Thursday, April 21, 2011

So why is gasoline so expensive, when oil is so far off its record price?



The answer is that the price of oil Americans see every day has little to do with the price of gasoline at the pump.


Those prices are for a particular type of oil -- West Texas Intermediate -- that's stored in Cushing, Okla.


Thanks to increasing supplies from the Rocky Mountain states and Canada's oil sands, plus a lack of pipelines to move that oil out, there's currently a big glut of oil in Cushing. That's pushing the price of West Texas crude down.


Prices for most other types of oil, which make up the vast majority of oil that refiners use in U.S. gasoline, are much higher than West Texas Intermediate. London's Brent crude, for example, was closer to $124 a barrel on Wednesday.


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