# YAGPQ... (Yet Another Gas Price Question)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yagpq-yet-another-gas-price-question/247356>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 27, 2004, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yagpq-yet-another-gas-price-question/247356 "2004-05-27T16:07:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![McDeath\_the\_Mad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a3d4f5/32.png) [@McDeath\_the\_Mad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/McDeath_the_Mad)\
**Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yagpq-yet-another-gas-price-question/247356/1 "2004-05-27T16:07:02Z")

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Okay explain this to me.

Thursday May 20 gas was 98.9 a liter  
Friday May 21 gas went down to 88.4 a liter  
Tuesday May 25 gas went down to 87.4 a liter  
Wednesday May 26 gas went up to 98.9 a liter

How is this possible? Are crude oil prices fluctuating that much? A 11.5 cent increase overnight? For you non-metric people, that’s ~$0.40 a gallon increase!

MtM

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**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\
**Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yagpq-yet-another-gas-price-question/247356/2 "2004-05-27T16:11:11Z")

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Supply and demand.

With today’s information systems, it’s possible to update prices at an impressively high rate. This is a good thing.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![McDeath\_the\_Mad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a3d4f5/32.png) [@McDeath\_the\_Mad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/McDeath_the_Mad)\
**Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yagpq-yet-another-gas-price-question/247356/3 "2004-05-27T16:31:22Z")

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Okay, so to get this right when demand goes up, so does the price? I assume this is the way it works, because everyone is blaming the high price of gas on China.

Now when it comes to local markets, it was a long weekend here in Canada. So I would think demand would go up on a long weekend (everyone travelling), so shouldn’t gas have gone up in price?

MtM

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**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\
**Post date:** [May 27, 2004, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yagpq-yet-another-gas-price-question/247356/4 "2004-05-27T17:20:05Z")

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> [@McDeath\_the\_Mad](#):
>
> Okay, so to get this right when demand goes up, so does the price?

Yes, _ **if** _ the supply remains constant.

> [@McDeath\_the\_Mad](#):
>
> So I would think demand would go up on a long weekend (everyone travelling), so shouldn’t gas have gone up in price?

Yes, _ **unless** _ the supply increased. Sometimes te suppliers will anticipate an increase in demand, and increase supply in sync with the predicted demand.