Oil Prices down - so Gas prices should drop shouldn't they?

[barney15c]

As of Friday oil prices are down to $82.24 a barrel from a High of $147in the summer . So I would assume then that as Gas prices are based on Oil prices we should be in for a major price cut then. Comments anybody?

[tiggerblue10]

I hope you're right!

[jake-the-peg]

Retail or Wholesale?

A lot of gas companies may be sitting with winter stocks of expensive gas

[mischief121]

what has the cut price of oil got to do with gas?

[pusspuss]

gas went up because of the price of oil

[Gromit]

That is in fact what Brown is demanding

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7662918.st m

[pusspuss]

they will use the excuse that jake has put above, that they have bought winter stocks.
LOAD OF CR@P

[mischief121]

NO NO petrol went up because of the price of oil.Petrol is a by product of oil not gas.

[jake-the-peg]

Well it's not so much an excuse as an economic reality.

The price of something is fixed by what people will pay.

If one of the big companies hasn't hot a big stock they'll be able to offer lower prices and attract a whole load of customers - which would force the others to do similar and take a hit on their balance sheet.

Or they might prefer to keep charging the higher price with the others and take the higher profit from a smaller customer base.

That decision will be based on a whole load of things that we have no insight into

[barney15c]

Taking into account what Jake said - surely its not unreasonable to expect a price cut in the spring when the stocks bought now would be cheaper.

[anotheoldgit]

When in this country, have you ever heard of anything going down in price when the reason for the increase has gone down? Perhaps sometimes a penny or two off petrol.

If some councils have to put up their council taxes because of the freeze on the money they have stashed away in Iceland's banks, does anyone really think that the tax will be reduced if and when this money is released?

Reminds me of when the fish & chips shops put the price of their chips up because they have to pay more for their potatoes, due to a bad season. Do they ever reduce the price of their chips when the price of spuds go down again?

[nedflanders]

Another note the price of oil is similar to what is was a year ago. But have the petrol prices dropped down to the same level? Have they ****!!!
Once again big business is ripping us off at the most inopporrtune time thinkable, if they want the economy to kick start, get the prices down asap!

[pusspuss]

mischief121, the head of british gas said the price had to go up because of the price of OIL

[Clanad]

Here, in the intermountain area of the western U.S., gasoline (your petrol) reached a high of $3.92 per gallon about a month ago. In the intervening 30 days or so, it's dropped to $2.79 and expected to go substanially lower. Some analysts are predicting that by years end it could be less than $2.00. I see the representaives of OPEC are holding an emergency meeting today. Fortunately, I don't think there's much they can do about it...

[jno]

oldgit, how would you feel if the price of things went down when supply improved - so your pay or pension was then reduced on the basis that you didn't need so much to live on? I wouldn't be best pleased myself.

[cazzz1975]

I agree with the fish and chip one, they never decrease the price after the "increase because of the new potatoes"

they are taking us all to the cleaners

[buildersmate]

Don't buy chips then. It's that simple - law of supply and demand..

[cazzz1975]

not the point builders, the problem is they give us the same excuse to keep raising and raising the price, even though at some point they go back to the cheaper potatoes, they still dont reduce the price accordingly

[jno]

Our local chippery sold a portion for �1 for more than five years. The price went up to �1.20 two years ago and has stayed there since then. (Same size portions too.) This doesn't seem like rampant inflation to me. As for petrol, I filled up for �1.02 a litre this morning, which is less than Clanad pays for a gallon...

[socket2008]

A slightly different angle. In my youth I worked in a major chain of newsagents. Just prior to the budget when cigarettes would be put up in price, the company used to bulk buy millions of cigarettes.

When our delivery arrived we had thousands of packets that we had to store everywhere you can think of. Even our own lockers were taken over and the kitchen too!. When the prices went up, because they had bought zillions in at the lower price, they made a tidy profit and were still selling those same cigarettes 6 months later.