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What is up with U.S. retail gasoline deliveries?

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Re: What is up with U.S. retail gasoline deliveries?

#31

Post by carsongross »

sxcurry wrote: post #27
carsongross wrote: post #11

Pretty simple: the U.S. economy is contracting severely, even though the manipulated (and preposterous, if you think about them for more than a moment) economic statistics (GDP, U3) are not. I'm not saying this is The Big One (I've been expecting it for a decade now) but I do expect The Big One to start a lot like this.

Do you have any real statistics to back up your statement? I can counter with other anecdotal stuff - where I live, housing prices are rising and unemployment dropping. So I guess I'll state that the economy is growing strongly. That doesn't make it any more true than your unsubstantiated statement.

See below. And see the latest ISM.

Of course there are pockets of growth during any economic contraction. In this case we can expect them to be in areas with first access to the money printed by the federal reserve: government, banking, etc. And there is an energy boom on as well. So it depends.

Re: What is up with U.S. retail gasoline deliveries?

#32

Post by carsongross »

zevyoura wrote: post #29
carsongross wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. You are looking at one, in gasoline sales. U6 over 15% looks pretty miserable: http://helpthe99ers.blogspot.com/2012/02/graph-of-day-u3-u4-and-u6.html and the less-easily-manipulated population employment ratio is bouncing along the bottom (maybe contracting): http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000 General sales taxes in CA are down (although the latest data is not up yet): http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/u…

None of those three look good, but, as far as I can tell, none indicate a contraction... at worst they indicate that things are remaining bad, but not getting worse. The first appears to be improving, slowly. The second appears to be hovering aroung the same level since 2010. The third link is broken for me, but when I find the data I think you're referencing on that site it appears that there is a dip in the latest…

They all indicate a very weak to declining economy and, of course, they are all trailing indicators. With the ISM miss this month and the latest jobs debacle, I expect us to be officially in recession by the end of the year (with all the experts shocked, of course.)

OTOH, it's an election year, and Bernanke will print, so who can say?

Re: What is up with U.S. retail gasoline deliveries?

#33

Post by ComputerGuru »

niggler wrote: post #12
pplante wrote: post #8

whats also interesting is that the price of gas hasn't moved much either: http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx?time=24 i guess this is a case where lower demand has kept prices high.

Pump prices are very sticky and depend on the cost of production per country. With recently depressed crude prices, some countries are actually pulling back production. http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...

The notable exception being Saudi, which (with America's complete approval, I suppose) ramps up production to drive down the cost of petroleum to make sure that Iran does not derive as much profit from its sales as it could, even at detriment to itself, as a calculated move in the cold war between those two countries.

Re: What is up with U.S. retail gasoline deliveries?

#34

Post by drawkbox »

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #17

Looks to me like they split it up into retail sales by gas stations owned by the refiner, and wholesale sales for resale. Most sales are wholesale - http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&... Going to take a wild guess and say that a refinery sold some gas stations or somehow a bunch of sales got reclassified from retail to wholesale. See definitions http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/TblDefs/pet_cons_refmg…

Exxon exited retail largely starting in 2008: http://articles.cnn.com/2008-06-12/us/exxon.mobil_1_exxonmob...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/06/12/us-exxon-idUSN1238...

Most of them just closed, others we sold, 2,220 in total. I remember around the election or before all mobile stations in my area going away. They either closed or became independent or remodeled into QuickTrips and other brands. Most of them closing due to gas prices at the time and the economy.

Possibly the dynamics of this contributed to a changed supply market since they were so big?

Re: What is up with U.S. retail gasoline deliveries?

#35

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mbell wrote: post #22
RockyMcNuts wrote: post #17

Looks to me like they split it up into retail sales by gas stations owned by the refiner, and wholesale sales for resale. Most sales are wholesale - http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&... Going to take a wild guess and say that a refinery sold some gas stations or somehow a bunch of sales got reclassified from retail to wholesale. See definitions http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/TblDefs/pet_cons_refmg…

That was my conclusion as well, this seems to be a more realistic representation of consumption: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&... Although its not easy to tell, the EIA's site could use some improvements in terms of clearly defining what the data displayed represents.

That data set isn't entirely helpful for addressing questions about U.S. retail gasoline consumption. "Petroleum products", as defined by the EIA, include "heating oils; gasoline, diesel and jet fuels; lubricants; asphalt; ethane, propane, and butane; and many other products used for their energy or chemical content" [1].

[1] http://www.eia.gov/tools/glossary/?id=petroleum

Re: What is up with U.S. retail gasoline deliveries?

#36

Post by rishonik »

carsongross wrote: post #32
zevyoura wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those three look good, but, as far as I can tell, none indicate a contraction... at worst they indicate that things are remaining bad, but not getting worse. The first appears to be improving, slowly. The second appears to be hovering aroung the same level since 2010. The third link is broken for me, but when I find the data I think you're referencing on that site it appears that there is a dip in the latest…

They all indicate a very weak to declining economy and, of course, they are all trailing indicators. With the ISM miss this month and the latest jobs debacle, I expect us to be officially in recession by the end of the year (with all the experts shocked, of course.) OTOH, it's an election year, and Bernanke will print, so who can say?

> Bernanke will print

Anyone holding paper is going to suffer some bad hurt in the coming year.

Re: What is up with U.S. retail gasoline deliveries?

#37

Post by ams6110 »

dangrossman wrote: post #2

Average vehicle fuel economy hit its all-time high [1], and there's been a massive cut-back in how much people drive [2]. Americans are driving less and when they do drive, they're driving cars that use less fuel per mile. You can likely credit the fuel economy increase on the federal mandates for higher MPG ratings on new cars, and the cut-back in driving on the high unemployment and stagnant/falling real wages of t…

You can likely credit the fuel economy increase on the federal mandates for higher MPG ratings on new cars...

I'm not sure how likely that is. Seems to me that when gas is cheap, people buy big, powerful cars (e.g. SUVs) with little regard to fuel economy. When gas prices rise, people buy small economical cars. People buy what they think they can afford and makes sense for them, and automakers make more of what the customers are buying and less of what they are not buying.

Re: What is up with U.S. retail gasoline deliveries?

#39

Post by ngvrnd »

carsongross wrote: post #11

Pretty simple: the U.S. economy is contracting severely, even though the manipulated (and preposterous, if you think about them for more than a moment) economic statistics (GDP, U3) are not. I'm not saying this is The Big One (I've been expecting it for a decade now) but I do expect The Big One to start a lot like this.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/will-baltic-dry-bounce-satans-...
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