After handing back 71.3 cents per gallon to gasoline customers during the prior seven weeks, the retail market has turned upward again, with the national regular grade average jumping 22.4 cents to $4.089.
The lack of progress in resolving the oil vessel traffic stoppage through the crucial Strait of Hormuz has fanned the flames of the U.S.-Iran war, adding $17.90 per barrel to the near-month futures market closing price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil in the past two weeks. WTI closed at $89.31 per barrel on Friday, versus just $71.41 on July 10.
If that per barrel oil price increase were gasoline in cents per gallon, it would be nearly 43 cents. That's about double what the retail gasoline price did during the same period.
If retail gasoline were to catch up with wholesale gasoline's price rise, it would have to leap by 20 more cents per gallon.
Refiners did not pass through all the oil price hikes that they paid into wholesale gasoline prices that they charge. Within the two-week date range, so far, they have eroded their own gasoline margins.
But the wholesale gasoline price hikes they did impose on their various buyers—the marketers and retailers of the country—amounted to more than 33 cents per gallon on average in these two weeks. This translates to a dangerously large reduction in retail margin. Retail margin on regular grade shrank by 11.6 cents per gallon on average, to a mere 21.3 cents.
This retail margin isn't sustainable. Thousands of retailers must urgently raise street prices to avoid throwing in the towel.
Even if crude oil prices were to suddenly cave, even if an oil price crash were to immediately cancel out the dramatic price rise just seen, it could not come fast enough to bring the wholesale gasoline prices down enough to prevent survival mode price hikes by dealers and other retailers.
During this time, gasoline stocks on hand shrank a bit more, while the nation's refiners managed to bring total capacity utilization up to 96.1%. The entire downstream industry is striving mightily to perform for consumer requirements while still competing fiercely for sales.
Trilby Lundberg is publisher of the Lundberg Survey of U.S. fuel markets. Lundberg Survey Inc. is based in Camarillo, California.
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