I paid 79.9 cents per gallon for regular unleaded yesterday at Tom Thumb Supermarket (not the convenience store in Forida). I had accumulated 60 cents a gallon in fuel discounts by shopping there. for every $100 you spend in the store you get a 10 cent per gallon fuel discount on the next fillup. You can let the discounts add up by choosing not to cash them in when you go to the pump. The discounts begin at the beginning of each quarter and will disappear if you do not use them by the end of the current quarter. I saw a man fillup his Suburban for 23 cents on Saturday. He had accumulated enough discounts to get the gas for 1 cent per gallon. I guess if you are going to buy groceries anyway, why not get fuel discounts when you buy.........And you can even buy gift cards and get double fuel discounts for them until Dec. 31. If you are going to give someone an iTunes card for Christmas why not buy it where you can get a fuel discount for yourself???? Or a Best Buy, Nordstroms, Chilis, Blockbuster, Starbucks or 225 other cards available at all Tom Thumbs. I am going to get a few more gift cards to give for Christmas and gather up another 30 cent a gallon fuel discounts. Works for me.
More like 20-25 cents here in the past couple of days. Me thinks the refiners want to keep it closer to the $2.00 level
Interesting! We get similar fuel vouchers. If you spend over $20, you get 4 cents off. Thats it, 4 cents off. Doesnt matter if you spend $200 on shopping, you get a 4 cent fuel voucher. And you cannot save them up, you use it once and thats it. You save around $2-3 on an average fill up. I dont bother using them, my brother does. Image Unavailable, Please Login
CAN$0.759 per litre (premium!) at the Costco in Abbotsford, BC last week! Gas prices are about CAN$0.974 (premium) on average throughout Vancouver, BC nowadays though. It was good while it lasted!
Even though crude has dropped over the past 5 sessions, here's what's going on: More oil is put into storage, waiting for prices to rise Record contango pushes up oil inventories; Cushing stockpiles at their highest By Moming Zhou, MarketWatch Last update: 6:10 p.m. EST Jan. 12, 2009 Comments: 174 NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Oil producers, refiners and investors have put a record amount of crude oil into storage at a key delivery point as they try to profit from an unusual form of "super contango" that indicates the market expects prices to rise sharply by summer. Inventories in Cushing, Okla., the delivery point for futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, have jumped more than 40% in the month ended Jan. 2 to the highest level in at least four years. Such stockpiling reflects the wide gap between the price of oil for delivery in the next month and contracts to deliver oil later this spring and summer. On Monday, oil for February delivery closed at $37.59 a barrel on the Nymex, or nearly $15 lower than July's contract price. Read more on oil prices. This situation, where the price of a near-term future contract is worth less than oil for delivery in several months, is called contango. It's the norm in oil markets, with the price gap representing the cost of storing the oil and locking up investors' money. But such a distance between contracts is unusual, sparking industry insiders to term the phenomenon -- which reached an apex in late December - "super contango." When the price spread is greater than the storage cost, "there is an opportunity to arbitrage at a profit without risk," said James Williams, an economist at energy research firm WTRG Economics. This gap between near-term and far-off future prices reflects expectations that oil will rebound as major producers cut output and international economic stimulus efforts breathe life into the global economy. At less than $38 a barrel, oil is currently trading nearly $110 lower than its record high hit in July. So instead of selling oil at a depressed price amid sluggish demand, more producers and investors are hoarding oil for future sales. Those stockpiles are showing up in ballooning inventories at Cushing. "When the market flips into contango, meaning the current month is less expensive than the month going forward, people start putting crude into storage," said Jeff Mower, editor-in-chief at Platts Oilgram Price Report. Contango "creates a financial incentive to store more barrels." And as the current contango widens, as analysts say is likely, Cushing could run out of room. Maximum storage capacity in Cushing is about 42.4 million barrels, but only about 80%, or roughly 34 million barrels, of that is operable storage space, says Linda Rafield, senior analyst at Platt. With 32.182 million barrels now sitting in Cushing, the market appears poised to test the limits of storage capacity there. Traders will get more information on oil stockpiles in the U.S. government's weekly energy report Wednesday. Super contango The ongoing economic turmoil has pummeled oil prices and created record levels of contango. On Dec. 19, the expiring January contract ended at $33.87 a barrel, $8.49 lower than the February contract. That's the widest contango between two successive months' contracts, according to Platts. With a price gap that big, oil investors can pocket lucrative profits by simply buying the January contract, taking the physical oil delivery and storing it, and at the same time selling contract under the higher-priced February contract. When that contract expires, they can deliver the oil they've had in storage since January. Meanwhile, the oil storage business has thrived as energy players sock away plentiful crude to wait out the current price trough. Bruce Macphail, director of contract terminals at Enbridge, said the company's 15.5 million barrel storage capacity at Cushing is nearly full. He said the company holds contracts with a variety of energy companies ranging in length from six months to several years. Read more on oil storage. Rising inventories Beyond Cushing, oil stockpiles are also on the rise across the nation. Total U.S. commercial inventories, or oil held by producers, refineries and other users, jumped 6.7 million barrels in the week ended Jan. 2 from a week ago to hit 325.4 million, the highest level since May, 2008. Refineries, meanwhile, are scaling back their production to wait for demand and prices to rise. U.S. refineries operated at 82.5% of their totally capacity of 17.6 million barrels a day at the end of last year, the lowest utilization rate since October, 2008. Futures markets indicate gasoline prices will rise in the following months. On the Nymex, the September reformulated crude contract closed at $1.3506 Monday, or 25% higher, than the February contract. At the pump, regular gasoline averaged at $1.79 a gallon Monday, up 13 cents from a month ago, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report. End of Story