People keep pointing at today’s oil price like the gas station uses that number at lunchtime. It doesn’t.
The station prices the next load, not this morning’s quote and not oil bought last year. Crude has to be bought, turned into gasoline, moved, stored, then trucked. That usually takes a few weeks. Prices also go up faster than they come down. That is why oil can sit near ninety-two dollars and gas can sit near four forty-seven at the same time.
About half the gallon is the oil. The rest is making it, moving it, the station’s cut, and taxes. The federal tax is 18.4 cents. State taxes are higher, especially in states that treat drivers like a cash machine.
The high barrel price people are waving around is leftover Biden and Obama policy. They blocked pipelines, slowed permits, treated American energy like the enemy, and drained the emergency oil reserve. Biden sold off a huge amount in 2022. That helped for a minute. It also left the tank almost empty for the next shock.
We also closed refineries. A big Houston plant shut. A Los Angeles plant shut. Fewer plants means gasoline stays expensive even when oil eases. California made it worse. Gavin Newsom spent years attacking oil companies, then watched a major plant leave. California needs a special blend and cannot just tap extra Texas gasoline overnight. That is why California is near six dollars. That is not a mystery. That is what happens when you chase the plants out and still expect cheap gas.
Trump’s Venezuela deal and pipeline approvals are the opposite of what Obama and Biden did. More oil and more pipe do not hit the pump the day of the announcement. Fields and pipelines take time. The damage took years to bake into the price. The fix will show up the same way: later, not this afternoon.
So no. Today’s gallon is not last year’s oil, and it is not this morning’s barrel price. It is weeks of restocking costs sitting on years of bad energy policy. The turnaround started. The receipt just has not caught up yet
Today, gasoline is $4.49 a gallon.
A barrel of oil is $92.44
On July 18, 2022, gas was $4.49 a gallon
A barrel of oil was $102.60
Weird