What's up with diesel prices?

[Rancher Will]

As a Stock Holder with Exxon, I recently received a Stock Holders' report.

It must be greed. In the last report period Exxon earned 8 Cents per gallon of fuel produced.

Along with the greed by Exxon, the taxes paid by Exxon to the Federal government for each gallon of fuel produced, including oil recovery, transportation, refining, etc., was only 76 Cents per gallon produced.

These figures do not include the actual physical cost of obtaining and delivering the finished product.

[Delaine and Lindy]

I'm the first to say I hate high fuel prices. However there was a time my Dad ran a Gas station. The money he was able to make came from the maintenance bays.. The gas pumps were there to get people into the Station. I don't have a clue as to what was made per gallon. I do know we are only told what they want us to know, its always the Big Bad Oil companys. Just wait when there is no Gas or Diesel, as someone posted its nice to just pull off the road and find fuel almost any place.. But if the Oil companys are Taxed more, fuel prices will go up. Life is Good.. Happy Trails...

[pbahlin]

Last week in Washington we went out sightseeing. Diesel prices appeared to go down as we got further away from our 'exit'. After a day of sightseeing we returned by the same route and all the prices were down even more. The next day, the station nearest our exit was down yet again when we went shopping. He was the lowest of all the stations we passed so the prices went up as we got further away from our exit. After shopping (maybe 2 hours) we found all the stations on our route home had met the guy at the exit.

This was a drop over all of about $0.20 in less than 2 days.

The free market works. It works best when it's truly free. The guy that has a place right at a freeway exit charges more because he can. There are people who enjoy the convenience enough to pay a premium for it. They are free to go hunting for a better deal and if enough do so, the exit 'bandit' will suffer enough to drop his price. It's just the market at work.

I'm sure that greed exists but it can't last unless (as is usually the case) some rent seeking politician has colluded with the greedy to create an artificial market