Comment on September 14 prediction: Correct. Indiana and Michigan spiked on September 16 with Ohio following on September 17.
Monday, September 21, 2015, 11:10 PM: Decent sized jump in wholesale today puts us back in the danger zone. Ohio is still slightly above the Spike Line, but Indiana and Michigan have headed below it with today’s increase. I’m looking for a Spike as soon as tomorrow to the $2.39 – $2.49 range for the Great Lakes region. Ohio may go a day later than Indiana and Michigan, but I wouldn’t chance it if I were you.
The Costco and Sam’s Club in Kalamazoo County had been holding steady at $1.999, all through last week’s reset and up until yesterday (Sunday). They both increased to $2.099 today, while the low end of regular gas stations in Kalamazoo County are two at $2.189 and a large number at $2.199.
Up until the last reset, the regular gas stations near Costco had been matching Costco’s price, which seemed unnecessary to me, since Costco does not advertise their prices on a big sign that can be seen from the road and you have to have a $55 annual membership to purchase gas there.
I think Tim’s prediction is a good one. Speedway normally raises prices around 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. ET, so you’ll want to fill up before that time if you believe a reset is coming.
You know it had to head UP in price. Patrick from Gas Buddy was quoted on our local TV as predicting dropping gas prices down to $2.00
Every time.
Always expect the opposite of what the “experts” predict. They’re profiting from having the opposite position.
Don’t misunderstand, I greatly appreciate the $2.25 to $2.50 gas this year. But I also feel cheated out of half a tank or more in August when we did not get the pricing we should have. A month, give or take, and the price was back down, but we were supposed to be lower by then, and LOTS lower during the month. And now it’s on the way up again. Let see, market down, oil up. Market up, oil up. Oil down, Whiting down.
Timm, could you share the link? I’m curious what context its in because I haven’t talked to many reporters this week.
The rest of the nation continues to see lowering prices….
http://wane.com/2015/09/21/indiana-one-of-three-states-to-see-gas-prices-spike-last-week/
And Chris, don’t be so cynical. Yesterday, a reporter from North Carolina copied and pasted what one of our analysts told an outlet in New Jersey, even after I told her that the quote did not apply to her.
You don’t know how many times reporters never talk to me and use something completely out of context.
Timm, where in that article do I provide a specific comment that says prices in Ohio (or wherever) will move to $X? The national average is not the average in one state, but all 50.
Sorry, Patrick, I posted that link before reading your post. The one I am referring to was a news report on WOWO in Fort Wayne referring to an interview with Patrick Dehan (if I spelled that correctly) from GasBuddy. I assume the interview they referred to was recent.
Patrick: my bad, WOWO is radio, and they mainly report for the tri state area of MI OH IN. I don’t recall any specific context except to “expect” the prices in our region to continue dropping, and the take away was to hit below $2.00 soon. It made me smile, but that was before I found out spot went up yesterday.
No Speedway reset in Kalamazoo County, Michigan today. Despite this, both the Kalamazoo County Sam’s Club and Costco went up again today, to $2.129 and $2.189 respectively. Regular gas stations in Kalamazoo County are one at $2.169, six at $2.189, and a bunch at $2.199.
Patrick DeHaan has been commenting in this thread, but he did not share what he tweeted at 8:12 this morning: “Watching for a possible price hike in the Great Lakes soon. Yesterday saw a fire at Husky’s refinery in Lima, OH.”
Ah, another refinery “issue”……..Same sh–, different day.
You mean highly complex machinery breaking now and then?
It would be FAR more surprising if it DIDN’T happen, based on simple physics.
BTW, no spike in Indy today.
Let’s see, 3 “issues” in, what, 6 weeks? And all in the same region….
Chris- I suggest driving around a 1965 Pontiac Firebird 24/7 for months at a time without slowing down and see what results you get. I’ll be awaiting your report back. Maybe it’s also a conspiracy that some NASCAR drivers fail to finish a race with engine failure, etc.
Umm, Whiting was just overhauled a few years ago, so YOU get back to me with a valid analogy.
Where I work we have several Haas machining centers. You can’t get much more complex than that. The only down time we ever have with any of them is scheduled maintenance which happens between runs of parts. Maybe we should have an unexpected shut down of them then charge our customers a hefty 20% increase. I bet that would go over well with them.
Patrick. Just checked the latest NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Chicagoland. Every car was running at the finish. Granted, Harvick and the Earnhardt protégé was many laps down after contact with the wall. The teams pride themselves on minimal mechanical failures. Maybe we should have Rick Hendrick and his employees run Whiting.
I work for a very very large cellular network providers. We offer VoIP, LTE Data, UMTS voice and data, and GSM voice and data. Lots of tachnology variations, all at the same time. Switching, routing, internetwork, and across continents and cultures. Every one of our nodes mud exhibit a 5-9s (that is 99.999%) up time over a rating period of one month or it is immediately replaced with no service interruption. Heck, after hurricanes, we’re the only thing working.
Tim and Bearcat are obviously comparing apples and oranges.
Maybe we should have a field trip to a refinery. But have your parents sign the permission slip ONLY if you are ready to learn something.
Once again Ren, you have managed to so famously miss a point that flew right across in front of you. Both Bearcat and I were making an example of a Free Market. In the case of Auto Racing, if a car stops, someone else wins, incentive to do better next time. In my employer’s case, if our network has issues, customers move to another better network, incentive to keep our network running fine all the time.
What, in the case of us gasoline customers in IN, MI, and OH, do we have for an alternate provider? NONE! When Whiting goes down, we have no choice but to bend over and pay, and when Whiting comes back on line, they have lost no customers, effectively, they have had no real lasting consequences. We ATE the consequences for them. In a real free market, we would have choices, and Whiting would need to perform better than someone else or they would be gone. Running a refinery should be subject to consequences of poor performance in the marketplace, if there is a free market. IN this case, too few refiners means no alternatives, a narrow, not so free market, that is subject to wild swings of pricing and supply, and gnashing of teeth of end customers.
With the Spike line at $2.31.5 and Grand Rapids average at $2.29….I filled up today in Cedar Springs at $2.19….. We can only predict when prices are going to go up…..
Like my father always said, nothing is certain, except for death and taxes!
Ren and Patrick: providing no facts and condescending as usual.
If we don’t have the same shade of rose glasses……….
I’m currently on a field trip to a refinery Ren….the Wood River refinery in Roxana Illinois. How’s that for timing!! Actually I work for the railroad and just happen to be in Roxana. The place is lit up like a Christmas tree at night.
While driving across I70, I saw $1.99 in Effingham. The Granite City area just had a spike to the $2.39 range. Guess I better tell the wife to fill up tomorrow morning to be on the safe side
I think Patrick’s NASCAR analogy was a little off, too. Imagine NASCAR forcing the cars to have to run on any number of different fuels (summer blend, winter blend, RFG), sometimes at the same time (diesel, too). Pit stops would have to include downtime to switch the engine over. Switching over and over would be brutal on the engine, would it not?
Is it suspicious that we have so many refinery outages? Possibly. Would I expect absolutely no outages knowing the process refineries go through to make the fuel we use? I’d be a fool to.
I’m more interested in what people think about the VW controversy:
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/21/9365667/volkswagen-clean-diesel-recall-passenger-cars
Timm- perfect. So you can explain why AT&T has had a tower down 🙂 … since April in my area, and why my LTE connection has been 0-0.5 mbps! That’s about 0.001% uptime for that tower. I’ve even talked to AT&T network engineers. It’s been great. So I dumped them and switched. Gasoline is a commodity and phone service isn’t, however, but they all charge about the same amount and I still pay high prices when I barely get service. Maybe I need to start “ThePhoneGame”.
Chris- you’re on par there. It’s hard to talk to people who refute the most basic understanding of economics and business.
The simple point of NASCAR was that even brand new things can fail with little to no warning. Does it happen every race? It happens occasionally that one or two might go down. Make the field 130 and you’d probably see even more go down. Driving an old car for weeks at a time and you’ll encounter unexpected problems. That’s the nature of it.
Comparing refineries to the cellular infrastructure is not quite right. The cellular network is not making anything. It’s there. It’s a service.
A refinery is a pretty tricky continuous manufacturing process that involves things that tend to blow up.
Having said that, the “gaming” side of refineries is such that an outage, ie a plant NOT producing, still makes you money. We just saw that. Think how funny it would be if all ice cream manufacturers raised prices the day Blue Bell went out 🙂
Ren, it wouldn’t be you if you didn’t say something a little condescending. I don’t think TimmP and I is as far off as you think. In my case, I work for a company that runs in some capacity 24/6 (Sundays off). Many things get audited annually, most get audited in a two year period. WE have to deal with FDA audits every two years. My work gets QA checked by someone inside our department then it gets checked by the appropriate department managers. On top of this we are converting to a lean manufacturing company throughout. If we don’t do all of this mistakes get made, machining centers or other equipment break down, then things get put on backorder. Then customers start looking elsewhere. If we charge any kind of surcharge for our mess-ups customers will look elsewhere, and they do not need to look far.
So you see our system is a little complex but it works. I wouldn’t recommend it for all industries but lean manufacturing is transferrable to all industries, even refineries. I don’t know if Whiting does lean but they should if my recollections of the Gulf Refinery field trip in Hooven, Ohio in the 1970s is correct. I didn’t take notes on that day because I guess I still thought I knew everything back then. 😉
I would like to know why this “economics and business” structure only happens in the Midwest states? If a nascar engine blows up, they don’t raise ticket prices for the next race, bad comparison.
The spike has begun… Going to $2.45 throughout Indy/Indiana, $2.49 in Michigan. Top it off while you can!
Jrunner is correct. The 3700 Gull Rd. Speedway in Kalamazoo Township was the first Speedway in Michigan reported at $2.499. Its increased price was reported at 9:55 a.m. ET.
#2 to check in was 279 Baldwin St. in Jenison at 10:08 a.m.
#3 to report was 401 Mackinaw Ave. in Cheboygan at 10:08 a.m.
Typically, there are still some non-Speedway stations selling at the lower price until about 2:00 p.m., but many independents will have gone up by the lunch hour.
South Bend IN area, Speedway spike $2.45. Fill up for $2.15-$2.21 while you can!
We are on winter blend, true? Assuming true, barrel prices were similar in early January. Prices at the pump were below $2/gallon on average. There is a breakdown (or lack of transparency) in pricing structures there.
Derek, not sure if supply/demand is running the same as in January (probably not with the weather this nice still) with refineries all up and running (some in maintenance mode right now). The real question is, why is NW Indiana at $2.69 vs $2.45 for the rest of indiana when we’re supposedly all on winter blend? Gouging by the Family Express/Speedway tag team twins or something else at play going on? I’m in Indy so it doesn’t really matter but that struck me as dirty pool.
I just got a Gas Buddy alert saying prices are going up in Indiana. I thought the winter blend switchover would start sending us downward a bit?
My daughter reports a shortage of her cat’s favorite food after a demand spike (her cat ate all the inventory at both pet care chain stores). She had to order some on the spot market (free Amazon prime)… But price of other cat food brands was unaffected.
An anonymous cat food pricing analyst is optimistic about the situation: “once the kitten – he’s only 7 months old – becomes 8 months old he will switch to adult cat food which is cheaper and this will alleviate any kitten food shortages”.
1.829 in SC
It’s at $2.00 in North Carolina which has fairly similar taxes with Indiana.
What’s $0.45/gallon among friends now?
Any Speedways in North Carolina lol
Amazing what happens when you get out of Speedway Country. 500 mile stretch saw ONE station over 1.999
Chicago Spot Regular $1.6064 vs Gulf Coast Spot $1.3674, Chicago RBOB $1.7964 vs Gulf Coast $1.3619. Their gas is cheaper in the South. Big price difference on Premium: Chicago $2.1314 vs Gulf Coast $1.5574. I see our nuclear power plant in West Michigan had another unplanned shutdown the other day, Detroit’s had one earlier this year. Search for those, see how often they’ve had unplanned shutdowns. One out East had 5 shutdowns in 12 months a few years back. In both cases you are dealing with aging, complex, and potentially dangerous equipment that can be shut down by the slightest malfunction.
London KY 2.43
Corbin Ky 1.99
2 cities 20 minutes apart, along I-75, one in Speedway Country, one not. Guess which.
no spike nw ohio yet R20 corridor 2.15-2.25 range still. gonna top off thursday morning as 2.
49 spike looks like coming
Had to deliver a puppy to central Ohio yesterday, Marion. Passed $2.19 in Findlay, same as it was here in SE MI. Came home to $2.49.
2nd straight Saturday hike in Chicagoland, this one a dime higher than last week
2.399 in Ohio. Glad I’m still in SC.
When you come back to Cincy Chris, be sure to tow a gasoline trailer lol. Spot up a dime yesterday…have we switched from winter back to summer blend already??
a saturday spike in NW ohio..2.39..while since had one of those..was expecting in couple days ago…
Just a quick observation. The Pilot Truck Stop here in Fort Wayne, in has a hugely tall sign for interstate truckers to see the cash price for big rig diesel. It is generally 20 cents above regular gasoline in times of all quiet. It is $2.33 this morning. Most stations are $2.43. I do believe we are about 30 cents above where we should be if things were completely “normal”
Anyone know of the reason for Chicago spot prices to be jumping so high? Someone over there invent a new phantom reason for taking more of our money since they can’t blame high oil prices?