Gas Price Hearing

Gas Price Hearing

Gas Price Hearing. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

I am always amazed when I drive by the filling station. Prices are up, prices are down and then way up again. And it’s not just your day to day commuters. Farmers and ranchers use a lot of fuel to get their jobs done. Senator Maria Cantwell from Washington State held a hearing and pressed oil industry leaders for an answer.

CANTWELL: High gas prices on the West Coast and supply and demand issue is something I have spent a lot of time on, my office has spent a lot of time on. And here we are again with prices approaching $4 per gallon in Washington State and when it gets to that point is starts to eat into our economic growth.

West Coast gas prices are well above the national average and not following crude oil prices according to a report by McCullough Research.

CANTWELL: I think my constituents would get it if there was a supply and demand formula that they could follow here but they can’t follow one. The report also underscores the continued need for continued real oversight and investigation of refinery shutdown announcements. We found last year that in a West Coast refinery fire that everybody said oh well this is the cause of the spike when in reality data showed that refineries weren’t offline but actually were still emitting which raises a lot of questions.

Cantwell said that a seemingly minor problem at Exxon Mobile’s Torrence, CA refinery led to an almost instantaneous increase in wholesale prices bumping prices 50 cents in a week.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network. 

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