Peak Oil Panic

THERE ARE MORE MISUNDERSTANDINGS about the oil market than perhaps any other. In America, drivers are fuming and politicians are demanding explanations because gasoline has hit about $3.50 per gallon. That’s less than half the price being paid by motorists in most industrialized countries. High to us is low to them. Then there are the oil refiners. Relative to the $120 price of crude, $3.50 for gasoline is so cheap that their margins have virtually disappeared. So “high” in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Oxford, Mississippi is “low” in similarly named cities in the UK, and “high” for motorists is “low” for refiners. It depends where you live, and at which point in the supply chain you find yourself.