale is for losers - who go bankrupt.

A coworker sent me this a few minutes ago.

Where?

That looks like Sunset Square in San Antonio, down from the Walgreens and next to the Family Dollar.

Anna, Dinner, and anyone else living in California, I suggest you keep your tanks topped up, as come the first of the year, you're getting screwed. http://m.sfgate.com/business/article/Will-state-gas-prices-soar-in-protest-of-2015-5974297.php

Tucker, we have had right wing loons lying and spinning this for several years now trying to sow fear and mosinformation. One right wing group even claimed it would cause gas prices to go up by $3 a gallon with the entire increase being some secret tax which the author couldn't explain or show was in the law.

In short, these are just more right lies from a side which seems to never do anything but lie, at least in this state. They did have a group of economists from major universities and financial companies examine the law and their estimate was gas prices would be effected by $0.05 per gallon while a $50 dinner for two with wine at a fancy restaurant would go up by $0.28. It is not the end of the world, it does reduce carbon pollution and it does fund both mass transit and clean energy programs.

I suspect that last part is what really upsets republicans and motivates 5hem to lie. Once everyone sees that not only it can be done but that it also doesn't cost that much then they are afraid other states will decide reasonable measures to fight man made climate change is something they want to do as well.

SO EXCITED!!!

Gas finally dropped to below $1 per litre here... which, if you factor in the metric conversion and exchange rate, works out to about $4.42 per gallon!

Yep. This morning I saw that we were down to $1.99 per gallon.

I've never paid that much. Maybe for a coke. But not for gas.

2.31 now! I feel like I got reamed up the ass by that station now. @Ron Paul @gturner @Dayton3 please tell me what getting reamed up the ass feels like so I can compare.

It has been 2.22 point 9 at the WalMart where I get gas for several days now with a WM card. Comes at a good time given all the travel.

It costs an average of €6 per gallon here. That's around $7.30

It was late in coming, but it's nice to see the blood for oil tradeoff finally working out.

Holy fuckballs...is that why public transit took off in Europe after WWII?

If it happens I look forward to our resident lefties to NOT complain about it since we should all pay our fair share for the good of the environment.

Yes, because we should all support artificial price gouging.

According to the article there has been no proof found of price gouging despite the "claims" of environmentalists.

You really do need to read articles before spewing your nonsense. According to Tucker's article, it's the environmentalists who are making claims that gas prices will go up not republicans.