No Relief At The Pump Despite Crude Falling
Crude peaked at $106 on September 15 and has since fallen nearly 15% to $90. Despite the recent downturn, gasoline futures are up 1.9% over the same period. The margin between the two widened from roughly $40 to $58 per barrel. That is over three times the twenty-year median, $17, and sits in the 99.8th percentile of every trading day since 2006. That gap is what a refiner earns for turning a barrel of crude into fuel, which helps explain why there is no relief at the pump. Refining capacity and freight costs are offsetting declines in crude oil. U.S. refinery utilization hit 97.4% in late…
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