What The ??? Monday’s Gas Spike Is the Highest Price I’ve Seen in Michigan

I don't know why I take it so personally, other than, it is coming out of MY wallet. Monday's 45-cent gasoline price spike just struck me, not so much as shocking, as it was brazen. It's like these SOBs are going to raise it another 45 cents...and all at once; not a dime here and a dime there?

Was there a world event today that would give Big Oil the green light to stick the knife in and twist it some more? I'm looking at all the news sites and there's nothing that would cause this kind of spike.

Gas Buddy editor Patrick De Haan wrote about crude oil inventories last Wednesday, but it wasn't all that much bad news: "Crude oil inventories increased by 0.7 million barrels (MMbbl) to a total of 414.4 MMbbl. At 414.4 MMbbl, inventories are 78.7 MMbbl below last year (-16.0%) and are about 16% below the five-year average for this time of year." Certainly nothing to warrant 45 cents in one day. De Haan adds "refinery utilization decreased by 0.7 percentage points vs. last week’s numbers to reach 90.3%. Gasoline production decreased to 9.5 million barrels per day while distillate fuel production decreased to 4.8 million barrels per day last week."

Here's the kicker. A new Monday night post says crude oil prices were down on Monday morning, but the stunner was the price of diesel is up a lot, like a dollar more than gasoline.

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You have to think automakers are licking their chops, with oil and diesel so high, that electric vehicle sales should benefit, but that smile on their faces may be also from the price of the electric vehicles being sky high, too.