Is my small community getting screwed? (gas prices).

So we all know that when the price of oil goes up, the price of gas goes up. This happens almost immediately since it is a fungible commodity.

So, the price of crude is dropping. Shouldn’t this work both ways? The price of gas where I live is still at its all time record high.

Is the price of gas dropping where you live?

I bought gas yesterday at $3.59/9. This is the cheapest it’s been in some time.

StG

Only slightly…I live in an area where gas prices are notoriously high because of the huge influx of tourists to this tourist destination. I have to drive to Rhode Island [10 minutes away] to get cheaper gas…but I have noticed a slight decrease lately .

As William Shattner and Henry Rollins said in “I Can’t Get Behind That”

BILL: I can’t understand why the price of gas suddenly rises when oil goes up…
ROLLINS: …but takes months to go down long after oil falls!
BILL: I can’t get behind any of that!

It’s 4.09 here. As high as it’s ever been.

We are also a tourist destination too, cheaper gas is 100 miles away. I understand that we would have higher gas than Denver, but it seems that it should follow the price of crude just like when it goes up. But when it drops, it doesn’t drop like it does in other places.

We’ve dropped $.35 in the past month, down from $4.099 to $3.749.

Of course, that’d be after I left. Grar.

Our little town out here on the Colorado plains historically has higher gas prices than any of the other small towns around. Nobody can figure out why, but prices here are consistently 5 to 10 cents a gallon higher than towns only 15-20 miles away, in all directions.

We’ve dropped maybe $.20.

I wonder if variations in nearby refinery capacity might affect the stickiness of gas prices.

It doesn’t bug me to much that overall we are higher. Afterall, they have to ship it over the divide.

But it should be coming down (relative) in price just like everyone else.

Santo Rugger also lives in a western tourist area. His prices topped out at the same high as ours (4.09). But, his prices have already dropped .35. Ours are still at 4.09 :mad:

I paid $3.69 today but NJ is normally among the cheaper gas prices. Two weeks ago I paid $3.93 at a station that runs about the same price.

I hate you all.

Lowest I’ve seen around here is $4.15

We’re down about 10 or 20 cents, in my own very flawed observations. The tricky thing is at least some of the stations around here have switched to the old practice of different prices for cash or credit - and debit card = “credit”. So what looks like a price drop when you’re driving by ("$4.06! ohmigosh, stop!") turns out to be the same ol’ same ol’ (“Damn. $4.06 for CASH; $4.16 for cards!”) when you get to the pump.

Premium had dropped from 4.26 to 3.99 in the last 2 weeks (Gulf Coast).

Yeah, but there’s no divide between us and the refineries in Cheyenne and Denver. It’s a straight down-hill run out either I-76 or I-80, and even towns further away from those refineries see lower prices than we do.

On close examination, of course, it’s a piddling thing – a couple of dimes a gallon means $2 per fillup. I mean, it’s just not that big a deal. But something about it still irks the hell out of me.

You’re in Sterling, IIRC. It’s probably because you’re on I76. No one is going to go to Haxton to get gas if they’re driving from Denver to Omaha. The other stations in town have no inscentive to lower prices if the big competition is charging .20 a gallon more.

I filled up on Sunday in Boulder County and I think it was $3.70 or so, down about 0.30 in a week. It sounds like the mountain stations were holding prices firm for a while and now they’re letting them get back to normal margins which are usually close to 0.50 a gallon higher than Denver.

I’m very lucky - I rent a summer bungalow in Loch Sheldrake, NY (in Sullivan County, in the Catskills), and the two gas stations in town have started a price war, they’re down to charging $3.79. That price has held steady for two weeks now.

I keep hoping it will spread to the neighboring towns and cause a domino effect all over New York, but no such luck. We have long lines here in Loch Sheldrake, but the price is still in the high 3.90s-low 4.00s in Liberty, Hurleyville and Woodbourne.

I understand what you’re saying, and you’re right about that much. But interstate stops in both Fort Morgan and Julesburg charge less than our in-town stores do. And in Sidney, Neb., on I-80, it’s a good 20 cents cheaper. In most places the interstate stops are higher than the off-interstate, in-town stores, but that’s just not true here. The local newspaper has been running a “gas watch” for about six months, listing gas prices locals have found in their travels around our 3-state area – interstate or no, we’re higher than anyone around.

On the other hand, you are correct about my location – and if you know anything at all about folks in Sterling, you know we love to bitch. I attribute it to the ethnic mix of the area, and only half-jokingly. For years we complained that the annual Fourth of July fireworks display took too long because they fired one shell every 30 seconds. “They” changed the program to a glorious, continuous cacophony of light and sound – so now we bitch because it doesn’t last long enough. :smack: