Delayed Updates

For those of you who may be wondering, the delay you’re seeing in updates to “The Spike Line” and “Today in Oil” pages is related to problems I’ve been experiencing in getting Chicago-area prices. Typically I pull prices from a specific site in the evening; that site in turn reflects postings from a price feed service. The price feed service has become erratic in sending through the updates, and thus the site I use is erratic as well. Based on what I’ve been seeing, you can expect delays of one to two days. I check periodically through the day, and update prices as soon as I see them available. While I could estimate the Chicago prices based on New York closing prices, which are reliably available, there is a fair amount of fluctuation between New York and Chicago. Because the formulas used to calculate the data for The Spike Line page are dependent on Chicago numbers, so far I’ve elected to wait to get accurate figures. If I decide to use estimates and correct the figures later I will put up a post to let you know. I apologize for the inconvenience, and hopefully things will settle down eventually. I’ve communicated with the price feed service about the problem but to no avail so far. -CP-